Daily News Building

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 of Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The building has 36 floors. It is owned by SL Green Realty Corp.

History

Built in 1929–1930, it was headquarters for the New York Daily News newspaper until 1995. 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." It was among the first skyscrapers to be built without an ornamental crown. 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 building, including the newspaper's new printing presses, cost $10.7 million (equivalent to $130,085,132 in 2018).

At the exact moment of 1977 New York City blackout, the building's facade was at that very moment serving as the set for the upcoming release of Superman: The Movie, the first installment with Christopher Reeve. A crashed prop helicopter was in place dangling from the roof. The film crew had their own self-powered flatbed light trucks, and the facade was bathed in light, making it an eerie apparition in the midst of a blacked out city full of spooky dark skyscrapers.

Lobby

The lobby of the building includes a black glass domed ceiling, under which was the world's largest indoor globe, conceived by the Daily News as a permanent educational science exhibit.

Landmark designations

The Daily News Building was designated a New York City Landmark in 1981 and its interior in 1998. It became a National Historic Landmark in 1989.

Tenants

The building is the home for the former Daily News TV broadcast subsidiary WPIX, channel 11, an affiliate of The CW network. The station is owned by the E.W. Scripps Company since September 2019. 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.

The Visiting Nurse Service of New York moved their headquarters to 308,000 square feet (28,600 m²) in the building in September 2016. In February 2019, the nonprofit Young Adult Institute signed a 75,000 square feet (7,000 m²) deal to relocate to the building. Other tenants include the United Nations Development Programme and the New York office of public relations firm FleishmanHillard.

Text imported from Wikipedia article "Daily News Building" and modified on April 26, 2020 according to the CC-BY-SA 4.0 International license.