Daily News Building
The Daily News Building is a skyscraper at 220 East 42nd Street in the Midtown East neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, United States. The original tower, designed by Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells in the Art Deco style and completed in 1930, was one of several major developments constructed on 42nd Street around that time. A similarly styled expansion, designed by Harrison & Abramovitz, was completed in 1960. When it originally opened, the building received mixed reviews and was described as having a utilitarian design. The Daily News Building is a National Historic Landmark, and its exterior and lobby are New York City designated landmarks.
The edifice occupies a rectangular site adjoined by 41st Street to the south, Second Avenue to the east, and 42nd Street to the north. It consists of a 36-story tower rising, along with a 14-story printing plant on 41st Street and an 18-story annex on 42nd Street. There is a large carved-granite entrance at 42nd Street, leading to a rotunda lobby with a rotating painted globe. The facade is divided vertically into bays of windows separated by white-brick sections of wall, with brick spandrel panels between windows on different stories. The massing, or general shape, includes several setbacks on higher floors.
After the New York Daily News acquired land on 42nd Street in February 1928, the paper's founder Joseph Medill Patterson commissioned Hood and Howells to design a building there. The architects filed blueprints with the Manhattan Bureau of Buildings in June 1928, and the Daily News started moving into the building in February 1930, with the lobby opening that July. The newspaper filed plans in 1944 for the annex, work on which began in 1957 after additional land was acquired. The Daily News parent, Tribune Media, sold the building in 1982 to a limited partnership led by the La Salle Street Fund. The newspaper downsized its offices there over the next decade before moving out entirely in 1995, and its space was rented out to other tenants. SL Green Realty bought the building in 2003 and sold a partial ownership stake to Meritz Alternative Investment Management in 2021.
Site
The Daily News Building, also known as the News Building, is at 220 East 42nd Street in the Midtown East neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, United States. The site is bounded by 42nd Street to the north, Second Avenue to the east, 41st Street to the south, and a private alley called Kempner Place to the west. The New York City Subway's Grand Central–42nd Street station, the Chrysler Building, and the Socony–Mobil Building are all one block to the west. In addition, the Pfizer Building is across 42nd Street to the north, and Tudor City and the Ford Foundation Building are across Second Avenue to the east.Architecture
and The Skyscraper Center describe the building as being approximately tall with 36 floors. The original portions of the building were designed by Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells as the headquarters of the New York Daily News. In contrast to Hood's earlier designs for the Tribune Tower in Chicago and the American Radiator Building in New York, both of which had Gothic ornament, the original structure is designed in the Art Deco style and lacks Gothic decoration. Hood designed the building around the Daily News practical needs, rather than based on aesthetics, though he did not "feel that the News Building is worse looking than some other buildings". According to Hood, both the owner and architect had agreed that "the most simple and direct way to get an effective exterior" was to incorporate colorful features. Harrison & Abramovitz designed the annex, which was completed in 1960.Form
The building consists of three sections. The two original portions constitute an L-shaped structure with a 36-story tower facing both 41st and 42nd streets, as well as a printing plant on 41st Street. These sections have a combined frontage of on 42nd Street and a frontage of on 41st Street. On the northeastern portion of the plot, at the corner of 42nd Street and Second Avenue, is Harrison & Abramovitz's 18-story annex.The original structure's massing or general shape—with several setbacks on all sides—was influenced by the requirements of the city's zoning code. The tower's northern elevation along 42nd Street contains one large setback at the 9th story. The southern elevation has small setbacks at the 7th and 13th stories, as well as larger setbacks at the 27th story and just below the mechanical penthouses on the roof. The setbacks on the northern and southern elevations are visible from the west, creating a zigzag effect. These setbacks can also be seen on the eastern elevation, whose northernmost seven bays protrude slightly up to the 33rd story. The printing plant was originally nine stories high; an additional five stories, dating from the late 1950s, are set back from the original plant.
Facade
Tower
The windows are arranged vertically into bays that measure wide; on each story, there is one window every, creating a uniform fenestration or window layout. Hood claimed that the windows were laid in vertical bands so the offices inside could be arranged more flexibly, though other observers stated that the windows could have been arranged in horizontal bands instead. The windows on different stories are separated horizontally by spandrel panels with black and reddish-brown bricks. The spandrel panels on the lower floors contain geometric patterns, while those on the upper floors depict simpler, horizontal bars. Between each bay are white-brick piers, or vertical bands of wall, which The New York Times likened to "tall piles of newspapers". The piers are similar to those that Hood had designed for 3 East 84th Street—where Daily News publisher Joseph Medill Patterson lived. The spandrel panels just below each setback are decorated with miniature setbacks, while the tops of the piers terminate abruptly. Hood decided to add "a small explosion of architectural effect" to the entrance and lobby, since he was given a $150,000 budget for their design. The granite-clad main entrance, at the base of the tower on 42nd Street, is three stories tall and five bays wide. Over the entrance is a carving of the phrase "The News", below which is a large bas-relief designed by Hood. The bas-relief has carvings of people and the phrase "He Made So Many of Them". The latter quotation was attributed to Abraham Lincoln and referenced the "common people" to whom the Daily News was intended; the figure directly below the word "He" may represent Lincoln. The entrance is flanked by glass pylons with bronze ornamentation and horizontal bronze strips. On either side of the main entrance are smaller storefront entrances, which are topped by a horizontal frieze with white brick. The western elevation bears a granite inscription of a quote from Patterson, proclaiming the building as "Home of the News", while the southern elevation has five loading docks.The top of the facade is plain in design, extending just high enough above the roof to conceal the elevator rooms and mechanical spaces. Hood had initially been conflicted about how to design the top stories, and one account has it that Frank Lloyd Wright advised Hood to "just cut the top off". Wright reportedly retracted his suggestion after being confronted by Hood's assistant Walter Kilham. According to the architect Kenneth MacKenzie Murchison, Hood put a tripod with a tin can on the roof after people complained that the building lacked a finial.
Other portions
The original printing plant on 41st Street is similar in style to the tower, though the bays are grouped in sets of three. Each grouping is separated by wide white-brick piers, while the windows in each grouping are subdivided by narrower piers. There is a painted frieze above the first story on both the 41st Street and Second Avenue facades, as well as six loading docks along 41st Street.The annex has a similar design to that of the original facade, although the windows in the annex are larger. Like the original building, the vertical bays each contain one window per floor, and there are light-and-dark-red brick spandrels between different floors; however, the piers between each bay have slightly projecting white-brick piers with aluminum sheathing. The facade of the printing-plant addition is designed in the same manner.
Interior
The Daily News cites the original structure, comprising the tower and the lower portion of the printing plant, as having a floor area of. The annex covers, and the printing-plant addition covers, giving the building a total floor area of.Lobby
The 42nd Street entrance leads to the lobby's rotunda, which has a faceted, domed ceiling made of black glass. The ceiling is supported by two closely-spaced marble piers each to the west and east of the rotunda. In a stepped pit underneath is a rotating globe painted by Daniel Putnam Brinley. Conceived by the Daily News as an educational exhibit, the globe measures in diameter and includes over 3,000 geographical features. The pit itself contains popular science inscriptions and is recessed into the lobby floor. Within the rest of the lobby, the floor has a terrazzo-and-bronze compass rose, with bronze inscriptions denoting world cities and their distances from the building. Surrounding the rotunda were originally eighteen glass display cases with charts and maps; the display cases also contained meteorology exhibits by James H. Scarr, a U.S. Weather Bureau meteorologist. There were also storefronts to the east and west of the rotunda.A hallway leads from the west side of the rotunda south to an elevator lobby, which has two banks of elevators. The elevator lobby has bronze grilles and other decorations designed by Rene Paul Chambellan in the Art Deco style. In addition, bronze plaques on the elevator lobby's walls memorialize Daily News employees who fought in major wars. After the building opened, the main lobby became so popular among tourists that Hood built a side entrance for Daily News employees. During the late 1950s, the storefronts on either side of the rotunda were removed and incorporated into the main lobby. The city names on the floor were modified, one of the hallways was extended to Second Avenue, and the glass showcases were replaced with 19 wall panels. J. Henry Weber designed the wall panels, which contain maps, weather charts and equipment, and clocks from different time zones.
Accounts differ on who had the most influence on the lobby's design. Daily News historians credited Patterson with having proposed the lobby's design, while Kilham indicated that Hood had come up with the idea and that Patterson had been skeptical of including a globe in the design. The rotunda's design is reminiscent of Bruno Taut's Glass Pavilion, and the recessed globe was inspired by Napoleon's tomb at Les Invalides.