Daily News Centennial, Part I: 1919-1949

June 26, 1919, 100 years ago: The New York Daily News is first published. It likes to call itself "New York's Hometown Paper," and it really is.

As I've said many times: The Daily News is the face that New York City likes to show itself, while the Times is the face The City prefers to show the rest of the world, and the Post is a face only a mother could love. (But not my mother. Hers didn't much like it, either.)

The Daily News used to call itself "New York's Picture Newspaper," and the object between "Daily" and "News" on its masthead is a camera. It's why the TV station it founded in 1948 -- as many early radio TV stations were founded by newspapers -- has the call letters WPIX.

Today, WPIX-Channel 11 is still headquartered in the 476-foot Art Deco Daily News Building, which opened in 1930 at 220 East 42nd Street, although the paper is not. The Daily News Building has a giant globe in its lobby, making it the ideal place to film the Daily Planet scenes in the Christopher Reeve-era Superman movies (1978 to 1987).

In 1995, the Daily News moved operations to 450 West 33rd Street, which is now the world headquarters of the Associated Press (AP). In 2011, the Daily News moved to 4 New York Plaza, at Broad & Water Streets and the southern tip of Manhattan Island. From October 2012 to November 2013, they had to vacate due to damage from Hurricane Sandy, but have moved back.

Many early New York newspapers were on Park Row, giving them easy access to City Hall across the street. This has long since ceased to be the case. The New York Post, its tabloid rival, was long headquartered on South Street, near the South Street Seaport and the Brooklyn Bridge. It is now at 1211 6th Avenue, at 48th Street, sharing headquarters with its NewsCorp brethren, Fox News. The New York Times, whose original building gave its name to Times Square, is now in a 1,046-foot tower at 620 8th Avenue at 41st Street, across from Port Authority Bus Terminal.

As a longtime (but no longer) part of the Chicago Tribune system, the News was long a populist conservative paper, while the Post was the preferred paper of liberal intellectuals, especially Jewish ones. But when Rupert Murdoch bought the Post in 1976, he made it populist conservative, and the News switched to a more -- but not entirely -- liberal attitude.

After long being one of the highest-circulating newspapers in America, the Daily News has significantly declined: At an average of 300,000 per day, far below their former peak of 2 million, which they held for much of the 20th Century, they now trail the Post at 425,000, and the Times at 2.1 million. (And Donald Trump says the Times is "failing.")

I begin a display of prominent front pages from its history.

June 26, 1919, the 1st front page, discussing the Treaty of Versailles, and the upcoming visit of Britain's Prince of Wales -- later King Edward VIII and the Duke of Windsor -- to America:

October 5, 1921, discussing the World Series between the Yankees and the Giants, both then playing their home games at the Polo Grounds:

October 9, 1922, after the Giants made it back-to-back World Series wins over the Yankees:

August 3, 1923, President Warren G. Harding had died the previous evening:

October 16, 1923, after the Yankees got revenge on the Giants, winning their 1st World Series:

August 25, 1926, at the out-of-control funeral for actor Rudolph Valentino, dead of peritonitis at age 31, before the age of antibiotics which could have saved him:

August 23, 1927, after the unjust execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti:

October 9, 1927, after the Yankees won the World Series:

January 13, 1928, after Ruth Snyder became the 1st female convict executed in the State of New York:

October 30, 1929, after the Wall Street crash:

October 18, 1931, Al Capone, still the biggest gangster in American history, convicted of income tax evasion in Chicago:

May 13, 1932, after the kidnapping and murder of toddler Charles Lindbergh Jr., son of the famous aviator:

December 6, 1933, when the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, Prohibition, was repealed by the 21st Amendment:

July 23, 1934, John Dillinger, the bank robber known as "Public Enemy Number 1" is caught and killed by the FBI:

March 20, 1935:

August 17, 1935:

October 25, 1935, a legendary Mobster, Dutch Schultz, gets rubbed out in Newark:

October 7, 1936, following a Subway Series:

November 4, 1936, both President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his successor as Governor of New York, Herbert Lehman, are overwhelmingly re-elected:

May 7, 1937, the Hindenburg burns at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in Ocean County, New Jersey:

June 8, 1937, a legendary actress loses a battle with kidney failure:

July 3, 1937, it wasn't a good year for flying:

George Gershwin died on July 11, 1937, of a brain tumor, only 38 years old, but if the Daily News had a big headline about it, it isn't on Google Images.

October 11, 1937, Yankees win another Subway Series, and the News buries the lead: Lefty Gomez, one of the worst-hitting pitchers ever, gets the winning hit:

June 23, 1938, Joe Louis knocks out unwilling Nazi symbol Max Schmeling at Yankee Stadium:

September 21, 1938, the biggest hurricane to hit the Northeastern U.S. until Sandy, with New England and especially Rhode Island being hit even harder than New York and New Jersey:

October 10, 1938, Yankees win World Series again:

October 31, 1938, after CBS broadcast Orson Welles' radio adaptation of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds:

November 11, 1938, after word reached America of "Kristallnacht":

May 1, 1939, the New York World's Fair opens in Flushing Meadow-Corona Park, Queens:

July 5, 1939, coverage of Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day:

September 2, 1939:

October 9, 1939:

June 10, 1940, the Allied effort in World War II isn't going so well:

September 13, 1940, Succasunna, Morris County, New Jersey:

October 7, 1941, the 1st World Series between the Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers:

December 8, 1941, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor:

October 12, 1943, Yankees win another World Series:

June 7, 1944, after the D-Day invasion:

April 13, 1945, after FDR died:

May 2, 1945, after word reached America that Adolf Hitler had committed suicide on April 30, with the Soviet Union's Red Army closing in on Berlin:

May 8, 1945, Victory in Europe, or "V-E Day":

August 8, 1945, The Bomb:

August 15, 1945, the day after the announcement of the surrender in Japan, "V-J Day":

April 12, 1947, after the Brooklyn Dodgers promoted Jackie Robinson from their farm system -- there apparently wasn't a big front page headline on April 16, the day after his 1st actual major league game:

December 27, 1947, a snowfall that would reach 26 inches:

August 17, 1948:

November 4, 1948, unlike their corporate sister paper, the Chicago Tribune, the Daily News waited a day before declaring a definitive winner in the Presidential election:

October 10, 1949, Bronx over Brooklyn again:

Part 2 follows.