They’ve stood sentry on city street corners, at bus depots and other gathering places for more than a century. Headlines inside their windows are meant to entice you to open the box, grab today’s paper and be on your way.

That’s how it was for decades, but newspaper racks are rapidly disappearing. As more and more people turn to the internet for their news, newspapers have seen a decline in print sales. This has led to a decrease in the demand for newspaper racks, as fewer people are looking for a physical copy of the paper.

The pandemic has also taken its toll. Some people still have not returned to the office after three years. People who work from home don’t walk past that street corner or into their local newsstand. Lengthy absence has taken its toll on America’s newspapers, as well as those where living depends on the sales of street copies of the paper.

Sometimes, though, they simply disappear.
We once had a fleet of these blue boxes. The early ones were all refurbished and dispersed throughout the region. With fresh blue paint, they were placed at Metro North Stations in Beacon, Town of Wallkill and Salisbury Mills. Over a period of time, they simply disappeared. Today they are no longer permitted on MTA property.

Two of the news racks were brand new, made-in-the-good-ole-USA boxes that arrived from Texas in spotless condition with TIMES in white letters on either side. They weren’t meant to last in such pristine condition.

One was located outside the McDonald’s on Broadway in Newburgh, next to one dispensing copies of the Times-Herald Record. One day our delivery person was surprised to find both boxes missing. He was told by the McDonald’s manager that both had been loaded onto the back or a truck and hauled away, along with six or seven others. That was probably the last time anyone has seen a Times Herald Record news rack.
A call placed to the publisher of the Middletown Daily paper offered no insights. He said he did not know the whereabouts of our box.

Another of the new boxes made its way to the Cup and Saucer Diner in Pine Bush. (That’s “saucer” as in flying saucer, not a resting place for the morning cup of joe.) It was intended to provide reading material to the morning patrons who gathered to ponder the strange lights in the overhead skies the night before.

Eventually the rack found a higher calling. Our abductors brought it to mid Broadway in Newburgh. There it was positioned next to a bus shelter, across from the intersection of Broadway and Fullerton.

And there it learned to multi-task: it became a news rack, a canvas for graffiti artists, and a billboard for all sorts of advertising stickers. Mostly, though, it became a garbage can, filled with empty coffee cups, soda bottles and candy wrappers. On occasion, containers and remnants of fast food from the New No.1 Express Chinese Restaurant across the street would also make its way inside. Twice it was knocked over and buried under piles of snow by city plows.

After shoveling it out a second time, we decided it needed a better home. So we brought it in, donned a pair of thick rubber gloves to clean it out and scrub the insides and then apply a fresh coat of paint. When it was good as new, we brought it to the gentrified neighborhood of Liberty Street, across from the upscale Bistro. Sadly, neither would last.

The Bistro closed its doors in November. The news rack disappeared from the corner in front of Washington’s Headquarters more than a week ago. It will not be replaced.

It may one day turn up at a scrap metal wholesaler or perhaps be donated to some Little Outdoor Library. Perhaps it will be repainted a bright pastel color and advertised on Etsy, where refurbished news racks can command up to $500 or more.

Perhaps then, it will have earned some respect.