25 Facts About Adolph Ochs

Adolph Simon Ochs was an American newspaper publisher and former owner of The New York Times and The Chattanooga Times, which is the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

Adolph Ochs was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on March 12,1858, to Julius Adolph Ochs and Bertha Levy, both German Jewish immigrants.

Adolph Ochs's father had left Bavaria for the United States in 1846.

Adolph Ochs sympathized with the Confederacy during the American Civil War, but the conflicting sympathies between husband and wife did not separate their household.

At age 11, Adolph Ochs went to work at the Knoxville Chronicle as an office assistant to the newspaper's editor, William Rule, who became a mentor.

In 1871, Adolph Ochs worked as a grocer's clerk in Providence, Rhode Island, while attending night school.

Adolph Ochs returned to Knoxville, where he was an apprentice to a pharmacist for some time.

In 1872, Adolph Ochs returned to the Chronicle as a printer's devil, who looked after various details in the composing room of the newspaper.

Adolph Ochs's siblings worked at the newspaper to supplement the income of their father, a lay religious leader for Knoxville's small Jewish community.

The Chronicle was the only Republican, pro-Reconstruction, newspaper in the city, but Adolph Ochs counted Father Ryan, the Poet-Priest of the Confederacy, among his customers.

At the age of 19, Adolph Ochs borrowed $250 from his family to purchase a controlling interest in the Chattanooga Times, becoming its publisher.

Adolph Ochs was one of the founders of the Southern Associated Press and served as president.

In 1904, Adolph Ochs hired Carr Van Anda as his managing editor.

Adolph Ochs added the Times well-known masthead motto: "All the News That's Fit to Print".

In 1904, Adolph Ochs moved The New York Times to a newly built building on Longacre Square in Manhattan, which the City of New York then renamed as Times Square.

On New Year's Eve 1904, Adolph Ochs had pyrotechnists illuminate his new building at One Times Square with a fireworks show from street level.

In 1901, Adolph Ochs became proprietor and editor of the Philadelphia Times, which was later merged into the Philadelphia Public Ledger.

Adolph Ochs was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1931.

In 1884, Adolph Ochs married Effie Wise, a daughter of Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise of Cincinnati, who was the leading exponent of Reform Judaism in the United States, and the founder of Hebrew Union College.

In 1928, Adolph Ochs built the Mizpah Congregation Temple in Chattanooga, Tennessee in memory of his parents, Julius and Bertha Adolph Ochs.

Adolph Ochs was active in the early years of the Anti-Defamation League, where he served as an executive board member, and used his influence as publisher of The New York Times to convince other newspapers nationwide to cease the unjustified caricaturing and lampooning of Jews in the American media.

Adolph Ochs was an opponent of a Jewish state in Palestine.

Adolph Ochs died on April 8,1935, during a visit to Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Adolph Ochs is buried at the Temple Israel Cemetery in Hastings-on-Hudson in Westchester County, New York.

Adolph Ochs was inducted into the Junior Achievement US Business Hall of Fame in 1982.