描述
**Elverson Building**
**Art by:** Chris Hytha
**Story by:** Mark Houser
Said to be the world’s largest newspaper plant at the time of its construction, the Elverson Building was named for the Philadelphia Inquirer’s fourth owner, James Elverson — according to its fifth owner, his son James Elverson Jr., who commissioned it.
It was built over the tracks of the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad so that the huge rolls of newsprint feeding the presses could be delivered directly by train. The paper needed 800 tons of it per week; storage rooms held 200 railcars worth.
Elverson and his wife, Eleanore, a former actress, lived in apartments upstairs until he died of a heart attack in 1929 while planning festivities for the paper’s 100th anniversary. The tower’s four 16-foot clocks are accompanied by Westminster chimes; Elverson loved clocks and kept a collection of rare timepieces.
The Inquirer won 17 Pulitzers in its heyday from 1975 to 1990 before departing the premises in 2012. Plans to make the building into a casino were abandoned, and instead the granite and ivory terracotta highrise has been repurposed as police headquarters.