New Building

Traditionally old have been the buildings in which famed newspapers started life. Usually they were fire traps. Always they were filled with more "atmosphere" than cleanliness, more musty files than modern conveniences. . . . Such a building was the ramshackle, rickety home of the Chicago Daily News. Its dim-lighted rooms, its narrow hallways, saw the birth of the Daily News--a tiny newspaper--in 1875, watched that newspaper grow to its circulation today of 450,000, local evening rival of The World's Greatest Newspaper (blatant Chicago morning Tribune).

Last week the Daily News moved to its new building on the Chicago River. In place of dinginess there is magnificence. Instead of one elevator there are 15; instead of five stories there are 25. A Board of Directors room on the sixth floor is dedicated to the late great Victor Fremont Lawson. Its fine dark panels were taken from his Lake Shore Drive residence, so that the Daily News should have a lasting memory of its onetime chief.