Daily News Building
Daily News Building | |
 (1941) | |
  | |
| Location | 220 East 42nd Street, New York City |
|---|---|
| Built | 1929-1930 |
| Architect | Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells |
| Architectural style | Art Deco, Modernist[1] |
| NRHP reference No. | 82001191 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | November 14, 1982[2] |
| Designated NHL | June 29, 1989[3] |
| Designated NYCL | July 28, 1981[1] |
The Daily News Building, also known as The News Building, is a 476-foot (145 m) skyscraper located at 220 East 42nd Street between Second and Third Avenues in the Turtle Bay neighborhood[4] of Midtown Manhattan, New York City.
Built in 1929–1930, it was headquarters for the New York Daily News newspaper until 1995.[5] It was also the headquarters of United Press International until the news service moved to Washington, DC in 1982. Its design by architects Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells, in the Art Deco style, has been called "one of the city's major Art Deco presences" by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, as well as "the first fully modernistic free-standing skyscraper of architect Raymond Hood."[1] It was among the first skyscrapers to be built without an ornamental crown, and can be seen as a precursor to Hood's design of Rockefeller Center. A 1957–60 addition to the building which expanded the lobby on the southwest corner of Second Avenue was designed by Harrison & Abramovitz, echoing the vertical stripes of the original design, except with a wider stripe.[4][5] The building, including the newspaper's new printing presses, cost $10,700,000[6] – about $135 million in 2010 dollars.[7]
The lobby of the building includes a black glass domed ceiling, under which is the world's largest indoor globe (which was previously kept up to date; however, it has now not been updated for some time). This was conceived by the Daily News as a permanent educational science exhibit.[5][8]
Landmark status
The Daily News Building was designated a New York City Landmark in 1981 and its interior in 1998.[5] It became a National Historic Landmark in 1989[3][9][10] and is now owned by SL Green Realty Corp.
Tenants
The building is the home for the former Daily News TV broadcast subsidiary WPIX, channel 11,[11] an affiliate of The CW network. The station is still owned by the Tribune Company, the former parent of the Daily News. It was also home to WQCD, the smooth jazz station The News had operated as WPIX-FM. Some time after former News parent Tribune Company took over WQCD directly, the station was sold to Emmis Communications. Other tenants include the United Nations Development Programme[12] and the New York office of public relations firm FleishmanHillard.
Ayn Rand
In her posthumously published journal notes written in 1936–7 in preparation for her 1943 novel The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand describes the Daily News Building as one of the "ugliest, flattest, most conventional, meaningless, unimaginative, and uninspiring" of the buildings in the architecture book she was consulting.[13] It has, however, been pointed out[14] that Rand was drawing upon Raymond Hood's career and work for material for the major negative architect character in her novel; she was therefore inclined to see nothing innovative or positive in Hood's Daily News Building at the time.
Gallery
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The lobby of The News Building, circa 1941 -
Daily News Building, rendered by Hugh Ferriss -
Main entrance in 2008
In popular culture
- The News Building was the model for the headquarters of the fictional newspaper Daily Planet, the building where Superman works as journalist Clark Kent.[citation needed]
References
Notes
- ^ a b c New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission "Daily News Building Designation Report (July 28, 1981)
- ^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. January 23, 2007.
- ^ a b "The News Building". National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service. 2007-09-11. Cite error: The named reference "nhlsum" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
- ^ a b White, Norval; Willensky, Elliot; Leadon, Fran (2010). AIA Guide to New York City (5th ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19538-386-7., p. 390
- ^ a b c d New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission; Dolkart, Andrew S.; Postal, Matthew A. (2009). Postal, Matthew A. (ed.). Guide to New York City Landmarks (4th ed.). New York: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0-470-28963-1., p.109
- ^ Federal Writers' Project (1939). New York City Guide. New York: Random House. ISBN 978-1-60354-055-1. (Reprinted by Scholarly Press, 1976; often referred to as WPA Guide to New York City.), p.210
- ^ Inflation Calculator
- ^ Brockman, Jorg (photographs) & Harris, Bill (text) (2002). Five Hundred Buildings of New York. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal. p.581. ISBN 978-1-57912-856-2
- ^ Pitts, Carolyn (1989-02-09). "Daily News Building (text)" (PDF, 718 KiB). National Register of Historic Places Registration. United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service. Retrieved 2011-10-15.
- ^ "Daily News Building—Accompanying Photos, exterior, from 1979 and 1981" (PDF, 241 KiB). National Register of Historic Places Inventory. National Park Service. 1989-02-09. Retrieved 2011-10-15.
- ^ SL Green Signs Three at 220 E. 42nd Street Covering 133,600 Square Feet
- ^ SL Green Inks 142,000 Square Feet of New Leases Within 30 Days
- ^ Rand, Ayn The Journals of Ayn Rand Plume, 1999. p.131
- ^ Heynick, Frank. "Peter Keating designed Rockefeller Center?" on The Atlasphere website (September 7, 2009)
External links
