San Francisco Chronicle
The "Chronicle" was founded by brothers Charles and M. H. de Young in 1865 as "The Daily Dramatic Chronicle", and inside of 10 years, it had the largest circulation of any newspaper west of the Mississippi River. The paper's first office was in a building at the corner of Bush and Kearney Streets. The brothers then commissioned a building from Burnham and Root at 690 Market Street at the corner of Third and Kearney Streets to be their new headquarters, in what became known as Newspaper Row. The new building, San Francisco's first skyscraper, was completed in 1889. It was damaged in the 1906 earthquake, but it was rebuilt under the direction of William Polk, Burnham's associate in San Francisco. That building, known as the "Old Chronicle Building" or the "DeYoung Building", still stands and was restored in 2007. It is an historic landmark and is the location of the Ritz-Carlton Club and Residences.
San Francisco Independent
Under new ownership, the Independent quickly took a more aggressive approach to growth and that summer launched a challenge to the largest and oldest community paper, the San Francisco Progress, by submitting a bid to publish the public notices for the city and becoming the Official Newspaper of San Francisco. Although the Independent was ultimately not successful in securing that advertising contract, the next year the scrappy newspaper was successful in pulling the bulk of the real estate community’s advertising away from the Progress and into a new publication printed by the Independent. Then, on December 15, 1988 the San Francisco Progress shut its doors, ceased publication and filed for bankruptcy. In six days, on December 21, 1988, the Independent converted from a tabloid size to the traditional broadsheet newspaper size and increased circulation from 80,000 to 180,000.