Posted May. 13, 2008
It was 50 years ago yesterday that The Boston Globe moved into its current plant in Dorchester, leaving its longtime headquarters on a crooked street downtown known for more than a century as Newspaper Row.
The few blocks of Washington Street once teemed with eight daily newspapers, where headlines were scribbled outside on chalkboards and pressmen quaffed drinks in dimly lit barrooms in Pi Alley. (The name came from the word pi or pie, which is what compositors called the mess made when handset metal type was dropped; the alley was reputedly where some exasperated printers disposed of the jumbled type, rather than sorting it out.)
When the Globe left in 1958, it was the last daily to vacate Newspaper Row. Only two scraps of evidence remain of the street's inky lore: A sign for the Pi Alley parking garage that explains the origin of the name and a small green plaque marking the former site of the Globe, which is hidden inside the driveway of a luxury apartment building. The paper, however, is still on sale there at a Starbucks a door down and at a Dunkin' Donuts across the street.
At the newspaper's current headquarters on Morrissey Boulevard, there was a simple ceremony yesterday to commemorate what was described at the time as a move to a $12-million plant that boasted color printing presses. Montilio's Baking Co. crafted a 125-pound marble sheet cake that was a scale model of the newspaper's current building, down to frosted white lines in the parking lot and miniature chocolate cars.
William O. Taylor, a former Globe publisher and descendant of one of the newspaper's founders, spoke briefly about the move. Taylor joked about early hiccups with the color presses (it was impossible to distinguish between a ham and a chicken in one advertisement), and he offered some soothing words to an industry beset by falling circulation and rising costs.
"Times have been tough, but I don't think it is as gloomy as some people say it is," Taylor said. "The print media is still vital, and the Globe has an important role to play."
-- The Boston Globe
