Was it coincidence or fate that the New York Philharmonic commissioned Julia Wolfe to compose a new piece about the deadly fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory?

For years she has passed the site on New York’s Greene Street and Washington Place where 146 young women, all Eastern European Jewish and Italian immigrants, died on March 25, 1911. The factory was overcrowded and its exits locked or inaccessible, and the sight of women and girls leaping to their deaths haunted Greenwich Village for generations.