HISTORY 11 CROWN STREET The building holds many personal memories for current and former employees. “Five generations of my family have spanned the full 110 years,” White said. “I have personally worked in the building since 1979. My first memory was accompanying my father in early 1950s on Sunday mornings to light the lead pots.” Until roughly the 1960s and ’70s, Linotype machines were the industry standard for printing newspapers. The type set machines used gas-fired pots to keep the lead and tin type metal liquefied just prior to being cast. The newspaper was printed on premises at 11 Crown St. until February 2009, though the technology to do so evolved from the
Linotype machine.
Meriden Journal.
In 2009, the aging press was in need of a costly replacement, and the ailing economy prompted the decision to outsource printing to the Springfield Republican campus in Springfield, Mass.
In 1887, The Republican Publishing Co. was incorporated, and five years later, in 1892, the Morning Record was launched as another daily paper.
The RJ, as many know it now, began as The Weekly Visitor in 1867. The weekly newspaper expanded into a daily print newspaper on Jan. 1, 1868, and three months later, evolved into the Meriden Daily Republican. Soon an evening paper was produced to compete with the Republican — that paper was the Meriden Daily Journal, which first ran in April 1886. It was later known (and perhaps better known now) as simply the
At that point, the Meriden Daily Republican became a weekly newspaper, and eventually ceased publication altogether. Between 1903 and 1925, the Morning Record changed names twice, ultimately settling on the Meriden Record in January 1925. In 1949, the Meriden Record Co. — formerly the Republican Publishing Co. — purchased the Meriden Journal, though it wasn’t until 1977 when the two papers merged, becom-