We almost made it.

In five short years, the Butler Eagle would have celebrated its 100th year in the distinctive art deco building on the corner of West Diamond and South Jackson streets.

The Eagle has been owned by the Wise family since 1903, and has operated out of the red brick building since its construction in 1924.

As of Monday morning, the entire operation will move down the hill to the production center at 514 W. Wayne St., where the newspaper has been printed since 2003.

True, we will no longer deal with an aging and temperamental boiler that roasts employees in some departments and permits a deep chill in others.

Instead of the hissing radiators in various locations throughout the block-long building, we'll enjoy modern heating and air conditioning at the new building.

Employees who pay to park in the city will also find themselves with a few extra bucks in their pockets, as the new office is in a nonmetered section of town.

But as the frenzied work to move shelves, desks, computers and a wall of award plaques continues, I find myself gazing in my mind's eye at the ghosts of this grand old newsroom, with its terrazzo floor and transoms above the doors.

I picture newsmen in 1929, fedoras on their heads and a cigarette dangling from their lips, furiously clacking away at their manual typewriters to alert county residents of the stock market crash that would spur the Great Depression.

I can feel the pall of the newsroom in late 1941 and early 1942, when reporters banged out stories on the thousands of young Butler County men and women headed to war. As an Eagle reporter who covered the county's reaction on September 11, 2001, I unfortunately know that horrible feeling.

So we have things in common, myself and these long dead newsmen who tore sheets of paper from their typewriters in exasperation upon pressing one wrong key.

Like Eric Jankiewicz and Jim Smith do today, reporters in the 1930s eschewed their overcoats and ran from the wooden double doors at the front entrance and across the brick street to the County Courthouse to cover a trial or ask a pointed question of a government official.

They sat and scribbled, ties loosened, at county commissioner meetings as I do twice a month, and afterward schlepped up the wide staircase to the newsroom to collect their thoughts and type up their articles.

I can picture reporters of yore running for their Packards and racing off to a fire or accident as we reporters do today, albeit in more modern vehicles.

I imagine the women in the front office, all in prim dresses with lace collars, using noisy adding machines and sharpening pencils to do their work under the same unique ceiling and portraits of members of the Wise family over the years.

While there are women in all departments now, up to and including our assistant General Manager, Tammy Schuey, I can visualize the men in the advertising department back in the day, having lunch and maybe a few belts with local business owners who peddled their wares in the pages of the Eagle.

While this old building no longer employs typesetters, I imagine more than one employee in the composing department has cursed the constant technological upgrades that allowed the paper to be created and printed more and more efficiently through the decades.

I have to laugh every time I head down to the basement to ask a computer-related question of our informational technology staff, as the word “computer” didn't exist when the building was erected — hence their current location in the basement.

Sure, there are advantages to moving, but I'm positive that I'm not alone in my melancholy as we employees vacate this historic old building.

The articles created here have shocked, delighted, informed and interested the folks of Butler County for almost a century, and I'm glad I get to say — until it is my turn to be just a memory — that I had the privilege of calling 114 West Diamond Street my home for eight hours a day.

Paula Grubbs has been an Eagle staff writer for nearly 20 years.