New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday the state will contribute $1.5 million dollars for a memorial to the victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911.

Plans for the memorial call for a steel beam to reach up to the 8th floor of the old factory building where the fire began. Names of the 146 victims will be inscribed on a panel below.

The victims were mostly young women, many of them Jewish and Italian immigrants, working in conditions known to be unsafe. And their deaths galvanized the labor movement, pushing New York to adopt new safety standards.

NYU now owns the building on Washington Place, which already has a small plaque. Victims' relatives and activists have been working to increase awareness of the fire for decades, and planning for a new memorial for years.

Undergraduate Ankita Ray said she often thinks about the tragedy, particularly when she meets with her adviser on the 10th floor, where some of the women died. "It's nice that they're acknowledging something that happened here and preserving the integrity of it," she said.

But Mark Johnson said he'd rather see the state invest elsewhere. "There's a lot better ways to spend lots of money than on huge monuments to the dead," he said.

James Parrott at the labor-backed Fiscal Policy Institute said the cost is "nominal," compared to the size of the state's budget and the event's historical significance. He called it a "landmark event" in New York history, and a seminal moment in the movement toward health and safety standards for the workplace.