The Daily News Building: Art Deco and the Revolving Globe

Why is it significant?

Look up at the thirty-six-story vertical striped facade of the Daily News Building, rising dramatically into the East Midtown sky.

Key Facts

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Look up at the thirty-six-story vertical striped facade of the Daily News Building, rising dramatically into the East Midtown sky. Completed in 1930 and designed by architects Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells, this groundbreaking skyscraper revolutionized tall building design by eliminating traditional classical cornices in favor of bold vertical piers of brown and black brick. Above the monumental 42nd Street entrance, a colossal bas-relief carving shows workers, airplanes, and the famous slogan: He made so many of them.

Step inside the breathtaking circular lobby, crowned by a black glass dome that creates the illusion of an infinite night sky. In the center of the sunken rotunda sits a colossal twelve-foot globe that slowly rotates in a polished bronze cradle, illuminated from within. Inlaid brass lines radiate across the terrazzo floor, marking exact distances and compass bearings to major world cities, from London and Paris to Tokyo and Buenos Aires. Hood believed that modern urban architecture should boldly reflect the industrial vitality of the machine age, using streamlined geometry and dynamic verticality to evoke the relentless speed and ambition of twentieth-century American newspaper journalism.

The building was constructed as the bustling headquarters for the New York Daily News, America's very first successful picture-tabloid newspaper founded by Captain Joseph Medill Patterson in 1919. In its golden age, the roar of massive printing presses in the basement shook the foundation as three million newspapers rolled off the rollers daily. Comic book aficionados will also recognize this building as the real-life inspiration for the Daily Planet, where Clark Kent worked in the classic Superman films.

Look around the perimeter of the rotunda to admire the vintage meteorological instruments and barometers that have tracked Manhattan's atmospheric pressure since the Great Depression.

Now step back outside onto 42nd Street and walk west toward Lexington Avenue, where the glittering silver crown of New York's ultimate skyscraper awaits.