Brown Building (Manhattan)

The Brown Building at twenty-three Washington Place holds a weight that its current academic use might hide. Completed in nineteen hundred and one as the Asch Building, it was designed in a neo-Renaissance style featuring brick walls and terra-cotta trim. While it appears as a standard part of the New York University campus today, the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors were once occupied by the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. On a Saturday afternoon in March nineteen hundred and eleven, a fire broke out in a scrap bin of fabric and spread with terrifying speed through the factory. The disaster claimed one hundred and forty-six lives, mostly young immigrant women who were trapped behind doors locked by the owners to prevent theft. The site now stands as a landmark, reminding visitors of the moment this tragedy forced a national shift in labor laws and public safety standards.