Image via Complex Original
The Daily News got its start, like so many of New York City’s papers, in a small rental office space nestled in the heart of Publisher’s Row in lower Manhattan. By 1927, after only eight years of printing, the paper was the biggest in the country, and ready to move to a “fat and flush” new tower in Midtown.
Written by Babak Bryan (@BabakBRYAN)
The Genesis
The publisher, Captain Joseph Patterson, had bought over 48,000 square feet of residential properties in the undesirable area east of Third Avenue between 41st and 42nd streets. He commissioned the winners of the 1922 Chicago Tribune competition, Raymond Hood and Andre Fouilhoux, to design the paper’s new home. Construction was estimated at over $7 million, an immense amount for the time that earned the jealous remarks of Henry Luce, the publisher of the more prestigious Time Magazine, wondering how a tabloid rag could afford such an undertaking.
One of the First Skyscrapers
The building is among the first skyscrapers to have been built without an ornamental crown. It’s thought to be a predecessor to Hood’s more substantial Rockefeller Center. The firm of Harrison & Abramovitz is responsible for the 1957 addition, though they kept most of the original design: vertical strips of white brick with bays of dark glass and brick spandrels between. The 476-foot, 37-story tower is set back above the 10-story base that accommodated the printing presses.
Art Deco
The building is best known for its lobby and entrance, adorned with a 3-storey granite slab with the relief image of art deco styled office workers beneath a sunburst motif illuminating the building rising above.
The Famous Lobby
Inside the lobby is a large rotating globe that had been kept continuously updated with geopolitical news. Interestingly, when the building first opened, no one noticed that the mechanisms were set so that the world revolved backwards. The globe and the building both served to inspire the offices of the Daily Planet in the first two Superman movies. Today, it still serves as the broadcasting center for WPIX-TV, which was once co-owned by the paper. Since for year the News’ slogan was “New York’s Picture Newspaper,” it thought the call letters for its television and radio stations a clever acronym.
Ayn Rand Hated It
Despite the building’s architectural precedence, Ayn Rand wrote in her notes for her 1943 novel The Fountainhead that the building is one of the “ugliest, flattest, most conventional, meaningless, unimaginative, and uninspiring” buildings of the time. This criticism seems especially harsh considering that Hood, the lead architect of the building, was one of the principle sources of inspiration for her character Howard Roark.
Making History
Since the mid-’90s the paper has moved twice, first to the building at 450 West 33rd Street that straddles the railroad tracks on the west side of Penn Station, and more recently to the tip of Lower Manhattan. However, its former home on East 42nd is still known as the Daily News Building. It was made a National Historic Landmark before the paper left in 1989, and remains the epitome of light Art Deco architecture for giant media conglomerations.