Brooklyn Buy

With its population of 2,741,083,* Brooklyn is bigger than Detroit or Philadelphia. Last week the line-up of newspaper ownership in this teeming borough of New York City was altered when the 95-year-old Eagle tucked the 88-year-old Times-Union under its wing. Henceforth both papers will be published, separately and under their own names, by the Eagle company.

The Eagle is as much a Brooklyn landmark as the Bridge. Founded in 1841 as the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and Kings County Democrat, the paper was controlled by successive generations of the family of Isaac Van Anden until it was acquired in 1929 by Chain-Publisher Frank Ernest Gannett. In its great days from 1892 till 1930, the Eagle's eyrie was a Renaissance castle on noisy Washington Street in Brooklyn's "downtown" section, a half mile from Henry Ward Beecher's old Plymouth Church on Orange Street and the "Heights," where some of the borough's first families still reside. Conservative organ of the top-drawer element in a conservative city not unlike Boston or Baltimore, the Eagle rightly regarded itself as one of the country's most influential papers.

Over the door of the old building were two bronze eagles to symbolize the paper's name, its wide flight for news. Under the Eagle's eagles passed many a capable newsman, such famed Brooklyn editors as Dr. St. Clair McKelway and Dr. Arthur Millidge Howe, who wrote sober, sensible Eagle editorials for 38 years.

In 1912, the Brooklyn Times was acquired by the late Carson C. Peck, vice president and treasurer of F. W. Woolworth Co. Mr. Peck died in 1915 and his son, Fremont Carson Peck, took over in 1922. Ten years later, young Publisher Peck bought the Standard Union from Chain-Publisher Paul Block. Same year Chain-Publisher Gannett relinquished control of the Eagle to a corporation headed by Millard Preston Goodfellow, an old Brooklyn boy.

Times-Union and Eagle split about even on circulation, found the advertising competition of Manhattan's tabloids and Hearst's "Brooklyn editions" keen. About two months ago the Eagle and the Times-Union announced a combination rate which gave advertisers insertions in both papers at the cost of one. Last week's merger, no surprise in view of this advertising deal, meant that Publisher Peck was to retire from the newspaper field. Still on his hands was the Times-Union shop, not included in the $900,000 deal because the Eagle's present plant, built in 1930, has ample press facilities for the Times-Union's daily circulation of 84,358, its own 88,921 (as of October 1936). The Eagle's Editor Cleveland Rodgers, a onetime typesetter, is to keep his duties, while on the other side of this united publishing house the Times-Union's Editor Joseph J. Early also continues in control. An alumnus of both papers like their most famed past editor, Walt Whitman, Publisher Goodfellow will now be in general charge of all Brooklyn's home-grown daily reading matter except that provided by the Citizen (circulation, 29,971).

* Estimated for 1936.

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