Pulp History

Pulp places

Street & Smith Publications’ six-story offices in New York City.
Street & Smith Publications’ six-story offices in New York City.

For nearly 60 years, publishing houses scattered throughout New York City, Chicago and other cities churned out pulp mgazines.

Their names are remembered — Street & Smith, Popular Publications, Standard Magazines and others — but their office locations have been all but forgotten by most pulp fans.

For fun, we’ve pulled together addresses for many publishers and linked them to Google Maps, which also often lets you view the site in a satellite photo, or MapQuest. In addition to publishers, we also have included a few other addresses related to the fictioneers who edited, wrote or illustrated the pulps. We’re limiting this to actual places, rather than locales depicted in pulp stories, such as Doc Savage’s Empire State Building headquarters.

Of course, if you know of a “pulp place” that we should add to this list, please drop us an e-mail (please include the address of the pulp place) and we’ll cheerfully add it. Photos of those places also would be welcomed.

Now, let’s start our journey to these “pulp places”:

Publishers

Some publishers may have multiple addresses, which reflect moves over the years, or the same address as another publisher because of a business affiliation.

American Fiction Group
330 W. 42nd St., New York
Best Books Inc. (1950s’ Ranch Romances publisher)
10 E. 40th St., New York
Better Publications Inc.
10 E. 40th St., New York
Culture Publications
480 Lexington Ave., New York
125 E. 46th St., New York
Dell Publishing Co. Inc.
149 Madison Ave., New York
Double Action Group
60 Hudson St., New York
Experimenter Pub. Co. (Amazing Stories)
230 Fifth Ave., New York
Fiction House Inc.
271 Madison Ave., New York
Frank A. Munsey Co.
280 Broadway, New York
Macfadden Publications Inc.
205 E. 42nd St., New York
Magazine Publishers
67 W. 44th St., New York
McCall Corp.
230 Park Ave., New York
Newsstand Fiction Unit
9 Rockefeller Plaza, New York
Phil Painter Publications (Breezy Stories)
30 E. 22nd St., New York
Popular Publications
220 W. 42nd. St., New York
205 E. 42nd St., New York
Ranger Publications Inc. (Black Book Detective Magazine)
4600 Diversey Ave., Chicago, IL
Ridgway Co. Publishers (Adventure)
Spring and MacDougal Streets, New York
Short Stories
9 Rockefeller Plaza, New York
Standard Magazines
28 W. 48th St., New York
144 W. 48th St., New York
10 E. 40th St., New York
Street & Smith Publications Inc.
79 Seventh Ave., New York
Teck Publications Inc.
461 Eighth Ave., New York
10 Story Book Corp.
529 S. Clark St., Chicago
Trojan Publishing Corp.
480 Lexington Ave., New York
Warner Publications Inc.
515 Madison Ave., New York
Weird Tales
840 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago
Ziff-Davis Publishing Co.
608 S. Dearborn St., Chicago
540 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago
185 N. Wabash Ave., Chicago

Fictioneers

Edgar Rice Burroughs (creator of Tarzan), home
18354 Ventura Blvd. Tarzana, Calif.
Lester Dent (author of Doc Savage), home
225 N Church St., La Plata, Mo.
Dashiell Hammett
620 Eddy St., San Francisco, Calif.
Robert E. Howard (creator of Conan the Barbarian), home
625 W. Highway 36, Cross Plains, Texas

Sources: Ayer & Sons Directory of Newspapers and Periodicals; The Pulp Jungle, by Frank Gruber; Book of the Dead, by E. Hoffman Price; Pulp Fictioneers, by John Locke; various pulp magazines; and Web sources.

Pulp events

Events are subject to change.

March 24, 2024: The Paperback & Pulp Fair at Bloomsbury Ephemera Fair, London, U.K.

April 5-7, 2024: Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention, Lombard, Ill.

June 1, 2024: Fantastic Pulps Show & Sale, Toronto, ON, Canada.

June 7-8, 2024: Howard Days, Cross Plains, Texas

Aug. 1-4, 2024: PulpFest 2024, Pittsburgh, Pa.

On–going:
• Gotham Pulp Collectors Club, 1 p.m. the third Saturday of each month via Zoom. Check its website for location.