Names in Stone

It’s going to take me a while to track down all of these names, but here’s a complete list, in order from south to north: Pulitzer, Bowles, Medill, Franklin, Lawson, Greeley, Bennett and Gadana, or maybe Cadana, it was hard to tell.

“Nothing’s written in stone,” is the turn of phrase, but in fact these names are written, two at a time, in stone on the side of Two North Riverside, a building in downtown Chicago that I walked past today. I had business downtown, and my route passed that way – near where I used to work, so I know Two North Riverside fairly well. Or thought I did. In all the years I walked past that building, on the plaza next to the Chicago River, I never noticed these names.

It’s an office building now, but when new in 1928 it was the Daily News building, home of a paper that succumbed to popular aliteracy about 50 years later. I recognize a number of the names, of course: Pulitzer, Medill, Greeley and Frankin, if it's Benjamin. Newspapermen all, and it would seem reasonable that the others are too, though not quite as well remembered.