After acting as an office for the Board of Education for its Aviation Trade Center, a hub for the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper and a vocational school for women, The site is now the home of two public schools, the Math and Science Exploratory School and Brooklyn High School of the Arts. The former Times pressroom is the school’s gym; upstairs is the office of The Wolf Press, a student-run newspaper of the Math and Science Exploratory School, a homage of sorts to the building’s original purpose. The eighth graders running the paper are just a few years older than Marian was on the day of the dedication.
Though the nameplate still stands over the school’s Third Avenue entrance, the sculptural relief is now in the Times Center, an event space at the base of The Times’s current headquarters on 620 Eighth Avenue in Manhattan.
“It’s cool to work in this building knowing that it has such a legacy,” said Lysander Mealy, a student publisher of The Wolf Press. Milo Kiely-Miller, editor in chief, agreed: “The air is different in here,” he said.
Their faculty adviser, Christine Willis, a former newspaper columnist for the Owensboro Messenger-Inquirer in Kentucky, impresses upon the students that they are carrying on a tradition. “No pressure though,” said Norah Buckman, the arts and entertainment editor.
The Wolf Press has 42 6th-8th grade middle school staff members who have been working through the coronavirus pandemic to bring news to the school, including digital live coverage of the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. Lila Butterworth, the community editor, said reporting on the attack solidified her determination to become a journalist. “I felt very uncontrolled in that moment,” she said. “The Wolf Press was a much-needed outlet to talk about it and break it apart. When you can report on it, it’s like you’re doing something to help.”
Ms. Willis enjoys facilitating her students’ enthusiasm and passion for reporting. While much has changed about The Times’s Brooklyn plant in 90 years, she said, “The bones and the spirit of journalism are alive and well here.”
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