ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the literal media architecture of the city through the structures erected by the media industry itself. By tracing the development of the news industry in New York City since the 19th century through periods of expansion and contraction, materialization and dematerialization, an important part of the city’s infrastructure is revealed. While the buildings themselves are outward symbolic projections of company values and ideology, the structures are also often scaffolds for text, image, and a variety of other spectacles that convened live audiences. Further, they operate on simultaneous planes of influence: vertically through the development of the skyscraper, and horizontally as the locus of economic power has shifted. The concentration and clustering of press buildings that began in Lower Manhattan and spread north, only to return in the 21st century, makes the circulation of media culture in the city physical and traceable, belying many claims made within digital discourses.
