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| Pic October 1988: In the background is the old Pioneer Press building designed by American architect Walter Burley Griffin. The foundation stone was laid by Viceroy of India, the Marquis of Linlithgow on December 16, 1936. Griffin died in Lucknow the following year. The excavation work for a multistorey building to replace the Griffin building came too close leading to a wall sinking. A reticent editorial staff stand for a pic: L to R KC Khanna, Sudarshan Bhatia, David Solomon, Somnath Sapur (Editor), George Shepherd (back), CK Mukund, Alpa Kapoor, Lance Mannays (back), Kaliyani Malviya(?) and Ravi Dutta. ***** Owned by the Jaipuria family, industrialists of Kanpur. the paper was handed over to the Thapar Group in the early 1990s that resold it a few years later. The Pioneer was started by Sir George Allen in Allahabad in 1865. It shifted to Lucknow towards the end of the 1920s or beginning of the 1930s and was located near Maqbara on Hazratganj before it moved into a the building specifically planned for a press on Abbott Road, the present Vidhan Sabha Marg. The move from Allahabad to Lucknow was done over several days and that too without missing an edition. The editor Desmond Young, later author of The Desert Fox, travelled from Lucknow to Allahabad and back by car carrying the lead plates so that readers had their copy of The Pioneer in the morning. This will be a world record the shifting of tons of machinery over a distance of 179 km and not missing a single edition! |
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| In the pic: A tea shop where for years press people had their cuppa and samosas is now called Pioneer Cafe. The construction taking place is the rebuilding of the old mosque outside the gate of Ratan Square, the new Pioneer building that is now a complex of offices, while the paper moved to another office comples on Faizabad Road. |
