Tribune Media announced last week that it was in negotiations for the sale of The Baltimore Sun's Calvert Street building, which the news organization has occupied since 1950.

Aging presses, downtown traffic congestion and daily delivery of newsprint from nearby warehouses conspired to force the A. S. Abell Co. board, then owners of The Sun, Evening Sun and Sunday Sun, to plan for a new five-story building that rose on the site of the Pennsylvania Railroad's old Calvert Station.

Since 1907, the newspaper had occupied a grand building on the southwest corner of Charles and Baltimore streets that. It was offically designated by the city as Sun Square.

The move to Calvert Street began in mid-December 1950, with the full move on Christmas Day, because papers were not published on the holiday at that time.

On Dec. 23, the Evening Sun rolled off the presses with an emotional farewell editorial to its old home: “Good-by, Sun Square.”

Some 80 trailers filled with furniture, filing cabinets, printing equipment, Linotype machines and stereotyping machinery made the journey across town.

At 8:11 Christmas night, Bettina Patterson, 10, whose grandfather, Paul C. Patterson, was the retiring president of the A.S. Abell Co., and Betty Ann Schmick, 10, granddaughter of William F. Schmick Sr., who succeeded Patterson, stood in the press room, and then set the Hoe presses in motion in The Sunpapers' new home.

frasmussen@baltsun.com