The Pioneer

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.
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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!

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.