If Rockwell was a photographer he'd have taken this image.

So full of action and detail. Those head visors, the not-paperless-office, the spiral staircase and all enveloped in that amazing masonry and concrete room.

Those paper spikes were dangerous, so sharp that a careless hand could easily get a nasty wound (another reader has picked up a suspicious wound). Never mind that the spike might just go through and destroy a very important word.

The previous shot of the wire service machines shows that it's pretty clearly dark outside (the left-hand window is open without whatever-it-is that's in the right hand window opening).

It seems to me that this is more likely the evening of September 3rd, 1942 rather than the morning.

[The Times is a morning paper, so yes, it's night. - Dave]

New York in September, no A/C, everybody packed in like sardines ... no wonder everybody looks sweaty!

I too pictured a lot more typewriters.

NOAA weather for Manhattan shows a high of 93 on 9/3/42. Might explain the matted hair, glistening foreheads and less than crisp work shirts.

I always love these photos of how things used to be in newsrooms, offices, labs, etc. and I'm especially intrigued by wartime home front photos. It's really easy for some to hold the past up to today's politically correct standards, but perhaps one of two of these newsmen lost a son or maybe even a daughter at Pearl Harbor or Midway. Maybe they have a son who recently landed at Guadalcanal. And perhaps there are women who are working in this environment but just happen to be out of the photo at the time. You don't know for sure, so don't judge.

"Nothing is more unfair than to judge the men of the past by the ideas of the present. Whatever may be said of morality, political wisdom is certainly ambulatory".
- Denys Arthur Winstanley

The movies from the 1930s led me to expect many more typewriters and whiskey bottles. Also, a sassy gal Friday.

This makes me want to watch "His Girl Friday".

Inhale deeply and let’s go back in time and take an olfactory tour of the newsroom. The first thing that hits you as you enter the room would be the tobacco smoke. I count at least three pipes and a cigarette, but no ashtrays. In a closed room the smoke and ash odor would be the first thing you notice. Weather archives report that the temperature reached 93 degrees F. in New York City on September 3, 1942 – near record heat. The next thing you’d notice would be man-sweat and hair tonic. Vitalis and Brylcreem and Murray’s Pomade each had a distinctive aroma and the miasma rising from those guys must have been remarkable.

Add to the vaporous atmosphere the smell of printer’s ink, gluepots, rubber-gum erasers, pencil shavings, leather satchels, and freshly developed photographs. Even though the clock says 9:20 AM perhaps you'd catch a whiff of flask-borne whiskey and, judging be the unshaven assistant city editor in the foreground, maybe the scent of monkey blood from his wound dressing. I’ll bet the gent in the eyeshade has a Limburger cheese and onion sandwich in a paper bag.

You can exhale now.

Goober Pea

Perhaps a history book is not in your future, or you'll be very very depressed. In other words. Lighten up.

The high temperature in New York that day was 93 degrees -- no wonder they all look so sweaty.

Coffee rationing in effect already?

These men don't need to go to a steam bath - it looks like their work place is already very hot and humid. Each of those caged ceiling lights is probably putting out 200 watts of heat, plus all the body heat of the men. Their shirts look very moist. The large metal ducts on the ceiling might only be for exhausting smoke and heat from the room rather than forced air conditioning. I would love the see a photo of the cord switchboard with operators connecting the candlestick telephones.

In an early comment below (“Safe pre-OSHA Workplace”), M2 writes, “Their safety consciousness even extended to the film used to record their workplace for posterity.” So I scrutinized the right edge of the photo, my head tilted down and to the right, to read: “EASTMAN—SAFETY—KODAK 101 SHORPY.” Very clever!

Natural human data processing power.

The guy smoking a pipe, The candlestick telephones too. The wire cages on the light fixtures are also strange. Overkill, I would say. But it's a delightful photo of the past.

Kind of depressing once you take it all in, a newsroom entirely staffed by men, plus the pipe smoking, the anti-Japanese propaganda poster, etc. It really is true that "The past is a different country. They do things differently there."

Not sure what the well thought out and professionally made wire cloth covers on the lights are all about. I guess it has something to do with being at war???

Bill spikes, stick telephones, eye shades, rubber stamps, oak office chairs, pipe smokers.. all of an era.

Can anybody identify the round white things with the little handle sticking up?

[Gluepots. - Dave]

And the cages on the light fixtures — did things get rough in that room from time to time???

That Assistant put his hand through the CE’s memo spike again.

Or maybe the editor is a very, very stern taskmaster.

What is that for. Oh, and that caricature, so not politically correct today.

This most be towards the end of the era for visors. Green eyeshades or dealer's visors are a type of visor that were worn most often from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century by accountants, telegraphers, copy editors, and others engaged in vision-intensive, detail-oriented occupations to lessen eye strain due to early incandescent lights and candles, which tended to be harsh (the classic banker's lamp had a green shade for similar reasons).

Interesting. When I worked in a newsroom in the 70s it wasn't much different from this except everyone had a typewriter. I wonder why there's not a single one visible in this photo.

[You don’t need a typewriter to edit. Just a grease pencil. - Dave]

Why are there cages around the ceiling lights? All I could think of was that the composing room upstairs creates enough vibrations to occasionally knock a light fixture off its ceiling mount, and the cages protect those below.

Copyboy! Get me OSHA! And having worked in such dangerous places in the 1960s ...

What do they need protection from?

would take a writer's finished typing when the writer held it aloft saying a bit more than audibly, "BOY!" In later times this was changed to "KID!"

Got that from a WSJ veteran.

US FIGHTS NEW LANDINGS IN SOLOMONS; SINKS CRUISER, 4 OTHER SHIPS IN PACIFIC; NAZIS ADVANCE NORTH OF STALINGRAD

Marines Meet Foe

Franco Shakes Up Cabinet, Ousts Suner and 2 Others

Allied Blows Force Rommel to Withdraw at Some Points

President Warns Youth to Choose Death or Freedom

Submarines Sink 5 Japanese Ships

Astor Real Estate Policy Shifted to Meet New Order

British Bombers Sear Karlsruhe; Sinclair Urges Sabotage in Reich

OPA to License All Meat Packers and Wholesalers in Control Move

What, are they planning early for TV?

What a classic case of industrial chic, even with wire cages on the lamps!

I only see three telephones in that whole office! How can they get any work done?

I'm sure that everyone they would've needed to speak with was within shouting distance. Amazing how efficient things were back then!

No cubicle walls either.

Looks like way back then they didn't need an agency of the Federal Government to codify or remind them of the dangers of falling light globes (I didn't even know that was a thing.) Their safety conciousness even extended to the film used to record their workplace for posterity. Which begs the question, what happened to the guy at front left.

Paper cut? Malingerer? Bar fight?

Not very glamourous, is it?? Even by the standards of the day, I would have expected something more impressive for the Paper of Record. But perhaps our expectations are tainted by modern conditions: whereas today the 'Times' may be NYC's only broadsheet, in 1942 there were a multitude - Journal-American, World-Telegram, the Sun -- some of which eclipsed the Times in circulation; but the real competitor for the quality reader was the Herald-Tribune. I've heard it posited that WWII is what earned the Times the final victory lap: it used its war-ration reduced pages to emphasize news, whereas the HT gave the edge to advertising. I don't know how true this is, but it's a great story.