This old building is going through another upheaval, as our newsroom has picked up and moved downstairs to the rear of our office.

They’ve left me all alone at the front of the second floor with my books and my historical files. A news crew has been up here since we remodeled the place about 1955, put in an elevator and air-conditioned the building. I think the last item was the highlight of that time.

The original building dating to 1926 had big factory windows that swung out to let in air (and flies).

In fact, my first “job” as a kid was to swat flies in the newsroom. My first paid job was as an apprentice printer the year after graduating from high school. It paid $12 a week for six days of work. The printers in those days were the paper’s largest department. It took a lot of man-hours in the “hot metal” days to put news and advertising into type metal that could be converted in our stereotype room to curved plates that fit on the press. That composing room with its Linotype for news and the Ludlow for large type is now the new home of our news department.