Eight Cool Things About 220 East 42nd Street
In 8 Months, Staff at 1250 Broadway Will Start Moving to 220 East 42nd Street. Here are 8 pretty cool things about the new building.
Beginning this August and continuing through September and October, the staff at 1250 Broadway will be moving to 220 East 42nd Street, a historic building between Third and Second Avenues—just a block and a half from Grand Central Terminal. In the weeks to come, Frontline will be posting updates on the move, in addition to direct communications that staff will be receiving from the project move team. In the meantime, here are 8 fun facts about the new building:
1) It’s the Superman building!
The original movie Superman—the first in the series of four Superman movies starring Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder, which was released in 1978—used both the interior and exterior of the building as locations for the fictional Daily Planet newspaper that Clark Kent and Lois Lane worked for. You can see photos of the stars filming on location by clicking here.
2) Before it was the Superman building, it was The Daily News Building.
The 37-story, 476-foot high office building was constructed in 1929 and 1930 to serve as the home for the New York Daily News—the nation’s first daily tabloid newspaper. The Daily News moved out in 1995, and since then 220 East 42nd Street has simply been known as The News Building. The building still houses the offices and studios of the newspaper’s former television broadcast arm, WPIX (Channel 11).
3) The world’s largest indoor globe is in the building lobby!
When The Daily News Building opened in 1930, one of its most remarkable features was a huge, detailed globe of planet Earth, suspended in the lobby at the exact angle of the actual planet’s axis, and constructed to revolve under a domed black glass ceiling. The model Earth—meant to signify the international reach of the Daily News—is the largest indoor globe in the world. It is accompanied by brass meteorological instruments that record rainfall, wind velocity, and atmospheric pressure, as well as clocks showing the time in various cities around the world. (As you can see, we’re also using it as a graphic for this section!)
4) The building is considered one of New York’s premier examples of Art Deco architecture.
220 East 42nd Street has been called “one of the city’s major Art Deco presences” by the New York City Landmarks Commission. Designed by renowned architects Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells, key features include its vertical strips of windows separated by red and black spandrels (the space between the top of one window and the bottom of the window above), the vertical white-brick piers between the strips of windows, and a three-story Art Deco granite carving over the entrance with the words “The News” above a depiction of the building and a group of office workers, all illuminated by a sunburst.
5) The building has official landmark status!
The exterior of 220 East 42nd Street was designated a New York City Landmark in 1981, and the building’s lobby was granted the same status in 1998. The building was also named a National Historic Landmark in 1989. (This landmark designation does not extend to the building’s office space, of course. VNSNY has full control over the design of our new workspace, which has undergone a complete, state-of-the-art renovation.)
6) 220 East 42nd Street was one of the first skyscrapers in the world to have a completely flat roof.
At the time 220 East 42nd Street was built, virtually all skyscrapers still had an ornamental crown at the top (think the Empire State Building and Chrysler Building, both constructed around the same time). For this reason, the flat, “razed” roof of The Daily News Building was considered novel, but it started a new trend. From that point on, most new skyscrapers were built in a similar flat-roof style—including the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center, which architect Raymond Hood also designed, using The Daily News Building as a model.
7) The reason the bottom ten floors of 220 East 42nd Street are bigger than the floors above them is that they were built to hold the Daily News’s printing presses.
The ability to have the printing presses in the same building as the newspaper’s editorial offices was a primary motivation for constructing the new Daily News headquarters. But the large size of that era’s heavy printing presses required a bigger floor space than the editorial offices, which is why the building’s first ten floors extend out farther than the floors above them. VNSNY will be on seven of the lower floors.
8) The building underwent a major expansion in the late 1950s.
The expansion, which was completed in 1960 and significantly increased the available space in the building, included an enlargement and renovation of the building’s lobby, a new five-story wing on the building’s 41st Street side, and a new 18-story wing on the building’s eastern side.
