Times Building Design

The Times Building at 41 Park Row as designed. Drawing published in the Scientific American, August 25, 1888. At the time the building was still under construction, which had begun on January 23 and the new structure was completed in April 1889. The Times and its staff continued to occupy their old quarters during the construction of the new building and the news paper continued to be printed inside the premises. This early skyscraper was designed by George Browne Post (1837-1913) in Romanesque revival style. It included a mansard roof with gabled dormers. The fronts were built of rusticated Indiana limestone blocks above a gray Maine granite base. The façades details include compound colonnettes, roll moldings, miniature balustrades and foliate reliefs.

Below, text from the Harper's Weekly, October 27, 1888, about the construction of this Times Building, entitled: THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE “TIMES” BUILDING.

«Short of an earthquake or a fire, there can be no cataclysm that ought to interrupt the steady life-throb of an every-day-in-the-year journal. Having decided on the erection of a new structure, the proprietors of the New York Times entertained the idea that the paper should be made on the premises, indifferent to any conditions. The problem to be solved was a novel one. Below the curb were the five WALTER presses, the stereotyping plant, a machine-shop, with eight engines and three boilers. Above that was the mailing-room; over that, on a level with the street, the publication office. On the fourth story were the editorial rooms, fifty-five feet above the street, and on the sixth story the composition-room, seventy-three feet above the ground-level. In these various departments some 300 people were at work. Old buildings have been enlarged, stories reared, wings added, and occupants shifted, but in this case the whole structure was to come down, a brand-new one was to be built, and neither occupants nor machinery were to be disturbed. The proprietors of the New York Times having always felt that the health and comfort of those they employed were worthy of the most particular attention, this was a demand the fulfilment of which they considered imperative.

To Mr. D. H. KING, Jun., who had successfully carried out the erection of the pedestal of the Bartholdi statue, the matter of tearing down and building up was submitted, and the exigencies of the case fully explained. It was something requiring careful study. Nothing was to be done in a foolhardy or tentative manner. Mr. KING arrived at the conclusion that it was perfectly feasible to carry on the entire business of the New York Times under what were abnormal conditions. The structure as it stands now shows that Aladdin does not belong to the past, but what was pure magic on his part Mr. KING has accomplished to-day by the means of practical mechanical skill and his own particular genius. It has seemed almost a theatrical change, only the canvas weighs many thousands of tons in solid stone and iron. Something more may be said, and it is that during the demolition and the building up the New York Times has been issued every day, and from editor-in-chief to errand-boy there really has been no disturbance.

The way it was done may be thus briefly described. In February the new foundations for the lofty structure which was to be were begun. They were of the most massive and substantial character. In some cases the new work fused with the old. When finished came the true preparations for the demolition, which, anomalous as it may seem, was a building up. Stories with a hundred occupants were not to be dropped eighty feet down. From the foundation to the roof were placed a whole series of double shorings, with their transverse needlings. These took the place of the outside walls, the interior partition walls, and held every story in place. The old building having been constructed with iron girders, the shoring and needling were to take the places of the old walls. Then from below were brought in wrought-iron columns, which rested on the new foundations. These columns are stronger than those used in elevated railroads. This was a difficult task, as holes had to be cut in the floors so as to pass the columns through. When a series of these pillars was in place, then new iron girders were bolted to them, and brought in direct contact with the old floors. At one time shoring and needling with iron pillars and iron girders were together holding up all the stories within the building. Bit by bit now the old stone facing and the walls were taken away. When outside demolition was complete, then the new walls arose. The work was in a measure synchronous, masons and bricklayers on the various fronts keeping exact time with the iron-workers inside. As the massive walls were built, the extremities of the iron beams and girders found their natural resting-places. While the scaling process had been going on, the various stories above, with their living occupants, were boarded in, and a temporary roof covered the composition - rooms. All these arrangements were made water-proof.»

In 1904, the building was again expanded to a 16-story skyscraper, but was turned into an office building for tenants once the Times was moved to Times Square in early 1905. This is one of the last remnants of Newspaper Row, the center of newspaper publishing in New York City from the 1830s to the 1920s. In 1999, the building was designated as a New York City landmark.