Brown Building of Science

The Brown Building of Science is a ten-story building owned by New York University located at 23-29 Washington Place, just east of Washington Square Park in Manhattan. It was formerly the Asch Building which contained the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, the site of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire that killed 146 of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory laborers on March 25, 1911. The fire led to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards and helped spur the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union.

The building survived the fire and was refurbished. Real estate speculator and philanthropist Frederick Brown later bought the building and subsequently donated the structure to New York University in 1929, where it is now known as the Brown Building of Science. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was named a National Historical Landmark in 1991. The building also was listed as a New York City Landmark in 2003.

The factory is now a part of the campus of New York University and has been reconstructed into the chemistry and biology building. Two plaques in the front of the building commemorate the women who lost their lives in the fire.

More recently, a coalition of preservation organizations, historians, artists, and labor activists, including the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, the Gotham Center, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, the Bowery Poetry Club and others, have come together to form the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition, whose goal is to commemorate the centennial of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, which will take place in 2011.