The newsroom of the recently deceased New York Sun took a star turn in 2006 when it served as a setting in the Hollywood blockbuster The Devil Wears Prada.
In the film, the main character, Anne Hathaway’s Andy Sachs, has decided to leave the corrupting and cynical influences of the fashion biz to follow her true passion—in the corrupting and cynical world of the newspaper biz. We see her meeting with an editor in the paper’s appropriately disheveled offices, a rolodex on his desk, papers piled high behind Ms. Hathaway’s head, light streaming through the arched windows.
Now, with the demise of New York’s only right-leaning daily broadsheet, those offices will take yet another star turn on some broker’s office vacancy list. The Sun’s newsroom occupies the full, 9,200-square-foot second floor of 105 Chambers Street, the cast-iron, 150-year-old Cary Building, and the paper’s business operations take up two-thirds of the fourth floor.
Last week, a visitor to the second floor would have encountered a receptionist sitting to the left of a wide-open newsroom. A conference room stood to the left of reception. In the newsroom, editor Seth Lipsky and managing editor Ira Stoll kept corner offices, the latter’s decorated with framed copies of the old New York Sun.
Neither could be reached for comment. But Bill Punch, manager of the Eighth Avenue Associates, which owns the building, said The Sun planned to continue to use the space through the end of the year. He added that while the paper’s lease has a couple of years left on it, he would work with the publishers to find a new tenant.
“They’ve always been a fantastic tenant,” Mr. Punch said. “Our offices are in the building, so we know all their workers. It’s very sad to see them go. It’s a very sad day here.”
drubinstein@observer.com
