I’ll show you a printing press!

Everyone’s been all a-twitter because the Times Union got a new press. (In fairness, it is likely to be the last offset web press ever installed in the area. Ever.) Well, the local newspaper didn’t always rule the roost when it came to printing production; far from it. Here’s a view of the J.B. Lyon Company printing plant, which printed countless books, including the Encyclopedia Americana, “on thin india paper made in America for this work.” Along with Van Benthuysen, the Argus and Williams Press, J.B. Lyon was one of the giants of printing and publishing in the Northeast.

In 1907, Lyon employed over 800 people. It boasted a composing room capacity of 1,500,000 ems (“or 800 pages average book size per day”). Its electrotype and stereotype equipment could handle all that output each day, its press rooms could make 500,000 impressions per day, and its book bindery could put out 4,000 books per day.

The plant shown here was at Market and Grand Streets, across from the Public Market, and lasted as a multi-use building long after Lyon had decamped. They also had a building at Beaver and Daniel streets, neither of which still exists there. It was just below Eagle Street, about where the Knickerbocker Arena’s parking garage is. (Oh, I guess that’s called the Times Union Center now.)

J.B. Lyon’s estate in Bethlehem burned in the 1960s, but the concrete lions that marked the entrance to the estate can still be seen along the road that leads to Henry Hudson Park.