Post by Tomspy77 on Jun 21, 2013 16:43:36 GMT -6
I’ll miss the ghosts of Queen St.
What once held a seven-unit press capable of publishing a 96-page newspaper, a warehouse jammed with large rolls of newsprint, a composing room staffed by a hundred employees, a commercial print shop, a darkroom for developing negatives and printing photographs, an independent newspaper with its own support infrastructure and a head-office corporate staff to oversee a small chain of newspapers … well, that no longer exists. Indeed, it hasn’t for some time.
But the building had most of those elements when I first climbed the back stairs leading to the second-floor newsroom close to 34 years ago, an act I’ve since repeated, I don’t know, 10,000 times or so.
During my first decade, the Burgoyne family was running a successful independent newspaper business, which included The Standard as well as a number of weeklies in Niagara and other parts of Ontario.
The joint was jumping, and chock full of people — pressmen, printers, journalists, ad salespeople, circulation staff, bean-counters and scads of middle managers with individual offices.
No way the original building footprint from 1898 could have handled all this activity. But The Standard remained committed to Queen St. during its various growth periods, acquiring adjacent properties, building new structures and altering existing space.
The result? Adequate space for staff and the company’s various functions, and the creation within the building envelope of a corridor-and-stairwell maze that confused new employees for years.
Arriving in late 1979, I missed out on the building boom, other than an expansion of our distribution centre at the rear.
Instead, I witnessed the building gradually shed functions and staff.
The major turning point was the 1996 purchase of The Standard’s operation by a corporate newspaper chain, an inevitability given the capital investments and economies of scale required to achieve the desired profit margins.
One of Southam’s first decisions was to shut down the press and move printing operations off-site. It was an expected, understandable decision, but a major blow to the newspaper building’s soul.
Relentless advances in technology eventually did in the composing room. Steady centralization of services instituted by a series of corporate owners reduced the staffing complement throughout the building.
Don’t believe me? Just ask the latter-day owners of the Mansion House.
And so it is that the sprawling, four-level building now sits largely empty.
The former office of entertainment editor Betty Lampard has long been a supply depot. Same with the space where editorial page editor Fred Kingsley and later managing editor Murray Thomson once ruled.
The room where newsroom staff went to smoke and that housed a couch where reporter John Nicol used to frequently sleep is largely without function.
The darkroom where photographers practised their alchemy and did goodness knows what in those secluded quarters was shuttered last century.
The accounting department where comptroller Boyd Arnold held court with his bean-counting team is pretty much vacant.
The composing room where in my copy-editing days I went to check that printer Jimmy Gare had cut and pasted copy properly has been silent for years.
And, of course, the once-familiar, comforting rumbling of the presses staffed by the likes of ink-covered Hugh Thomson hasn’t been heard forever.
If only these walls could talk … uh, on second thought, maybe that’s not such a good idea.
At any rate, we’re heading to a modern office building with the infrastructure required for today’s multi-media news operation, leaving these ghosts and contemporary memories of crumbling masonry, worn flooring, dated furnishings and a wonky HVAC system behind.
So, am I going to miss the Grand Old Lady of Queen St.?
Absolutely.
It was a newspaper building, for crying out loud!
What once held a seven-unit press capable of publishing a 96-page newspaper, a warehouse jammed with large rolls of newsprint, a composing room staffed by a hundred employees, a commercial print shop, a darkroom for developing negatives and printing photographs, an independent newspaper with its own support infrastructure and a head-office corporate staff to oversee a small chain of newspapers … well, that no longer exists. Indeed, it hasn’t for some time.
But the building had most of those elements when I first climbed the back stairs leading to the second-floor newsroom close to 34 years ago, an act I’ve since repeated, I don’t know, 10,000 times or so.
During my first decade, the Burgoyne family was running a successful independent newspaper business, which included The Standard as well as a number of weeklies in Niagara and other parts of Ontario.
The joint was jumping, and chock full of people — pressmen, printers, journalists, ad salespeople, circulation staff, bean-counters and scads of middle managers with individual offices.
No way the original building footprint from 1898 could have handled all this activity. But The Standard remained committed to Queen St. during its various growth periods, acquiring adjacent properties, building new structures and altering existing space.
The result? Adequate space for staff and the company’s various functions, and the creation within the building envelope of a corridor-and-stairwell maze that confused new employees for years.
Arriving in late 1979, I missed out on the building boom, other than an expansion of our distribution centre at the rear.
Instead, I witnessed the building gradually shed functions and staff.
The major turning point was the 1996 purchase of The Standard’s operation by a corporate newspaper chain, an inevitability given the capital investments and economies of scale required to achieve the desired profit margins.
One of Southam’s first decisions was to shut down the press and move printing operations off-site. It was an expected, understandable decision, but a major blow to the newspaper building’s soul.
Relentless advances in technology eventually did in the composing room. Steady centralization of services instituted by a series of corporate owners reduced the staffing complement throughout the building.
Don’t believe me? Just ask the latter-day owners of the Mansion House.
And so it is that the sprawling, four-level building now sits largely empty.
The former office of entertainment editor Betty Lampard has long been a supply depot. Same with the space where editorial page editor Fred Kingsley and later managing editor Murray Thomson once ruled.
The room where newsroom staff went to smoke and that housed a couch where reporter John Nicol used to frequently sleep is largely without function.
The darkroom where photographers practised their alchemy and did goodness knows what in those secluded quarters was shuttered last century.
The accounting department where comptroller Boyd Arnold held court with his bean-counting team is pretty much vacant.
The composing room where in my copy-editing days I went to check that printer Jimmy Gare had cut and pasted copy properly has been silent for years.
And, of course, the once-familiar, comforting rumbling of the presses staffed by the likes of ink-covered Hugh Thomson hasn’t been heard forever.
If only these walls could talk … uh, on second thought, maybe that’s not such a good idea.
At any rate, we’re heading to a modern office building with the infrastructure required for today’s multi-media news operation, leaving these ghosts and contemporary memories of crumbling masonry, worn flooring, dated furnishings and a wonky HVAC system behind.
So, am I going to miss the Grand Old Lady of Queen St.?
Absolutely.
It was a newspaper building, for crying out loud!