07/19/2004


AP leaves 50 Rock for West 33rd Street Headquarters

NEW YORK -- After 66 years in its Rockefeller Center headquarters, The Associated Press launched a new era July 17 with its move to a newer and far more expansive space on the west side of Manhattan.

The first shift in the new building arrived around 7:30 a.m., with Kathleen Carroll, senior vice president and executive editor, greeting staffers on the 14th floor of 450 W. 33rd St.

Fred Lief of the Sports Department filed the first story from the new headquarters at 8:28 a.m. -- a story on American rider Tyler Hamiltonpulling out of the Tour de France.

"We've had many happy years at Rockefeller Center, but we're excited to be moving to a newsroom that pulls all of AP's news departments together on one big floor," Carroll said. "The newsroom was designed by journalists to be collaborative, energetic and creative -- a great showcase for an international news organization in the 21st century."

The new space stretches for two blocks south along Tenth Avenue, two blocks west of Madison Square Garden. It's the sixth Manhattan address for the world's oldest and largest news organization, and the first since moving into The Associated Press Building at Rockefeller Center in 1938.

The news cooperative's first office opened in lower Manhattan in 1848.

The famed "News" sculpture by Isamu Noguchi will remain above the 50 Rockefeller Plaza entrance, a reminder of the news service's long run at one of journalism's most recognizable addresses. City landmark regulations require that the sculpture stay.

"50 Rock," as it was known to thousands of AP employees, was the place where the news service swapped typewriters and keypunch operators for new technology.

For more than six decades, editors, photographers and reporters inside provided the world with news 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It was here that the AP launched the first news agency wire dedicated entirely to sports, entered the digital age, sharply increased the speed of story and photo transmission, broadened its investigative and enterprise reporting, and launched numerous other initiatives.

Rockefeller Center, hailed by critics as the 20th century's greatest urban development, included the AP as an original tenant. The Associated Press Building was a fixture in the complex, along with the towering GE Building, the skating rink and Radio City Music Hall.

The space became the nerve center for the AP's ever-expanding worldwide operations.

From its midtown headquarters, the AP transmitted dispatches on events from Pearl Harbor through the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, from astronaut Neil Armstrong to cyclist Lance Armstrong, from presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt to George W. Bush.

But the Rockefeller Center building became inadequate for housing all of the AP's operations and meeting its technology needs. In addition, its design separated news departments, instead of making it easier for them to work together. With its lease expiring, the AP took the opportunity to move to a newer building, with lower rent, that will put all its news divisions in a newsroom the size of two football fields. The goal is to
better coordinate the work of all AP services -- text, photos, video, graphics, radio and online

Terms of the lease weren't made public.

The new headquarters building, constructed in 1967, is a squat pyramid with views of the Hudson River to the west and the Empire State Building to the east. Other tenants include the New York Daily News, U.S. News & World Report, and public broadcasting station WNET-TV.

The move will consolidate AP's 950-person New York staff at a single
location, rather than in two buildings in Rockefeller Center and two more on Broadway in Manhattan. All employees should be moved into the 33rd Street location by Aug. 2.

AP will lease a total of 290,773 square feet at 33rd Street. The AP's four New York offices, including Rockefeller Center, totaled about 207,000 square feet.

There's been no word on a new tenant for the AP's space at 50 Rockefeller Plaza. The AP's first Manhattan headquarters opened in 1848, a sparse office up 78 stairs at 150 Broadway -- about a block away from the future home of the World Trade Center.

The news cooperative stayed there for 27 years, moving two blocks north on Broadway in 1875. Headquarters No. 3 was downtown on Chambers Street, and the AP moved to midtown in 1924 with offices at 383 Madison Ave.