The Skyscraper Museum is devoted to the study of high-rise building, past, present, and future. The Museum explores tall buildings as objects of design, products of technology, sites of construction, investments in real estate, and places of work and residence. This site will look better in a browser that supports web standards, but it is accessible to any browser or Internet device.
The Times Annex
After the extravagance of the Times Tower and eight years of expanding circulation in the constrained space of Times Square, the paper decided to spread out in a new factory-style facility at 229 West 43rd Street. This time efficiency rather than iconicity was the watchword. The Times occupied their entire building of 144,000 square feet-three times the space of the old building. Press capacity increased sevenfold. In the booklet they published in 1913 on the new home, of which multiple pages are displayed here, the paper dubbed the new Annex "the greatest and completest newspaper workshop in the world."
The full Annex was built in several stages, principally from 1912-1914, and then in 1922-1924, when the image of the towered chateau took shape. The first section, designed by Buchman & Fox, was a reserved limestone-faced structure with eleven stories above street level and a spacious pressroom and sub-basement below.
Cover. The Times Annex A Wonderful
Workshop: a book about the new
home of The New York Times in
Times Square.
The New York Times Co. 1913.
Courtesy of The New York Times
Company
The Making of a Great Newspaper:
The Story of the New York Times.
The New York Times Co., 1924.
Collection of The Skyscraper Museum
In 1922 Ludlow & Peabody designed a 100-foot extension to the west that also subsumed the 1914 building under a five-story setback attic and central peaked tower. The blueprint in this case shows the arrangement of the third floor-home to the News Department with reporters' desks, City and Managing editor offices, copy editors arrayed around the special circular desk called the "slot," and the Biographical Morgue, Drama, Sports, and Music departments. The Times printed newspapers at 229 West 43rd Street until 1997
Architectural Drawing: Third Floor Plan. Ludlow & Peabody Architects. New York, NY. 1924. Courtesy of The New York Times Company
