Adolph Ochs stamp
The famous newspaperman Adolph Ochs was born on March 12, 1858, in Cleveland, Ohio. His parents, Julian and Bertha Levy Ochs, were natives of Bavaria. The family was living in Knoxville when their son began his newspaper career delivering papers for the Chronicle at the age of 11. In 1870 he worked in an uncle's store in Providence, Rhode Island, and attended Warner's Business School at night. A year later he returned to Knoxville and worked as a printer's devil on the Chronicle. He then went to Louisville where he worked as an apprentice for the Courier-Journal and returned to Knoxville where he held several jobs on the Tribune.
Ochs was only 19 when he moved to Chattanooga in 1877. He soon became editor of the Daily Dispatch, and in 1878 printed a directory of Chattanooga. The Dispatch having failed, he arranged its consolidation with The Chattanooga Times, gaining control of both papers on July 1, 1878, when he was only 20. On Feb. 28, 1883, in Cincinnati he married Effie Miriam Wise, daughter of Rabbi Isaac M. Wise. The newlyweds went by train to Washington, D.C., where Ochs had arranged for them to have tea with President Chester A. Arthur.
Their daughter Iphigene was born on Sept. 19, 1892. Ochs' new six-story Times building of Italian Renaissance design surmounted by a golden dome was dedicated almost three months later, on Dec. 8, 1892. Located at the corner of Georgia Avenue and East Eighth Street, it was the tallest structure in Chattanooga. More than 10,000 people attended the dedication. A group of local citizens presented him with an 8-foot tall grandfather clock, which he later moved to his New York office.
After falling heavily in debt during the Panic of 1893, Ochs hoped to dig his way out by acquiring another newspaper. His chance came on March 17, 1896, when a reporter for The New York Times notified him by telegram that the newspaper, in a slide towards bankruptcy, was for sale. On Aug. 18, 1896, Ochs gained control of the paper, which is still controlled by his descendants. Ochs added the Times' well-known motto, "All the News That's Fit to Print." In 1904 he moved the paper to a new building on Longacre Square in Manhattan, which the city renamed Times Square. On New Year's Eve 1904, Ochs had pyrotechnists illuminate his new building at One Times Square with a fireworks show from street level.
In 1928 Ochs built the Mizpah Congregation Temple in Chattanooga in memory of his parents. In 1979 it was designated as a Tennessee Historical Preservation site. He fought anti-Semitism and was active in the early years of the Anti-Defamation League. He died on April 8, 1935, during a visit to Chattanooga and is buried at the Temple Israel Cemetery in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.
Read more Chattanooga History Columns
- Gaston: Paul John Kruesi was Edison's right-hand man
- Robbins: The old Richardson's house and the Civil War
- Gaston: James Williams was a man of the world
- Raney: Mason Evans, the 'Wild Man of the Chilhowee'
- Gaston: The legacy of Adolph Ochs endures
- Martin: Ed Johnson said, 'I have a changed heart,' the day before his lynching in Chattanooga on 1906
- Thomas: The inventiveness of Judge Michael M. Allison
- Moore: Chattanooga's first Chinese community
- Summers, Robbins: Chattanooga's Tuskegee Airman - Joseph C. White
- McCallie: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 says so!
- Gaston: John McCline's Civil War - from slave to D.C. parade
- Raney: Exploring Chattanooga businesses in the Green Book
- Elliott: Remembering the Freedmen's Bureau in Chattanooga
- Gaston: Nancy Ward was a beloved, respected Tennessean
- Martin: Prohibition - the noble experiment
- Elliott: 'A shameful, disgraceful deed': The destruction of the Sewanee cornerstone
- Gaston: Robert Cravens was ironmaster, Chattanooga area's first commuter
- Robbins: Dr. T.H. McCallie's Christmas 1863
- Robbins: Journalist writes of a trip to Missionary Ridge in 1896
- Summers, Robbins: Mine 21 disaster - gone but not forgotten
- Elliott: Collegedale incorporates to avoid Sunday 'blue laws'
- Gaston: 'Marse Henry' Watterson's journalism fame began in Chattanooga
- Robbins: Orchard Knob battle recalled in 1895
- Elliott: Chattanoogans joined in an 'orgy of joy and gladness' on Armistice Day, 1918
- Thomas: Noted service, speakers are marks of Rotary Club of Chattanooga since 1914
- Summers and Robbins: Remembering noted Tennessee author North Callahan
- Raney: 'I auto cry, I auto laugh, I auto sign my autograph'
- Gaston: Sequoyah's alphabet enriched Cherokees
- Robbins: A look at Sam Divine's life during the Civil War
- Robbins: Memories of a Confederate nurse
- Robbins: More notes from Bradford Torrey's 1895 visit to Chickamauga Battlefield
- Robbins: Journalist in 1895 details visit to Chickamauga Battlefield
- Elliott: Telephone exchange firebombing was distraction for grocery store robbery
- Gaston: Worcester brought Christ's message to Cherokee at Brainerd Mission
- Robbins: 1896 travel diary: 'A Week on Walden's Ridge'
- Gaston: Elizabeth Strayhorn, WAC Commandant at Fort Oglethorpe
- Robbins: The history of the Friends of Moccasin Bend National Park
- Moore: Do you own a Sears Roebuck home?
- Summers and Robbins: Camp Nathan Bedford Forrest in World War II
- Gaston: Hiram Sanborn Chamberlain remembered
- Elliott: Daisy the center of tile, ceramic manufacturing in Hamilton County
- Gaston: FDR inaugurates the Chickamauga Dam
- Summers, Robbins: Interned WWII Germans had it easy at Camp Crossville
- Elliott: A war correspondent on Lookout Mountain
- Gaston: Chickamaugas finally bury hatchet in Tennessee Valley
- Gaston: Chickamaugas in Chattanooga
- Robbins: The history of the Riverbend festival
- Raney: Sadie Watson, the first woman elected in Hamilton County government
- Moore: Remembering Chattanooga's Hawkinsville community
- Elliott: Welsh coal miners transformed Soddy after the Civil War
- Gaston: Chattanooga's best-kept secret
- Elliott: Cabell Breckinridge loses his horse
- Raney: Martin Fleming is the people's judge
- Gaston: The amazing career of Francis Lynde
- Martin: Hamilton County's Name Sake: Alexander Hamilton
- Summers, Robbins: The crosses at Sewanee
- Bledsoe: The fiery truce at Kennesaw Mountain
- Moore: Talented architect's life cut short by tragedy
- Rydell: Chattanooga's place in soccer history
- Robbins: Tennessee Coal, member of the First Dow Jones Industrial Average
- Raney: In the barber chair
- Lanier: Becoming the Boyce Station Neighborhood Association
- McCallie: John P. Franklin: Living history among us
- Barr: Chattanooga's first railroad: The Underground Railroad
- Summers, Robbins: Charles Bartlett was a Pulitzer Prize winner, Kennedy confidant
- Rainey: 'We have seen it'
- Elliott: Feinting and fighting at Running Water Creek and Johnson's Crook
- Gaston: The Spring Frog Cabin at Audubon Acres
- Raney: Wauhatchie Pike was moonshine motorway
- Robbins: Oakmont was home of venerable Williams clan
- Summers and Robbins: Rebirth of the Mountain Goat Line
- Elliott: Bad investments led to Soddy Bank failure in 1930
- Summers and Robbins: Pearl Harbor attack left football behind
- Gaston: Jolly’s Island namesake had long ties with Sam Houston
- Return Jonathan Meigs, Indian Agent
- Moore: Did you know about St. Elmo's other two cemeteries?
- Summers: Orme - Marion County's almost lost community
- Davis: Spooky revival at Sharp Mountain in 1873
- Robbins: The story of Longholm
- Raney: Women labored to help the U.S. win World War I
- Even in the city, the 'wheel' changed everything
- Murray: Confederate dilemma after Chickamauga
- J.B. Collins — Newsman extraordinaire
- Robbins: The Story of the Lyndhurst Mansion
- Chattanooga artist and wife lost on the Lusitania
- Chattanooga History Column: Battelle, Alabama and the Battelle Institute
- John Ross, a founder of Chattanooga
- Hamilton County casualties in World War I
- Chattanooga Power Couple
- 'Somewhere in France'
- The Ray Moss family
- Battery B from Chattanooga
- Ulysses S. Grant, Clark B. Lagow, and the Chattanooga Bender
- Songbirds Museum Timeline
- Hamilton County World War 1 roster
- The Soddy Girl and the Memphis Belle
- Blues icon Bessie Smith was the Empress of Soul
- Women's Army Corps at Chickamauga
- Emma Bell Miles' life at the top of the 'W'
- The Tivoli Wurlitzer is one of Chattanooga's priceless assets
- Chattanooga in struggle for freedom during Civil War
- October 1918, Chattanooga paralyzed by Spanish flu epidemic
- Eli Lilly and the Ditch of Death
- One hundred years ago, Chattanooga goes to war
- The legacy of Anna Safley Houston
- Harriet Whiteside was ahead of her time
- Southern Adventist University
- Chattanooga native's writings aided Civil Rights movement
- Zion College, Chattanooga's only African American College
- The North Shore's hidden past
- Mayme Martin -- Businesswoman and community leader
- Thomas Sim's epic struggle for freedom
- Top of Cameron Hill was price of rerouting interstate
- Cameron Hill has rich history
- Temperance movement included Harriman university
- The sweetest music this side of Heaven
- Conquistadors at Chattanooga
- Chattanooga and the 'General'
- Chattanooga's first Thanksgiving, 1863
- Chattanooga's greatest flood caught city unaware
- Opening the Cracker Line
- European trip in 1900 enlightens Sophia Scholze Long
- Sophia Scholze Long spoke out when others were silent
- Little South Pittsburg and its big silent movie stars
- Lot attendant recalls hottest job in Chattanooga
- Chattanooga's Forest Hills is final resting place for known, unknown
- Burritt College -- Pioneer of the Cumberlands
- Chattanooga's nicknames trace city's evolution
- The 25th annual meeting of the Tennessee Press Association
- Clemons Brothers Furniture Store
- The Short Life of the USS Chattanooga
- Ellen Jarnagin McCallie lived a truly remarkable life
- Dr. Jonathan Bachman was a revered city father
- Second guessing the Confederate failure on Missionary Ridge
- Nancy Kefauver, ambassador for the arts
- William Gibbs McAdoo kept his Southern roots
- Chattanooga's Secretary of the Treasury
- Howard Baker remembered as a statesman/photographer who snapped history
- Tivoli's last picture show
- The history of one of Chattanooga's oldest businesses
- Chattanooga's roller derby skaters
- Myths of Coca-Cola in Chattanooga
- Chattanooga's neighborhood grocery stores
- The tale of the Scottsboro Boys
- The people's history of Chattanooga
- Howard School is Chattanooga's reminder of Reconstruction
- Elevator operator, painter, mystery man: meet Rice Carothers
- Raulston Schoolfield made enemies amid his rise to power
- Website lets users peer into Chattanooga's past
- The flood of 1917
- Chattanooga's 'wickedest woman' buried at Forest Hills
- History of Cummings Highway
His daughter Iphigene had married Arthur Hays Sulzberger who succeeded Ochs as publisher of The Times after Adolph died. He was succeeded by her son-in-law Orvil Dryfoos (1961-63) followed by her son, Arthur Ochs "Punch" Sulzberger ,and then by her great-grandson Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. (1992-2017). He was succeeded by his son, A.G. Sulzberger, on Jan. 1, 2018.
Preparing for the transition, A.G. Sulzberger referred to Adolph Och's request in his will that his descendants maintain the editorial independence and integrity of The Times. "I think that's something everyone in my family feels, which I suspect I feel particularly acutely, given this pretty profound responsibility," A.G. Sulzberger said when his appointment was announced.
In Chattanooga, Iphigene's daughter, Ruth Holmberg, became publisher of The Chattanooga Times and served for 28 years (1964-1992). She was chairwoman of the Times Printing Co. from 1992 to 1999. In 1999, The Chattanooga Times and the Chattanooga Free Press were merged into the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
Like her grandfather Adolph, who worked to establish the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park and to preserve much of Lookout Mountain, Ruth was very civic-minded. In 2001 she and her husband, William Holmberg, funded artist Jim Collins' stainless steel book sculpture and fountain titled "Volumes" outside the Chattanooga Public Library.
William Holmberg died in 2005, followed by his wife Ruth in 2017 at the age of 96. In 2005 both were honored for their support of the arts with the construction of the Holmberg Bridge, a $1.6 million pedestrian bridge leading from the Hunter Museum across Riverfront Parkway to the Walnut Street Bridge Plaza.
Kay Baker Gaston is a regional historian and a former Chattanoogan. For more, visit chattahistoricalassn.org.