Henry J. Raymond Office in Times Building, Park Row

Raymond's private office in the Times Building at 41 Park Row, the inner sanctuary known as the Sanctum Santorum, occupied the northwest angle of the building in the fourth floor, with views of Printing House Square and City Hall Park. Illustration engraved by Richardson N.Y., published in 1870 in the Henry J. Raymond and the New York Press... by Augustus Maverick.

Henry Jarvis Raymond was the soul of the New York Times in its first two decades. He was born on January 24, 1820, on the family farm near Lima, New York, and began his life as a poor boy, with no advantages of fortune or position. Raymond became a journalist, publisher and politician who co-founded both the Republican Party and The New York Times.

After graduating from the University of Vermont, in 1840, Raymond began his career as an assistant on the New Yorker for Horace Greeley, a weekly journal predecessor of the New York Tribune. Later, Raymond gained further experience in editing James Watson Webb's Courier and Enquirer. He and other seven investors founded The New York Times in 1851. The first headquarters was a 6-story building at 113 Nassau Street.

In 1849, Raymond was elected to the New York State Assembly. He was elected speaker of the Assembly in 1851, lieutenant-governor of New York in 1854, and member of Congress in 1864. His books included works about Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War.

Raymond married Juliette Weaver (1822-1914) in 1843 and they were the parents of seven children. Raymond died in New York City, on June 18, 1869, from a heart attack.

Horace Greeley (Recollections of a Busy Life, 1869) wrote about Raymond: «I had not much for him to do till the Tribune was started ; then I had enough ; and I never found another person, barely of age and just from his studies, who evinced so much and so versatile ability in journalism as he did. Abler and stronger men I may have met ; a cleverer, readier, more generally efficient journalist I never saw. He remained with me eight years, if my memory serves, and is the only assistant with whom I ever felt required to remonstrate for doing more work than any human brain and frame could be expected long to endure. His salary was of course gradually increased from time to time ; but his services were more valuable in proportion to their cost than those of any one else who ever worked on the Tribune.»