The "Lancaster's Written Word: Part III" Story

Copy of one of the earliest newspaper
printed by the Intelligencer Printing
House in Lancaster, PA.  Click
to enlarge the image.

It was an ordinary day.  Posting the next to last story about the early Colonial-American town of Lancaster, PA and how it developed it's printing houses during the time when the written word was one of the main forms of communication.  The print shop with the deepest roots and earliest history was, and still is, the Intelligencer Printing House.  It was back in 1794 that William Hamilton, who had been an apprentice in the print shop of Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia, came to Lancaster and opened a print shop on West King Street at "Franklin's Head."  Known as that because his print-shop sign was a painted portraiture of printer Ben Franklin.  It was here that he partnered with Henry Willcocks and started the Lancaster Journal which is the basis for the Intelligencer Printing Company that is still one of the leading print houses in Lancaster as well as eastern Pennsylvania.  The Dickson Brothers, William and Robert, along with William's wife Mary, began another printing shop two years later and in 1799 began to print the Lancaster Intelligencer & Weekly Advertiser.  

Andrew Jackson Steinman published his newspaper in this
little red-brick building (three-window wide), next door
to the Reno Theatre on West King Street. The car on the
left side of the card is where the building is located.

These two publications became the basis for today's Intel- ligencer newspaper operation.  It was in 1866 that Andrew Jackson Steinman bought the entire business.  In 1888 the newspaper featured a vignette of the three German godfathers of letterpress printing: Johann Gutenberg, Johann Fust and Peter Schoeffer.  It was meant to be a tribute to the German ancestry of Andrew Jackson Steinman.  It was in

This is a daytime photo of the same scene.

the 1930s and 1940s that the company began to expand its commercial work and in 1963 built a new 35,000-square-foot plant in Lancaster for the commercial printing, but kept printing the newspaper in the building on West King Street.  In 1978 the new building was doubled in size adding more equipment including a web press.  

This is the exterior of the 1927
building that replace the original
printing company on West King St.
I snapped this pix a few days ago.

It is at this building that my youngest son, Tad, works as a pressman on one of their large web presses. The Intelligencer Journal newspaper was a morning newspaper and traditionally carried the political stances and views of the Federalist/Democratic party as they do to this day.  The Lancaster Sunday News was established by James Hale Steinman and John Frederick Steinman in 1923.  It was Lancaster's first local Sunday newspaper.  The small, red-brick building where the newspaper was printed was next door to the Reno Theatre.  In 1927 it was replaced with a five-story building that still remains today.  It was around the corner that the Lancaster Examiner was printed which started in 1877.  Eventually the Steinmans purchased the afternoon newspaper in 1928, now known as the New Era, and began printing both newspapers in the building on West King Street.  Today Lancaster Newspapers also owns, beside the Intelligencer Journal, Lancaster New Era and the Lancaster Sunday News, three area newspapers - Lancaster Farming, a farming newspaper, The Lititz Record and the Ephrata Review which are both weekly newspapers.  

Today's Lancaster Newspaper with the combined
Intelligencer Journal and Lancaster New Era
Logos that comprise the masthead for the daily paper.

It also owns and prints La Voz Hispana (The Hispanic Voice) for the the Spanish speaking population of Lancaster.  They also have Lancaster- Online.com which is their premier website which began in 1995.  In addition Lancaster Newspapers prints and operates LancMoms.com, LancJobs.com and LancMarketplace.com.  Lancaster Newspapers is part of Steinman Communications which also now holds Intelligencer Printing House, Delmarva Broadcasting, a network of 11 radio stations in Delaware and Maryland, and Steinman Coal in southwestern Virginia.  If William Hamilton were alive today he would be amazed at the huge success his small printing house in Lancaster has become.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.  PS - Tomorrow's final story about Lancaster's written word will take you on a trip through the press room of the original Lancaster Newspaper building in downtown Lancaster.