Time Machine: Printing The Gazette

The Gazette notes its 140th anniversary of continuous publication on Jan. 10, a milestone that also marks the 14 decades of owning and operating the large machines — often the newest and biggest to be had — that have printed the newspaper and others as well.

When Illinois newspapermen Elbridge Otis and Lucian Post printed the first Evening Gazette on Jan. 10, 1883, it came off a four-page, cylinder-type, hand-fed flatbed press located at 69 First Avenue East.

In March, an essential piece of equipment, a Chamber folding machine, was added. It folded papers “as fast as they come from the press. … It is the only folding machine in this part of the state, and consequently is something of a curiosity.”

At the time, The Gazette cost 3 cents a day, 15 cents a week, 50 cents a month. The paper started off with 386 subscribers in Cedar Rapids, which had a population just over 10,000 at the time. It was one of 11 newspapers, most of them weeklies, in the city.

Six months after starting the newspaper, Otis announced he was returning to Illinois because he’d been unable to sell his property there.

Post continued running the paper and in March 1884, announced he was selling three-fifths interest in The Evening Gazette to Fred W. Faulkes and Clarence L. Miller. Three months later, Post sold his remaining shares to the two and went to work for the government printing office in Washington, D.C.

Miller, as president and treasurer, took care of the business end of the enterprise. Faulkes, vice president and secretary, was in charge of news, editorial and advertising.

Faulkes wrote that he’d actually tried to buy a newspaper, or start a new one, in Cedar Rapids in 1879, but his partner in that venture, Herbert Fairall of Iowa City, went to work for the New York Tribune, and the deal fell through.

By the end of their first year, circulation had increased to more than 1,300, with a third of those subscribers living in Marion, Anamosa, Springville and other surrounding cities.

In the fall of 1885, The Evening Gazette office moved to the first floor and basement of 58 First Avenue East. In November 1888, it moved into its “elegant new home” at 85-87 First Ave. SE, where the Cedar Rapids City Hall now stands.

New, faster presses

In 1892, the paper bought a Columbian Model Duplex web perfecting press, which could print 4,000 papers per hour, “cut, pasted, folded and counted, ready for delivery,” the paper promised in its March 11 edition.

The newspaper ran a drawing of the new press in its Dec. 31, 1892, edition, labeling it “The Gazette’s Great Printing Press.” It was first in a series of Duplex printing presses the newspaper would buy.

At the time, newspapers often contracted for commercial printing — “job work” — but The Gazette decided not to, instead renting its second floor to an independent job-work company run by T. Scott Metcalf.

In December 1893, the Duplex press blew a balance wheel, wrecking the press engine. A new engine was put in place, but the next day a cylinder ink distributor broke, again delaying the paper by more than four hours, with carriers delivering the afternoon paper at 9 or 10 that night.

By 1897, The Gazette’s circulation was over 9,500. The press started at 3:15 p.m.

In December 1903, a new Duplex press was installed, just in time to print the paper’s 108-page, 21st anniversary edition on Jan. 9. It was the largest and most expensive printing job ever produced in Iowa. Although it cost 20 cents a copy to print, The Evening Gazette sold the special edition for 10 cents.

But even the new press proved inadequate in the face of the paper’s growth. In April 1909, another Duplex press was installed that could print a 20-page paper.

That press lasted until 1925, when a new press was installed in The Evening Gazette’s new building at Third Avenue and Fifth Street SE. This one was a low-construction, sextuple press that could print up to 48 pages and print 60,000 12-page newspapers in an hour’s time.

In 1952, a six-unit Goss press was installed in a new wing of The Gazette building that also included room for the composing, stereotyping and circulation departments.

The next press, a Goss Metro offset press, was installed in 1977, as the newspaper moved from “hot type” to “cold type” production.

The Gazette company’s last press was a giant Goss Universal 70 press, the only one of its kind in the United States when it was installed in 1999 at 4700 Bowling St. SW. The new business entity, Color Web Printers, printed The Gazette and other daily newspapers plus 3 million Sunday comics for King Syndicate.

Color Web Printers closed in 2021, printing its last Gazette on Aug. 24, after commercial accounts dried up.The 386-ton press, which could print up to 77,000 papers an hour, was dismantled and sold to Sound Publishing in the Pacific Northwest.

The Gazette is now printed in Des Moines.

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