Can we use geospatial tools to explore the human condition and tragedy? The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Revisited: A Geospatial Exploration of Tragedy aims to do just that, by introducing the viewer to a historical event, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911, through the use of interactive geospatial technology. The project presents the viewer with the home addresses of all 146 victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, their burial places, and major geographic points related to the fire, identified by points on a map. The project uncovers siloed documents and information, bringing them together in a singular context for a more intimate understanding of an event and the primary sources that document it. This project intends to create a single access point via a digital portal for interaction by the user. Creating this portal offers the user the freedom to interact with the information contained within the map at their own pace, and explore the information that most appeals to the user. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Revisited project is built on a dataset complied from archive photographs, letters, journalism, artwork, home, work, and gravesite addresses all relating to the fire victims.

Modeling historic events with geospatial data has been shown to be an impactful way to explore history in digital humanities projects such as Torn Apart / Separados http://xpmethod.plaintext.in/torn-apart/volume/1/, Slave Revolt in Jamaica, 1760-1761: A Cartographic Narrative http://revolt.axismaps.com/, and American Panorama: An Atlas of United States History http://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/. 

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Revisited continues the expansion of geospatial exploration in the digital humanities by presenting the user with the ability to explore the horrific event of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire through the lives of the victims. By creating an interface that will allow the user to explore an event through their own direction, the user can take ownership over learning about a historical event through their own research. This project encourages the user to examine underrepresented histories and also provides a way for them to engage with primary sources and digital tools. This project is committed to grounding geospatial concepts in the humanities for thinking critically about the relationships between events, people, movements, laws and regulations, and journalism.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Revisited project will be built in three phases: 1) research and data collection, 2) prototype design and review 3) digital portal creation, followed by user testing. Phase 1) research and data collection— Information about the 146 victims was gathered from David Von Drehle’s book Triangle: The Fire that Changed America, the Cornell University Kheel Center website Remembering the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911 (https://trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/) which includes Michael Hirsch’s research on the six previously unidentified victims and also from the Find A Grave website (https://www.findagrave.com/). Additionally, the information and letters included in Anthony Giacchino’s 2011 Triangle Fire Letter Project (http://open-archive.rememberthetrianglefire.org/triangle-fire-letter-project/) was included to add another dimension to the information landscape of these 146 victims. This information was compiled and reviewed for accuracy, then a dataset was built. Relevant primary and secondary sources were then identified and incorporated into the dataset. Addresses were geocoded (latitude and longitude locations added to the addresses). Phase one is complete. Phase 2) prototype design and review — The dataset built in phase one was then used to create several digital geospatial prototypes (see Appendix). Further review will need to be done to complete Phase 2 and move forward with the project. Phase 3) digital portal development, creation & user testing— For this phase, the project team will continue to review prototypes created in phase 2, determine the mapping software to be used, features and information to be included, and then begin building the final map. Once the digital map and interactive portal is complete, user testing will be begin and adjustments will be made based on comments and recommendations made by the user testing group, pending final approval by the project team.

The final product, a digital, interactive geospatial (map) interface documenting the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911, that will allow the user to explore this historical event, and those connected to it, at their own direction will be published openly on the internet under a Creative Commons license that would allow others to freely use the code and dataset to build their own geospatial project. Once the project is publicly available, a Github repository for the tools used, data gathered, and dataset created will be established and populated, allowing further research to be done using the tools and data collected by the project team. In addition, a detailed account of the building of the project, including lessons learned, will be added to the Github repository with the hope of providing future researchers a formula for success and review of best practices for a digital mapping project. We will also use social media, blog posts on digital humanities and geospatial websites, conference talks and presentations with relevant academic associations to further publicize the project.

I used this praxis as an exploratory step in what I hope will become a larger project and potentially my thesis/capstone work. Recently I had the opportunity to walk the area of downtown Manhattan that was known during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, roughly 1880-1940, as Little Syria with GC historian and president of the Washington Street Advocacy Group, Todd Fine and music historian Ian Nagoski. I have not lived very long in New York City, so going in my knowledge of the history of this area and people who had lived there was rudimentary at best. That being said, I wanted to learn more about this group of immigrants from the Eastern Mediterranean and their role in the history of New York City, especially as the perception of immigrants from this part of the world remains so highly contentious. I have a background in Islamic/Middle East Studies and Arabic language and have been looking for a bridge to connect my current study of the digital humanities with my previous work in the Middle East. I think this project may just be that bridge.

“I believe that you have inherited from your forefathers an ancient dream, a song, a prophecy, which you can proudly lay as a gift of gratitude upon the lap of America.”

– Khalil Gibran, I Believe in You (to the Americans of Syrian origin)

The walking experience of Little Syria was an incredible dive into the physical history of the area which was located on Washington Street, just south of the 9/11 memorial to Battery Park, but it was also an auditory exploration of recordings created by its residents, provided in the form of  a playlist by Ian Nagoski. The name Little Syria, can be a little misleading as it refers to the region of Greater Syria, which in the late 19th/early 20th century included parts of Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria, and was given to the area because it was the origin point of the majority of the population who lived there. Most of the buildings in Little Syria were demolished when the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel was built in the 1940s, with just a few buildings remaining, including the St. George Chapel (white building on the right in the picture below, which was designated a New York City landmark in 2009 and is now home to the St. George Tavern).

This walking experience got me thinking about the past and how I might explore the intersections of the history of Little Syria, the history of New York City, the experience of the immigrant’s “American Dream”, and our relationship with immigrants, all within a hauntological (“always-already absent present”) framework (simple, right?!) and could I use some sort of map to do it? I knew that I would not have time to build anything even close to what I envision for a final project, but as with any project, you have to start somewhere.

I have experience mapping using many of the applications that we read about in “Finding the Right Tools for Mapping” and I was not sure which would be the best for this project but first I needed some data. I must admit that I fell down many of the same “rabbit holes” that I have fallen down in the past, including spending far too much time looking for data resources, learning there were none and then having to find and build my own datasets which (I knew from past experience) requires a ridiculous amount of time, though I do seem to always underestimate just how long it takes.

I began by playing around a bit in Mapbox with a very small dataset that I built of the locations of Syrian Periodicals in New York based on information from The Syrian American Directory Almanac (1930). It turned out to be nothing particularly exciting so I decided to build something in Storymaps, which was not particularly exciting either.

In the end, I am still not sure what direction this project is going but it was an interesting exploration with mapping applications.