The Daily News Building (a.k.a. The Daily Planet)

**click on any picture to see a larger view**

September 1st marked our four year anniversary of moving to New York. We've come a long way since that first day in the city as baby-faced college graduates from Idaho. In fact, I just re-read the first blog post that I wrote after arriving here and laughed the whole time. I think we've both learned a lot and grown a lot from city life (and I think I've gotten a lot better at blogging). I wouldn't say that we're 100% New Yorkers now, but we fit in a lot better than we did.

What better way to celebrate than to go have an adventure in the city to visit a famous journalistic sight, since journalism is what brought us here. We decided to visit The Daily News Building, which housed the NY Daily News (one of the country's largest and oldest newspapers) from 1930 to 1995. The building sits on East 42nd street, two and a half blocks east of Grand Central Station. Although it no longer holds the newspaper, it is still called the News Building. The main reason why we wanted to visit this building was because its lobby, elevators, entrance doors and exterior were used to represent the Daily Planet in the original Superman movie with Christopher Reeve and Margo Kidder. Brian is a big fan of Superman, and we both have fond memories of watching the movies as kids.

While walking over from Grand Central, we had a great, up close view of the Chrysler Building -- one of our favorite buildings to see in the NY city skyline from our apartment in Queens.

  

One of my favorite things to see in the city is a small (five stories has become small) building squished in between two large skyscrapers. We found one such building on our walk. 

We got super excited when we came upon the building. I wanted to get a picture of Brian in front of the doors and he naturally struck a Superman-esque pose.

The whole building has an Art-Deco feel to it. It was designed by Raymond Hood and John Mead Howell, the architects who also designed the Tribune Tower in Chicago. Hood was also the chief designer of Rockefeller Center, and his design for the Daily News Building was part of his inspiration for the center's RCA building (the really tall main building). The design in the stone above the main door is so cool. It depicts a portion of New York's skyline with the News Building in the center. Below the skyline is a crowd of people meant to represent New Yorkers.

The inscription above the stone figures reads "He made so many of them" in reference to the people. These words are actually a portion of a quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln. The full quote reads, "God must love the common man. He made so many of them."

The Daily News Building was constructed in 1929-1930 and was one of the first skyscrapers in NYC to have a flat top. The building was designated a NYC landmark in 1981, a National Historical Landmark in 1989 and its interior was designated as a NYC landmark in 1998. 

In the movie, Lois Lane is thrown off the top of the building from an out-of-control helicopter. The building exterior shown behind her as she falls is the Daily News building (the gray building on the left below).

While we were standing outside, we couldn't help but glance through the windows to see the lobby inside. We walked through the revolving doors to find this slowly-rotating globe sitting in the center of the room. It was so cool.  

This is the world's largest indoor globe and it was quite impressive. It was installed in 1930 when the building was finished. It is 84 years old! It looks in great condition for being that old though. 

It's surface was periodically updated over the years, but hasn't been changed since 1967 -- so some of the geography is a little outdated.

The globe is 12 feet wide and weighs 4,000 pounds.

The floor beneath the globe falls away into circular, step-like platforms from which lights shine upward on the sphere. A mirror in the bottom center of the recessed floor reflects the globe's bottom surface.

Set in the top step of the recessed floor were plaques with facts about the size of the earth and solar system in relation to the size of the globe. They were fun to read. 

The triangles inlaid into the floor around the globe serve as compass points. Embedded in between these points are the names of cities along with how far away they are in miles. The cities' names are positioned so that the line underneath is pointing outward towards that city.

After looking at the globe for awhile and reading all of the plaques, we looked up to find a beautiful domed ceiling centered over the globe. The dome's surface was made entirely of black glass to signify outer space.

The globe, along with just being awesome itself, appeared in the movie as well. I couldn't find a clip of it online, but we were able to find this picture. If you clink on the source link below the picture, it will take you to a site that has more pictures of the globe and building, along with old photos of it from the 30's, 40's and 50's.

Source

Nearby the globe, were a series of old weather instrument panels set behind glass. Upon closer inspection, we realized that the hands were moving. There was one for wind velocity, wind direction, atmospheric pressure, atmospheric temperature, relative humidity and rainfall. The temperature read 90 degrees, and we could believe it. It was hot outside.

On the other side of the globe, farther back in the lobby was a wall containing lighted display cases. We walked over to take a closer look and found a brief history of the newspaper and building.

The Daily News was started in 1919.

We loved the old pictures of the building. The picture on the right shows the Daily News Building (far right) next to the Chrysler Building (center) in the early days after it was built. The neighborhood is a bit more crowded now.

   

They also had a picture of men working on installing the globe.

Among all the pictures was this time zone clock. The main clock face in the center is set to New York time.

We found a couple of pictures of Superman himself and Lois Lane behind the scenes during filming in the lobby.

After spending time looking at everything and taking lots of pictures we headed back outside. We walked across the street to get a better view of the entire building. 

   

On our walk back to the subway to head home, we found these two stone lions outside a building. Brian was trying to take a picture and I jumped in.

It was a fun day and now we can say we've been to the Daily Planet. The building, especially the lobby, is worth a visit if you are in the neighborhood. Now I want to go watch Superman.