Last week, the Miami Herald shuttered its building on the bay.
Located at One Herald Plaza, the beige box on the water is affectionately known as 1HP. Conference room meetings were interrupted by someone spotting dolphins. Water spouts could be seen forming from the cafeteria windows. Depending on the person, the building was either a testament to architecture done without aesthetics in mind, or an ideal place to do journalism.
For a decade now, there was little question that the building would be sold. It was too big for the post-layoffs Herald, and the paper stood to make too much off the real estate to hold on. As a contributing editor at WLRN-Miami Herald News for the past few months, I’ve tried to document the final days of 1HP in the photos below:
Few parking garages had a better view of the downtown progress than the Herald’s.
The back deck had stunning views of the bay, and of the giant billboards hung on the east side of the building.
The escalators had the old-school look of something from a 1950s department store. Most people took the elevators, but the five floors of escalators made for a more scenic ride.
After layoffs, whole sections of the building ended up empty. Hallways sometimes led nowhere, although signs remained symbols of the paper’s pride.
The second floor advertising office was the building’s most stunning space, with two-story ceilings and walls of red wood. The bay views didn’t hurt.
The decor may have been dated, but few South Florida restaurants could boast better views than the Herald’s cafeteria. The food was often Cuban influenced, well priced, and served with one hell of a cafe con leche.
The once-rough neighborhood around the Herald saw major improvements in the paper’s time there.
The digital pre-press office sat empty after restructuring.
Equipment upgrades and layoffs made for many unused computers.
Old newspapers hung by unused printers and copiers in the old pre-press room.
There was once a team of people cutting and pasting pages together in pre-press, before computers made the job obsolete.
Plate machines operated in a room basked in yellow light, which doesn’t affect the aluminum plates.
In the early days of 1HP, barges brought in rolls of paper for the presses.
The presses were removed one by one to the new building in Doral.
A janitor’s closet on the upper level.
With the impending move, things like water coolers often went without repairs.
Layoffs made the newsroom a far quieter place than it once was, but on deadline, it remained thrilling.
Pictures and printouts that hung in the old graphics wing included jokes and dated references to people no longer at the paper.
The newsroom break room.
The upstairs men’s bathroom.
The Pulitzer wall, in the newsroom’s executive suite, stood as a testament to the paper’s dogged reporting.
On Monday, the Miami Herald opened new offices in Doral.
