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Just 45 seconds from Broadway, the Times is temperamentally as remote from its hurly-burly as if it were in the mountains of Tibet. In the white marble lobby is a sentimental inscription chosen by Publisher Sulzberger: "Every day is a fresh beginning . . . Every morn is the world made new." The house that Ochs built and Sulzberger expanded is softly lighted and handsomely equipped, from the 88 presses and 106 linotypes to the pink-walled ladies' washrooms. In the soundproofed third-floor city room no one ever runs and few raise their voices; on the tenth-floor the editorial writers deliberate in monastery-like offices.
Meticulous about details, Publisher Sulzberger designs bookcases, hangs news pictures and mats of memorable Page Ones along the corridors, empties ashtrays and dreams up new improvements for his treasured showcase. Among the improvements already installed: lounges, a game room, dining rooms and a reading room for employees, bedroom suites for top editors. Summers, when the Sulzbergers close their spacious town house and move to 60-acre "Hillandale" in Connecticut, Arthur Sulzberger lives weekdays in his own three-room suite at the office.
Just Looking. When he is asked for advice on how to become the publisher of a great paper, Arthur Sulzberger always amiably replies: "Do as I did—marry the boss's daughter." But his remark is not in the Times tradition of fairness; Sulzberger did much more to earn his job. Manhattan-born, the son of Cyrus Leo Sulzberger; a cotton-textile manufacturer, philanthropist and later anti-Tammany candidate for borough president, Sulzberger was brought up on the Times, went to Horace Mann school and Columbia College. There he was on the swimming team, danced as a chorus boy in a musical and met Iphigene Ochs, a student at Barnard College. She was the only child of Ochs and a cousin of Julius Ochs Adler, one of Sulzberger's best friends, who lived in the Ochs home.
Before long, Sulzberger and Iphigene Ochs were in love. When Sulzberger married her in 1917, Ochs was not his boss; Sulzberger was a second lieutenant in the Army. But Father-in-law Ochs stipulated that as soon as he was discharged he must join the Times, and in 1918 he did. Ochs gave him an office, a secretary, a title (assistant treasurer), and nothing to do. Says Sulzberger: "I didn't even know enough to ask questions. I just looked."
He looked, listened to everyone and learned about news and editorial administration, in 1919 was made vice president. (At the same period Adler, also a vice president, was serving his own apprenticeship.) When 75-year-old Adolph Ochs suffered a breakdown in 1933, Sulzberger temporarily ran things. After Ochs died in 1935, Mrs. Ochs (who died in 1937) and Mrs. Sulzberger got life interests in the trust he had set up for the block of stock that controls the Times. Named as trustees were Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger, Sulzberger and Adler. By giving control of the trust to Mr. & Mrs. Sulzberger, Publisher Ochs had chosen his successor.
One of the first comments on his new job that Publisher Sulzberger received was a postcard from an indignant subscriber: "I knew the Times would go to hell as soon as Mr. Ochs died. My name was spelled wrong in the paper this morning."