A history lesson on the rising and the setting of the Sun
Moser in July 1935. A year later, it was purchased by Harold E. White,
in partnership with a friend, Gordon K. Haist. The assets consisted of
the name, an old desk and an equally old typewriter.
There was no subscription list at the time and the eight-page newspaper
was distributed free each week by the two publishers, assisted by
several Naperville high school boys.
The office was located in a room adjacent to a barber shop on
Washington Street, across form the Naperville post office. The printing
was done by the Downers Grove Reporter. In 1937, Haist and White
dissolved their partnership by mutual consent and White became sole
owner.
During the spring of 1938, a small, hand-fed printing press was
purchased and The Sun began doing job printing. That fall, a newspaper
press was purchased and The Sun moved to new quarters in a building
formerly occupied by Naperville's famed Spanish Tea Room, which closed
in 1937. That was to be home for The Sun for the next 26 years.
During that quarter of a century, the newspaper slowly flourished,
growing in circulation in number of pages, constantly adding new
equipment to enable it to handle that growth. The first brand-new
Linotype was purchased in 1942, enabling the publisher to set all the
type for the newspaper and commercial printing work in his own shop.
In 1944, an opportunity to print a large semi-monthly newspaper arose
and it became necessary to purchase a faster, more modern press — a
Miehle newspaper press. Thus The Naperville Sun became a newspaperman's
printer; and soon, several other newspapers were being printed in the
Sun plant.
The Miehle press was replaced in 1950 with a roll-fed Duplex web press,
capable of printing, cutting and folding 16-page sections at a time.
During the 1960s, White decided to convert to offset printing and had
the press work done at an outside plant for a time, until he could get
delivery on an offset web press of his own. In 1964, plans were drawn
and construction started on a new Sun building at 9 W. Jackson Ave. It
was there that the new Goss offset press was installed, and the entire
operation moved to the new address on March 5, 1965.
The phenomenal growth of the city of Naperville, and the growth of its
newspaper with it, made necessary two additions to the 9 W. Jackson
building — one in 1970, and the other in 1978. But the growth did not
stop there. It soon became evident that the printing plant required a
building of its own, and again, plans for a new building were made.
In March 1983, all of the printing equipment was moved to the new Sun
building at 1500 W. Ogden Ave. The newspaper offices, however, remained
downtown at the Jackson Avenue address.
In 1991, Harold White sold The Sun to Copley Press headed by Helen
Copley. She directed the company's Northern Illinois holdings, along
with the San Diego Union-Tribune for nearly 30 years.
She later turned the business over to her son David C. Copley shortly
after selling their Northern Illinois newspapers including The Sun to
Hollinger International in 2000 and in 2003, the Sun began printing six
days a week.
7/17/05
