It’s a very bittersweet day for the journalists at 435 N. Michigan Ave. here in Chicago.
Today’s the day we move out of our home: Tribune Tower, where we’ve worked for almost an entire century.
I can’t emphasize enough how incredibly fortunate and blessed I am to have spent the past three-plus years working in this tower. Landmarked in 1989, it’s one of the most — if not the most — recognized newsrooms in the world. Its neo-Gothic beauty rises 36 floors up into Chicago’s skyline, where it has greeted every sunrise with its magnificent arching crown since 1922.
The building was originally designed by architects John Mead Howells and Raymond Hood as part of a contest to design the most beautiful office building in the world. I might be biased, but I think they succeeded.
Throughout the years, the building saw several add-ons, including the bricks, stones and various other forms of memorabilia embedded in its street-level walls.
If you’ve never been inside the lobby, I’d recommend you do so. It’s open to the public and — frankly — stunning. The walls are engraved with quotes about the media industry, and as a journalist, it’s impossible to not feel inspired walking into work every day.
Saying “goodbye” to our home was a long, drawn-out and difficult process that we started the day the sale of our building was finalized. If you didn’t know, we actually haven’t owned Tribune Tower for quite some time. Our parent company did, and thanks to a series of bad owners and sketchy corporate politics, it was sold out from under us to a Los Angeles-based developer to be turned into luxury condos.
The goodbyes started slowly, with a tour of the Colonel’s old office a few months ago, then a tour of the archives a few weeks after that.
In the past weeks they’ve picked up steam, with scheduled staff photos outside the building, a clean-out-the-half-empty-fifths-in-your-cubicle-drawer rooftop send-off, a final-day champagne toast.
I wanted to take some time to share some of those celebrations with you. The Tribune — and by extension, its tower — has been such a huge part of my life for the past three years.
We spent a Sunday afternoon what feels like forever ago touring the Colonel’s offices in the higher floors of the building.
Then, we made our way out to the Crown, which we usually don’t have access to, as it’s reserved as event space for things like weddings. It’s really stunning, and the inside has a bar and a reception area filled with brass recreations of historic Tribune front pages, and quotes are inscribed at every turn of the floor.
Then, several weeks after our tour of the Colonel’s offices and the Crown, we got to tour the archives.
Marianne Mather, our photo editor and the curator of the Vintage Tribune Instagram account, maintains access to the archives. They dip several floors below Michigan Avenue, and there’s absolutely no cellphone service in them.
They’re full of photo negatives and manually-curated clippings from the paper’s history.
You can actually watch a full video of the archives here.
I was amazed at the sheer number of files. I can’t even fathom the amount of time it must have taken to hand-clip every one of these articles, date-stamp them and file them away by subject matter.
I’m so grateful for ctrl+f.
Then, this past Thursday night, the real tomfoolery started. Reporter Will Lee coordinated a rooftop send-off, asking journalists to clear the half-empty liquor bottles out of their desk drawers (hah!) and head up to the 22nd floor to get together one last time in the tower.
Tenants of Tribune Tower have always had access to the 22nd floor’s roof deck, and a lot of us would gather on nice days to eat lunch or take breaks.
We popped bottle and fired up the grill — yes, there’s a grill up there — and let the debauchery begin.
After a glass (or five) of champagne (or… whatever), someone figured out a window had been left open at the Crown. After taking an elevator to a hallway to another elevator to a room to another hallway, we found ourselves back on the Crown, typically only available for reservation — if you’re willing to pay for it.
From the Crown at the 31st floor, we looked up… and realized several of our coworkers had made it even further up the building.
We followed suit, ignoring several “do not enter” signs — many of which cheekily suggested we call security before security could call us out.
We wandered between gutted rooms that offered sweeping 360 views of the skyline and the ongoing sunset.
We quickly found ourselves in an impromptu photoshoot… because what else do you do when you’re accompanied by some of the best photographers in the world?
At that point, several glasses deep, the shenanigans truly began.
We moved from the gutted rooms to a second, smaller outdoor ledge that encompassed the entire top of the building.
We coordinated timed races around the spire, spilling our glasses along the way and bumping into floodlights.
None of us worried about getting in trouble, either, because — what would building management do, evict us?
The newsroom’s managing editor joined in on the chaos as well.
As we made our way back down to the Crown, someone found out how to kick on the kegs in the Crown’s event center (shhh!) and the Allagash White and Bud Light started flowing.
Security finally caught on to us, and shooed us back down into the newsroom, where any packing progress that was being made — or work that was being done — was quickly derailed. Hoards of tipsy journalists took to surfing around on moving trolleys, swilling half-empty bottles of wine while sitting on desks and pilfering newsroom artifacts that were otherwise sure to meet their demise at the hands of the next day’s moving crew.
At least, that’s what we told ourselves as we rushed around, dictating “if it’s not nailed down… take it!
“…and even if it is, try to take it anyway!”
Rumor has it a group of journalists made out with a hundred-pound statue.
I settled for a small plastic “i” from a “Chicago Tribune” sign on a newsroom pillar.
We called it a night, leaving the newsroom to continue drinking at every Chicago journalist’s favorite dive — the Billy Goat Tavern.
The next day, we hauled our hungover selves back to the newsroom for a final check out, followed by a toast of champagne with cake.
After Friday’s absolute final round of goodbyes, we made our way to LondonHouse for drinks, taking solace in the fact that — while we can no longer call the Tribune Tower our home — we can still enjoy this view for years to come.
Knowing that I don’t have this newsroom to come back to when I start my work week tomorrow morning makes my heart ache. For so many of us journalists, the Tower was more than an office. It was a home.
This past week helped. Knowing I get to take the best parts of Tribune Tower — the people who worked in it — with me to our new newsroom in Prudential eases the sorrow, even if it’s only slightly.
Journalism is such a special career. I can’t put into words how much it meant to play a part in this building’s storied history, even if it was only for three years on the tail-end of the Chicago Tribune’s tenure in this building.
But, as Publisher Bruce Dold said at our farewell toast — the Chicago Tribune printed for 70-some years before we built and moved into Tribune Tower, and we’ll continue to serve our readers by upholding our publication’s mission statement, no matter where our desks may be.
It’s not the end, it’s a new beginning. See you on the other side of the Chicago River.
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