Opinion: A bittersweet farewell to the former Citizen Times building, from journalists who spent much of their lives there

In my head, I know it’s silly to develop an attachment to buildings.

They are, after all, utilitarian creations of brick, concrete, wood, steel, and glass. 

But in my heart, I can’t help it. In my 27 years working for the Asheville Citizen Times, I, like most of my colleagues, developed a deep affinity for that old gray lady, despite her uneven HVAC system and architect Anthony Lord’s odd overuse of glass bricks. 

So I was a bit gut-punched when the paper’s executive editor, Karen Chávez, penned a lovely but heart-wrenching column about the newspaper’s decision to vacate 14 O. Henry Ave. on March 31, after 85 years in the building. When I left the paper in November 2022, I figured this day would come, but it still left me feeling sad and more than a little wistful.

I talked or corresponded with several Citizen Times old-timers for this column, and yes, I’m sure they’ll appreciate that age reference. Hey friends, there’s no shame in geezerhood!

One recurring theme is that we all remember our first time through those big, heavy steel and glass doors under the iconic metal Citizen Times nameplate.

“It’s a grand old building, suited to its purpose and elegant in design,” longtime reporter Clarke Morrison told me. “When I arrived at the Citizen Times for a job interview in 1986, I recall being struck by the sight of the beautiful floor depicting a map of western North Carolina in the entranceway of the building.”

One of the finest writers to grace the building was Dale Neal, who spent more than three decades reporting from O. Henry. 

“I’ll always remember stepping across that wonderful tile map in our lobby that showed all the counties we used to cover across western North Carolina,” Neal said. “And I’m glad at least that will remain.”

‘A press that rumbled through the building’

When Neal started work in 1983, the paper still printed morning and afternoon papers in the building, “in a press that rumbled through the whole building.”

The press had long gone to a Sardis Road facility in Enka when I started, but Neal’s and Morrison’s words brought back memories of my job interview in February 1995, when I, too, was struck by the beauty of the map of “A state within a state,” as the inlaid tile and metal described it.

I went to the second floor newsroom for the interviews and started sweating like a pig at a barbecue. That’s partly because I was wearing a wool blazer and was nervous, partly because no one could ever regulate the heat in O. Henry during the winter.

“Of course the heart of the building was the newsroom,” Morrison said. “That’s where the fun and the action were happening. No offices for our crowd. Even the cubicle walls were low. You heard and shared info with those around you, even when you didn’t want to.”

Let me tell you, it was a great place to sit and chat with Charlie Guthrie, the gruff city editor in 1995, who turned out to be a wonderful gentleman and even better journalist. With his white hair and rolled up sleeves, he was imposing, and it felt like everyone in the newsroom could hear our conversation, mainly because they could.

The place was packed with people and desks piled high with news releases, reports, and other detritus. Probaby 60 or 70 people shared the newsroom space, and in the “back shop” workers still cut and pasted the paper onto boards to make plates for printing.

The building is now full of renters, including Moog Music, which will take over the sliver of the second floor where the remaining journalists worked.

On Thursday, I met Morrison and longtime reporter Mark Barrett for lunch in the building’s first floor, now home to the Citizen Vinyl record-pressing operation and Session Cafe, an upscale eatery. For a few years in the 2010s, the newsroom was on the first floor, and Mark and I noted we used to sit about where the record press is now.

It’s hard not to get nostalgic about the building, which has stood as a community hub since 1939. Barrett reminded me that in the mid-20th century, the front lobby once hosted a rudimentary, hand-operated mock-up of a ballfield and base paths so locals could come by and keep tabs on the World Series.

The building really was a center of action for Asheville, with politicians, sources, and colorful nosy nellies dropping by to shoot the bull with reporters or occasionally deliver a hot scoop. Back before security became paramount, anyone could just walk right into the building, come up the 33 stairs to the newsroom – I counted them every day on my way into work – and chat up a reporter or editor.

This was not always ideal. When the Harrah’s Cherokee Casino opened in 1997, the paper had written multiple stories about it, and this apparently displeased one disconcerting gentlemen who, wearing camo from head to toe, strode into the middle of the newsroom at 9 a.m. and shouted, “Are you (expletive) owned by the Cherokee Casino?”

Back in the day, most newspaper journalists didn’t start work till about 10 a.m. or so, so it was just yours truly and former features writer Carole Currie holding down the fort. As GI Joe walked out, Carole waved and said, “Thank you for your input!”

It seemed funny then, but boy, times have changed. Not long after, we got a security guard and buzz-in doors.

I’ve had multiple readers ask me where the paper’s staffers will now be, as Chávez didn’t address that in her column. She referred me to Lark-Marie Anton, the spokesperson of the paper’s parent company, Gannett Corp.

“As the Citizen Times continues to grow and invest in the journalists who provide essential local reporting to Asheville and the greater Buncombe County area, we are evaluating our space needs and actively searching for our future location,” Anton said.

As Chávez noted in her column, it’s the journalists and their work that makes the paper, but that paper’s building served as a heartbeat for Asheville for nearly nine decades. Many of us old cranky journos spent most of our lives there, often conducting interviews in the newsroom or charging up the stairs with a hot scoop.

In my case, I also spent too much time up on the third floor, in the publisher’s office or in HR, after getting in a little trouble for my big mouth.

The building ‘is in my bones’

Barbara Blake spent four decades working in the building, cranking out beautifully crafted news stories and features. 

“The cranky old newspaper building at 14 O. Henry Ave. is in my bones,” Blake told me. “From my first day on the job at age 22 until my last day 40 years later, I was proud to have a chair and a desk in one of the coolest and architecturally original workplace sites in downtown Asheville, along with being in an indisputably noble profession.”

Blake captured much better than I can the notion of how a building becomes intertwined with our lives.

“I entered adulthood there,” she said. “Years later, my young daughter was partially raised there, thanks to notoriously unpredictable reporters’ work schedules. I’m acquainted with most every inch of its four levels, intimately so with its second floor where the newsroom and related offices were housed.”

Her daughter is Casey Blake, who worked for the paper for a decade and now works for USA Today. Casey Blake was also the original Answer Woman, often taking well-intended jabs at me in her columns, which she would always walk over and alert me to beforehand.

Blake also remembered when the building hosted a mighty press, that enduring symbol of the Fourth Estate that’s now becoming obsolete before our eyes. Barb never wrote short in her life – I know – pot calling the kettle black), so I’m letting her ramble a bit here.

“Among my early memories are the times I and my fellow rookie journalists finished our 2-10:30 p.m. shift, then hit a dive bar or somebody’s apartment for poker or trivia, and finally in the wee hours rolled up to the north side of our building, where we scaled the loading dock to grab some newspapers literally hot off the press, the ink still damp,” Blake recalled.

“We could have waited until we awoke in late morning and scooped up our papers from our front porches or paper boxes, but sometimes we just needed to see our stories in print at the earliest possible moment,” Blake continued. “And it was thrilling to be in that noisy, pulsating, one-of-a-kind place at 3 or 4 a.m. while most of the city slept.”

While the press was gone when I started there, the basement remained an intriguing place, especially for my sons, Jack and Aidan, who are now grown. As kids they loved roaming around down there.

It was the only floor usually devoid of people, although longtime building super Joe Shaw, an African American man, had an office there. Another Citizen Times veteran, Melissa Williams, reminded me of a powerful story about Shaw and former Publisher Virgil Smith, the first Black man to hold that post, starting in the late 1990s.

“(Smith) told me how Joe Shaw wept when Virgil was hired and showed him the ‘colored’ restroom areas down in the guts of the building,” Williams said.

Smith said via email that when Shaw invited him to his basement office, Smith noticed the words “Colored Bathroom” on the glass. 

“(Shaw) told me he cried when I was named President and Publisher of the Asheville Citizen Times,” Smith recalled. “He said, ‘I never thought I would live to see a Black publisher of the Asheville Citizen-Times.’ As you know, in 1996 the only person of color (Black) was Henry Robinson. Same for the rest of the company.”

Robinson was the Citizen Times’ longtime religion reporter and the paper’s first Black journalist. He died in 2014.

Technical and cultural changes

The building bore witness to a lot of change over the years, some cultural, some technical.

“Back in the day, our photographers took pictures with actual film in their cameras,” Blake said. “That required darkrooms and the adjacent equipment and procedures required to produce actual photographs.”

I remember going back to the photo department, tucked into offices on the south side of the second floor, to hand in film or check on photos for my stories. The darkroom still had one of those cool swiveling steel doors you’d enter, close and rotate into the photo lab by.

That’s magic, my friends, and there was a lot of that at O. Henry. Mostly the magic came from all the people who became like family over the years, including some who are no longer with us, such as photographer non pareil Steve Dixon or the encyclopedic beer and entertainment writer Tony Kiss.

Sure, we fought sometimes and got annoyed with the loud talkers (I’m looking at you, Mark Barrett and Nanci Bompey) or gum snappers, and on occasion even engaged in some shouting matches. But we were a tribe, and we were all in it together.

I’ll treasure the friendships I made in that building more than anything, and the laughs. I was telling someone the other day about former reporter Jennifer Bowman, who broke nearly all of the significant Wanda Greene scandal stories, literally collapsing on the newsroom floor, prostrate in her grief, after an informal newsroom poll bolstered my assertion that her favorite actor, Keanu Reeves, has the emotional range of a sloth on morphine.

She’s probably still sore about that.

At one point, O. Henry housed nearly 300 employees. That included a gigantic ad sales team that kept the money coming in, the circulation folks who actually got the paper to people’s doorsteps, and even an in-house cafe. The canteen initially took up a tiny room on the second floor but then moved to more spacious digs on the first floor, space now used by the Curate restaurant group.

Keeping the memories alive

Perhaps my fondness of the building stems from the basic human desire to assign permanence to things in our lives we know really aren’t permanent, whether that’s people, our childhood homes, a favorite tree or yes, an office building. We know they’re not here forever — and neither are we — but they still provide comfort and continuity in a world that never stops changing.

Of course, we’re all glad the Citizen Times building remains standing. Too many old newspaper buildings have been razed to make way for downtown hotels or restaurants or condos.

Time marches on.

Blake remembered something I’d forgotten — “the small room on the back side of the building with a window facing west, used randomly over the years to house a refrigerator, smokers, and a tiny office for a staff recluse.

“Its most important role, though, was offering a clear view of spectacular sunsets around Mt. Pisgah through its west-facing window,” Blake said. “I hope whoever occupies that space in the future will not ignore those breathtaking opportunities.”

I used to watch the sunsets from outside the back door, on Otis Street. Neal recalled those, too.

“It’s the small details you remember from a career — how Phil Luther, the foreman of the composing shop, used to fetch reporters from the newsroom and escort them to the back to witness a particularly spectacular sunset from our western-facing windows,” Neal said. “And yes, the sun has set on that historical building now.”

It certainly has, at least as a bastion of journalists. I’m glad it’s still there, and that the sign still indicates a newspaper once thrived there.

But it’s just different now, with no reporters, editors, and photographers giving birth to a newspaper every day from that old edifice.

As we all considered Barb Blake “the newsroom mom,” I have to let her have the last word.

“It is impossible to calculate the wealth of laughter, pranks, fun, brilliant humor and unwavering camaraderie in our newsroom that coexisted with serious journalism and the somber work of watchdogging government entities and covering the darker sides of humanity throughout the years,” Blake said. “The physical space may no longer belong to the Citizen-Times, but I hope our collective memories of our time there might keep its stories alive for a while longer.”

Nicely said, Barb.

[This column was updated to include comments from former Citizen Times President and Publisher Virgil Smith.]

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Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. John Boyle has been covering Asheville and surrounding communities since the 20th century. You can reach him at (828) 337-0941, or via email at jboyle@avlwatchdog.org. The Watchdog’s reporting is made possible by donations from the community. To show your support for this vital public service please visit avlwatchdog.org/donate.