Mail and Express

New York Evening Mail

The Mail and Express building (1892-1920, center)
Type	Daily newspaper
Owner(s)	Charles H. Sweetser
Publisher	Evening Mail Association (1869–1870)
Editor	Charles H. Sweetser
Founded	1867
Headquarters	New York City, NY, U.S.

The New York Evening Mail (1867-1924) was an American daily newspaper published in New York City. For a time the paper was the only evening newspaper to have a franchise in the Associated Press.

The paper was founded as the New York Evening Mail in 1867 and published under that name through 1877. It then went through some minor name changes, becoming the New York Mail for about a year (November 1877-November 1878), and then The Mail (through late 1879). It then became the Evening Mail from 1879 through December 1881, when owner Cyrus West Field acquired the New York Evening Express (which had been founded by James and Erastus Brooks as a Whig paper in June 1836), and created The Mail and Express. It retained the Mail and Express moniker until 1904, when it eventually became the Evening Mail once again.

In January 1924, the paper was merged with the Evening Telegram upon being acquired by Frank Munsey from Henry L. Stoddard. This later became the New York World-Telegram in 1931.

On March 20, 1888, Elliott Fitch Shepard purchased the Mail and Express (with an estimated value of $200,000 ($5.33 million in 2016) from Cyrus West Field for $425,000 ($11.3 million in 2016). Deeply religious, Shepard placed a verse from the Bible at the head of each edition's editorial page. As president of the newspaper company until his death, he approved every important decision or policy. Shepard's brother Augustus D. Shepard, who was the vice president, became acting president of the Mail and Express Company on his brother's death.

In 1892, the newspaper's owner Elliott Fitch Shepard ordered a new headquarters built. Shepard owned the company from 1888 until his death in 1893. The building was on Broadway, between Fulton and Dey Streets. It was 66 by 25 by 211 feet, ten stories, and was built by Carrère & Hastings (architects of the New York Public Library). The building's dimensions were challenging based on the land purchased, and thus the Buffalo Morning Express wrote that it "looks for all the world like an upright lead pencil". The ground floor featured caryatids representing the newspaper's reach across all "four corners of the world". The building became an architectural landmark, such that after a fire in 1900, the Troy Daily Times wrote that it was "such an ornament to Broadway that its destruction would be a calamity". It was demolished in 1920, following AT&T's plans to expand its building at 195 Broadway to take over nearly the entire block.