Daily News Building (New York City, New York)

 office building, skyscraper, newspaper publisher, interesting place, Art Deco (architecture), 1930_construction

476-foot, 36-story Art-Deco office building completed in 1930 for Joseph M. Patterson. Designed by Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells, it was headquarters for The New York Daily News until the mid-1990s. It was also the headquarters of United Press International until the news service moved to Washington, DC in 1982. The structure contained the newspaper's offices and speculative office space in a tower set back above a 10-story base with larger floors to accommodate the presses. 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.

The paper was originally called the Illustrated Daily News, the city's first tabloid newspaper. By its second year, now shortened to just the Daily News, it was the second most-circulated paper. In December 1925, the paper's circulation passed the one million mark, making the News New York's largest newspaper. From 1921, the company operated out of a 5-story loft building at 21 Park Place downtown, but soon needed more space.

As completed, the News Building is a 36-story tower on East 42nd Street, attached to the 9-story printing plant on East 41st. The northern facade has only one major setback, two bays deep, at the 9th floor level. The setback is not pulled in from the sides, so that when seen head-on the building has the appearance of a slab until the very top, where at the 33rd floor the outer two bays on either end are inset one bay.

The western facade, fronting on the 25-foot alley, is not as visible as it would have been with the originally-planned 50-foot wide alley. Its setbacks are more complicated than those of the north front. The 2-bay setback at the 9th floor level on its north edge is matched by a 10-bay setback on its south edge, which also is pulled in two bays from the western facade. The 11th and 12th bays from the south rise to the 15th floor before being pulled back two bays. The ten southernmost bays on this side have smaller floor heights, and rise in a different pattern from those on the north. The total effect on the western front is a series of zig-zag setbacks and varied massing.

The southern front has 1-bay deep setbacks at the 7th and 13th floors, and a 2-bay deep setback at the 27th floor and at the top where the building's exterior walls rise to hide the service shafts. The outer two bays on either side terminate at the 10th floor. The view from the southwest corner shows a very complicated set of stacked masses. The eastern front, now partially obscured by a 1959 addition, shows the setbacks of the northern and southern fronts; its seven northerly bays project forward from the main wall plane until the 33rd floor level.

The entire exterior is composed of tall slender bands of white brick alternating with window bays in which the windows are separated by patterned panels of reddish-brown and black brick; the windows originally had red-striped shades. At the lower floors the brick panels show geometric patterns, but these are gradually simplified higher up until in the upper windows they have become simple horizontal stripes. Wherever the building is set back, these panels have miniature setbacks within them.

The main entrance--on the north front--is through a 3-story high, 5-bay-wide polished granite block, with a large inscription at the top reading "THE-NEWS," a smaller inscription below reading "HE MADE SO MANY OF THEM," a bas-relief of the people of New York, and a background of skyscrapers culminating in an image of the Daily News Building from above which emanate the rays of the sun. To either side of the polished granite block is a glass pylon capped in bronze, and held to the block by bronze straps. A large bronze floral frieze is set above the doorway. The entrances at either side of the center, which originally led to stores, have smaller but similar bronze floral friezes. The brick patterns immediately above them show a more complicated version of the brick patterns in the window bays; they are overlapped by the terminations of the vertical bays of white brick. The same decorative treatment of alternating white brick bands and window bays, patterned brick, and bronze friezes, is carried around on the other fronts.

The ground floor on the south front has five loading bays in the tower portion of the building. The printing plant portion, in its original configuration, was nine stories high on East 41st Street and on Second Avenue, with no setbacks; a 1959 addition rises several stories above it and is set back from the building line in accordance with zoning laws. The decorative treatment of the printing plant is similar to that of the tower, but its narrow bays are set in groups of three defined by wider white brick piers. There are six loading bays on the East 41st Street front. The floral bronze frieze of the north front is repeated, again at the first-floor level, along the Second Avenue front of the printing plant. Designed to complement Hood's tower, the addition is composed of vertical bands of white brick alternating with bays of windows and black and red brick panels, similar to Hood's elements; the white bands, however, project out from the building and are sheathed in aluminum, in effect taking Hood's conception several steps towards the more recent evolution of the International Style. The addition fills in the space at the southwest corner of Second Avenue and 42nd Street which had been bounded by the tower and printing plant, so that the News complex now fills the entire block between Second Avenue and the 25-foot alley, from East 41st to East 42nd Streets.

No longer occupied by the newspaper, the News Building is the home for former News TV subsidiary WPIX and 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 outright, the station was sold to Emmis Communications. It is also known as the model for the headquarters of the fictional newspaper Daily Planet, the building where Superman works as journalist Clark Kent.

The landmarked 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. The lobby's metalwork was executed by Rene Chambellan. An expansion was made in 1960 by Harrison & Abramovitz. The ground floor is occupied by YAI Premiere Healthcare, VNS Health, Pleroma restaurant, a Starbucks coffee, WPIX 11, Club Champion golf store, and the Consulate General of Brazil.

s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/lp/1049.pdf
s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/lp/1982.pdf
usmodernist.org/AF/AF-1930-11-1.pdf