When I took my first steps inside the San Francisco Chronicle building at 901 Mission St., as an elementary school student around 1980, it felt like a ride at Disneyland.
“Everyone quiet, do you feel that?” a tour guide said as we stood in the third-floor lobby just outside the elevators.
The marble floor beneath us rumbled. A massive steel printing press, lurking four stories below in a sub-basement like a sleeping dragon, had just started running again.
I became a Chronicle paperboy in 1983, then a reporter in 2000. I’ve spent more than half my life as an employee of this magical newsroom at Fifth and Mission streets. And the building still feels like a living thing.
But late Thursday afternoon (June 18), for the first time in 102 years, news production will end at 901 Mission. The Chronicle is moving to a high-rise at 450 Sansome St. for at least six years, maybe forever, while a structure adjoining the 901 Mission St. newsroom is demolished and a condo project rises in its place.
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