Daily News Building

220 East 42nd Street | also 767 2nd Avenue, 225 East 41st Street | Murray Hill | built 1928

Open on the map11 entries

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

  1. 1928

    Joseph Patterson picks East 42nd Street so his tabloid beats rivals to the newsstands

    Joseph Patterson reasoned that a site on a crosstown street leading to Times Square would put his tabloids on the sidewalks before the competition. East 42nd Street east of Lexington Avenue was then a row of modest old buildings, though Tudor City and new office towers were starting to remake it. Land there was too costly for a printing plant alone, so a tower of rentable offices was added to help pay for it.

    “I'll get my tabloids on the sidewalks in the morning ahead of any of my competitors.”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1928

    Raymond Hood talks Patterson into a tower he never asked for

    Patterson wanted a printing plant with a little office space attached, not a skyscraper. Hood, wary of his reaction, told his staff to make the case in business terms and built half a dozen plasticine models, ranging from a modest plant to a 50-story shaft, to show that 35 to 40 stories would pay best. Patterson grumbled, then put an arm around Hood and told him to go ahead.

    “…put his arm around Hood and told him that if he wanted to build his tower he could go ahead…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1928

    Hood slices setbacks into the clay model of the News tower with a carving knife

    Patterson had turned down Hood's first scheme, a tower rising from the third floor, on grounds of cost. While the sculptor Rene Chambellan worked on the plasticine model, Hood's assistant Walter Kilham walked in and found him holding a carving knife, asking if he minded his doing a little zoning himself. Hood cut stepped setbacks into the block, giving the tower its tapering silhouette.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  4. 1930

    The entrance is inscribed He made so many of them beneath a bas-relief of New Yorkers

    The tower's three-story limestone base carries a bas-relief showing the people of New York, along with the inscription He made so many of them. The words refer to a quotation ascribed to Lincoln that survives in two versions, one about common people and one about common-looking people. Patterson considered common people to be his readers, and the Landmarks Commission treats the building as an emblem of his tabloid.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  5. 1930

    July 23

    Raymond Hood's Daily News Building is completed on East 42nd Street

    Designed by Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells, the 36-story Art Deco tower rose from a groundbreaking in September 1928 and was completed on July 23, 1930. Its facade runs vertical window bays between white-brick piers, and its rotunda lobby centers on a rotating globe 12 feet across. The city landmarked the exterior in 1981 and the lobby in 1998.

    Source: Wikipedia

  6. 1930

    A 12-foot revolving globe becomes the centerpiece of the Daily News lobby

    When the Daily News Building opens in 1930, its 37-story lobby centers on a 12-foot globe that revolves beneath a black glass dome, with bronze lines marking mileage to cities around the world and positioning New York at its center. The globe still draws crowds of onlookers decades later, long after the newspaper itself moves out in the mid-1990s.

    Source: Ephemeral New York

  7. 1948

    June

    WPIX opens a television studio in the building and broadcasts from its mast

    The Daily News bought the television station WPIX, and its studio opened inside the building in June 1948. The station sent its signal from the tower's 778-foot mast until 1951, when its transmission equipment moved to the taller mast of the Empire State Building.

    “…the station's television studio opened at the building in June 1948.”

    Source: Wikipedia

  8. 1978

    The building plays the Daily Planet in Superman: The Movie

    The Daily News moved into its tower in February 1930 and stayed until May 1995, when it left for Chelsea. The building inspired the headquarters of the fictional Daily Planet in the Superman comics, and it was used as a filming location for the newspaper's headquarters in the 1978 film Superman: The Movie.

    Source: Wikipedia

  9. 1981

    The city designates the Daily News Building a landmark

    New York City designates the Daily News Building a landmark in 1981, protecting Raymond Hood's Art Deco tower more than fifty years after Captain Joseph Patterson commissioned it as his newspaper's headquarters. The News occupies the building until 1995, when it relocates to Lower Manhattan near Battery Park. Its globe-filled lobby and stepped massing had already made it a well-known Midtown Art Deco address.

    Source: Forgotten New York

  10. 1982

    November

    Tribune sells the building for about $90 million and the paper becomes a tenant

    Tribune Media had tried to sell the paper and the building since 1981. In November 1982 it agreed to sell the tower to a group led by the La Salle Street Fund, and the deal closed a month later for roughly $90 million. The Daily News rented back its offices, printing moved elsewhere, and the presses came out in 1984, freeing 175,000 square feet to rent.

    “Tribune Media agreed in November 1982 to sell the building to 220 East Limited Partnership, a limited partnership led by the La Salle Street Fund.”

    Source: Wikipedia

  11. 1995

    May

    The last Daily News staff leave the building for Chelsea after 65 years

    In October 1994 the Daily News announced it would move its remaining staff to 450 West 33rd Street, giving up 130,000 square feet on 21 floors for a single floor. The last employees left in May 1995, when the tower had more than 50 tenants, including WPIX and the radio station WQCD-FM.

    Source: Wikipedia

Further reading

Nearby

All 26 buildings with stories in Murray Hill