Tom Baker

Will Baker

Thomas F. Baker was born in Hartford, Connecticut on April 5, 1847, and when he was three years old was brought to Utica by his parents. Here he attended the Assumption Academy and when he was sixteen years old, entered the “Utica Observer” printing plant as an apprentice. When he had finished his apprenticeship he remained with the “Observer” until 1870, when he established the “Utica Daily Bee”, which was short lived. In 1877, with Dennis T. Kelly he established the “Utica Sunday Tribune”. He long had a dream of establishing a weekly paper in which, in addition to the news, the readers would see illustrations and pictures of the people and of the events of interest. The result was a journalistic wonder of the time.

He and his brother, William T. Baker, rented two small rooms on the third floor of the Thomas Building, later known as the Lux Building, on Bleecker Street. There they issued the first number of the “Utica Saturday Globe” on May 21, 1881. The publishers had fondly hoped that the first issue would contain an illustration of former Governor Horatio Seymour, but the engraver in New York failed to complete the cut in time. The infant weekly was an eight page affair, of seven columns to the page, and of these, four pages were of the ready print variety, purchased already printed outside the city and containing stories and selected miscellaneous articles of general interest. The other four pages were made up of telegraph news, local news and editorials. Two thousand copies of the first issue were printed, but only 700 sold.

The Saturday Globe building on Whitesboro Street c 1891

The existence of the “Globe” was precarious from the beginning. Its entire capital had been expended in the initial issue. They were able to get out the second issue, and the Seymour illustration, three columns wide, appeared on the first page. People began to take an interest in the weekly and a third issue was produced. This featured a cut of Senator Francis Kernan, followed with one of Theodore Faxton in the fourth number. These were, of course, rather crude likenesses, but they were hailed as an innovation in journalism.

On the second day of July 1881, when the telegraph flashed the news that President Garfield had been assassinated in Washington by Charles Jules Guiteau, the “Saturday Globe” was the only publication from which the excited citizens could get the facts. The “Utica Morning Herald” did not get out an extra and the press at the “Observer” had broken down. The papers were sold as fast as they could be printed in the job printing office of Curtiss. & Childs — for the “Globe” did not have its own printing press. This was the event that turned the tide for the “Globe” and it became a recognized newspaper not only in Utica but throughout the State and country.

In 1885, the Bakers purchased property on Whitesboro street and commissioned Architect George Edward Cooper to design a suitable building. This building, was a three story brick affair. The paper's circulation was then about 40,000 per week. Within a year, the plant was in­adequate and in 1887, the building was doubled in size.

The cornice of the Saturday Globe building, with the sandstone relief of the street-corner newsboy - the symbol of the newspaper's success

In 1892, it became necessary to further enlarge the “Globe” plant. Another story was added and the frontage of the building increased. The western half of the ground floor contained the press room. There were eight large Campbell & Cottrell presses, with each capable of 1,200 impressions per hour. They were not fast presses, but ran slowly so that the illustrations which formed the conspicious feature of the “Globe” might be developed clearly and distinctly.

The average circulation of the “Globe” reached 180,000 copies per week, and also reached 269,000 on some occasions, when the events of the week held a special interest. For more than 40 years, the “Globe” covered and illustrated cyclones, floods, conflagrations, executions, inaugurations, assassinations and all the great happenings of the day.

On January 24, 1920, the “Saturday Globe” presented “A Glance Back to the Babyhood of The Globe” and wrote, in part: “Along the highway leading from then to the present there are many milestones, and among these are many monuments to which we who have long been with the ‘Globe' look back with quickened pulses. We flush with pardonable pride when we recall that the ‘Globe' was the first five-cent paper in the world to print a half-tone cut; that we were the first to print on a cylinder press a paper illustrated with half-tones; that it was in our office that the first half-tone was cast into a form instead of being ‘matrixed'; that ours was the first newspaper to print cartoons and half-tones in colors; that ours was the only paper in Central New York to send a man to Johnstown and keep him there during those awful weeks succeeding the great disaster; that ours was the only paper in the State outside the metropolis to send a writer and photographers to Galveston when that beautiful city was destroyed by wind and wave; that in order to get the exact facts and legitimate pictures we have sent our representatives direct from the home office into more than three-quarters of the States making up the Union; that our subscribers have come from the wilds of Alaska and the teeming cities of China; that we have received personal letters of approval from Supreme Court judges, Presidents of the United States and even from Queen Victoria herself.”

The founder of the “Saturday Globe”, Thomas F. Baker died on May 15, 1916 and in 1920, his brother retired and the weekly was sold to the “Globe-Telegram Company”, formed to publish a new daily paper in Utica. This venture was not successful and lasted but a few years. On February 26, 1924, the “Utica Saturday Globe” published its last copies of the weekly.

From its auspicious infancy in Utica, New York, the Saturday Globe grew into a major newspaper with nationwide circulation. Through its pioneering use of regional editions, it became the first truly national newspaper in United States history.