Echoes of history at 34 Blvd. of the Allies
Building empties as newsroom moves to North Shore
Once vibrant, energetic and cacophonous, the second floor of 34 Boulevard of the Allies, Downtown, is now abandoned, silent but for faint echoes of the past — clicking keyboards and ringing telephones, muttered curses and loud cheers, boisterous laughter and some tears.
The former newsroom of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is no more and that of The Pittsburgh Press has long been gone from the iconic newspaper building. Yet still hovering there is the indefatigable spirit of the journalists who since 1927 congregated in those one-of-a-kind work spaces seven days a week to chronicle the latest tragedies and triumphs, achievements and failures, foibles and strengths of the human condition.
No longer will the work of reporters, photographers, videographers, editors, page designers, copy editors, Web staffers, artists, librarians clerks and others be housed in the half-block-long building at the entrance to the Golden Triangle. Tonight, workers will complete a three-week, logistically difficult move of 200 news staffers and equipment from that building Downtown to the new home of the Post-Gazette newsroom on the third floor of a brand new building at 358 North Shore Drive.
With that change following the move of printing on brandnew high-speed presses in
Clinton in September, the Post-Gazette now has the most state-of-the-art newsroom and production facility in the country. Thus ends 88 years of newspapering at 34 Boulevard of the Allies and the first time since July 29, 1786 — the date to which the Post-Gazette traces its lineage — that a newspaper is not being edited Downtown.
What’s changing is our location — not our vocation. Readers of the Post-Gazette and post-gazette.com will notice no difference in coverage of local, state, national and international news, features, sports and opinion that the news organization has provided for 229 years (our birthday was Wednesday).
Still, there’s no overstating the historical significance of the Post-Gazette building (which still houses personnel from human resources, advertising and circulation who will be moving to new offices at the Clinton facility this month).
Post-Gazette publisher and editor-in-chief John Robinson Block, whose appreciation of history is well known, acknowledged that the building at the end of the boulevard evokes deep feelings.
“The building has long memories. So many great newspapermen and newspaperwomen worked there over the decades for the Pittsburgh Press and, since 1962, the Post-Gazette. These wonderful people were the heart, soul, and conscience of Pittsburgh for 88 years.”
Indeed, the journalists who toiled there daily produced newspapers and, later, a website that provided the “first drafts of history” — the stories of our lives for most of the 20th century and the start of the 21st. The city and world’s hopes and dreams, its famous and infamous, the magnificent accomplishments and devastating failures — all were chronicled in the Post-Gazette building, formerly known as the Press building and for much of its life known affectionately, or less so, as the “Brown Box” for its aesthetic properties.
• Scripps Howard, which purchased The Pittsburgh Press in 1923, constructed the building at 34 Boulevard of the Allies at a cost of $4 million with the first papers rolling off the presses on Jan. 31, 1927. Utilitarian in design, the brick building nevertheless had large, Romaneque Revivalarched windows on the first floor, which allowed passersby to see the pressroom.
Atop the then-four-story building was a two-story tower that actually was a water tank fed by Pittsburgh’s “fourth river.” The word “PRESS” in large block letters adorned the tower and atop it was an illuminated lighthouse — the logo for Scripps, whose motto was “Give Light and the People Will Find their Own Way.”
On March 17, 1936, the record St. Patrick’s Day flood demolished the large firstfloor windows, causing the company to install steel floor doors and “honeycomb” windows made from 8-inch squares of thick glass, still allowing pedestrians to see the presses. A brass plaque remains on the structure indicating the high-water mark.
In 1962, The Press and Post-Gazette entered a joint operating agreement in which Scripps would provide the PG with all advertising, circulation and printing services with the two papers retaining their editorial independence. A fifth floor was added for storage, and the Post-Gazette moved into the fourth floor with a separate elevator and address at 50 Boulevard of the Allies.
Around the same time, a new “skin” of box-like protruding rectangles of aluminum panels was added to try to blend in with the newly
constructed Gateway Center buildings. The landmark PRESS sign and lighthouse were removed to attach the skin. While the new exterior reflected modernism’s love of geometeic patterns at the time, it became outdated, weathered and unsightly. No one seemed to like it — except for the myriad birds who constructed innumerable nests in its spaces.
On Jan. 1, 1993, following an eight-month work stoppage, Scripps Howard sold The Press and the building to the Post-Gazette, which ended The Press’ 108-year run. And now, 22½ years later, Downtown’s only newspaper building no longer houses a newspaper.
On its exterior is a bronze plaque the Society of Professional Journalists presented in 1975 designating the PostGazette as an historic site in journalism for being the descendant of the first newspaper west of the Alleghenies.
And in 2013, as part of the Pittsburgh Renaissance Historic District — the area at the western tip of Downtown that is bordered by the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio Rivers and Stanwix Street — it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Not bad for a brown box.
• “There’s no building like it in Pittsburgh,” said Lisa Hurm, director of operations who had the formidable task of starting a new production facility in Clinton and creating a new newsroom on the North Shore. Not only is it unique for being the only newspaper building Downtown — there aren’t many buildings that smell from ink and whose floors rumble and shake when the presses run — but also because it was a centralized hub for creation, manufacturing and distribution.
“Every day we created something entirely new — we created it from concept, produced it and distributed it,” Ms. Hurm said. “It’s nostalgic for some people.”
The building is five stories and has a basement and a subbasement. It’s immense — about 38,000 square feet per floor. At one time, in the mid-1980s, close to 2,800 people worked out of it.
There are tiny rooms and immense spaces, tunnels and nooks and crannies and strange hallways. So large is the building that one pressman, reportedly trying to avoid two ex-wives and some bookies, lived in it for months at a time, finding different places to sleep to the frustration of managers. He didn't have to worry about food — he ate at Heidi’s, the snack bar/diner on the mezzanine level that at one time employed eight people and was open nearly around the clock serving anything you can imagine — hoagies (best-seller), salads, homemade lasagna, meatloaf, potato salad and soups, hand-breaded fish, ice cream, popcorn, breakfasts and thousands of cups of coffee.
Owner Heidi Levi, who has worked there 48 years, said it was the place where everyone met, noting it was not uncommon to see inkstained pressmen enjoying lunch with the late publisher Bill Block Sr., who was revered by his employees.
“It was like a family,” Ms. Levi said, “but we had our idiots, too.”
Brian Sloan, a cook who has been there 26 years, said snack bar workers knew everything that was going on in the building because it was a place where employees from every department came to vent as well as eat.
Among the complaints were those of newsroom employees because, depending upon where they sat, they had no windows. As a joke to staunch reporters’ complaints, the late editor John G. Craig Jr. presented the newsroom with an immense painting of him sitting at his computer — at a window.
“There’s your window,” he said, laughing.
Newsroom staff fondly remember visits over the years from mayors, governors, movers and shakers and presidential hopefuls Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
The newsroom also doubled as that of the Washington Post in the 2002 movie “The Mothman Prophecies” starring Richard Gere as a reporter. And Tom Cruise is said to have used the Teamster’s drivers room bathroom while filming the 2012 movie “Jack Reacher.”
• As for the new newsroom, well, there’s more than a few upgrades. There are windows! And carpeting! An open floor plan! New furniture! An industrial chic motif!
“We’ve moved not only into a new workplace but also into a new era,” said executive editor David M. Shribman. “This is the most modern newsroom in the country — a symbol of our commitment to this community and our determination to embrace change.”
Ms. Hurm said Block Communications Inc., the company privately held by members of the Block family, will retain ownership of the Downtown building with minimal staff kept there for security and maintenance, and the idle presses will be scrapped. As for what will eventually happen to the building, Ms. Hurm said that is to be determined.
“[The Blocks] are investigating their options,” she said. “Obviously, it is a prime site for redevelopment.”
Until then, inside the darkened, abandoned newsroom, history faintly echoes.