With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

The Time to Retrieve Time’s Time Capsule Is at Hand

Moving day was on the calendar back in 2015, and in the executive suite in the Time & Life Building, someone said: “Oh, there’s a time capsule. We have to figure out at some point what to do with it.”

Greg Giangrande’s response was more than the “what do you mean there’s a time capsule?” reaction of an executive vice president who had spent only three short years with Time Inc., a company with a long and fabled history in the magazine world. “I said: ‘What’s to figure out? It’s coming. If I have to take a sledgehammer at midnight one night and kidnap it, it’s coming,’” Mr. Giangrande, now the company’s executive vice president, recalled last week.

Time’s time capsule will finally be exhumed from the building, at 1271 Avenue of the Americas, on Monday, and Mr. Giangrande’s command will be fulfilled: The time capsule will be taken downtown to the company’s new headquarters at 225 Liberty Street, in the World Financial Center complex. It will not be hidden behind a cornerstone weighing hundreds of pounds, as it was at the Time & Life Building. It will be put on display outside an auditorium named for one of the company’s hard-driving founders, Henry R. Luce. It is supposed to be opened when Time Inc. turns 100 in 2023.

Read entire article at NYT