and Francis Shubael Smith began their publishing partnership in 1855 when they took over a broken-down fiction magazine. They then bought the existing New York Weekly Dispatch in 1858. Francis Smith was the company president from 1855 until his 1887 retirement; his son Ormond Gerald Smith taking over his role. Francis Street died in 1883. Francis Smith died on February 1, 1887. The company, which owned a six-story building at 79 Seventh Avenue, became a publisher of inexpensive novels and weekly magazines starting in the 1880s and continuing into 1959. In the early decades of the 20th century, Ormond V. Gould was the company secretary. Ormond Smith remained company president until his death in 1933. In 1933, Street & Smith bought titles from Clayton Magazines, including Astounding Stories. In 1934 they put out 35 different magazines, looked after by about a dozen editors, including John Nanovic, Frank Blackwell, Daisy Bacon and F. Orlin Tremaine. The company paid one cent a word, which was standard base rate among the major publishing groups, though fringe publishers paid less. In 1937, Street & Smith discontinued a number of their pulp titles, including Top-Notch and Complete Stories, the start of a long-term shrinking of their pulp line. In 1938, Allen L. Grammer became president. He had spent more than twenty years as an ergonomics expert for Curtis Publishing Company, and made a small fortune inventing a new printing process. He moved the offices into a skyscraper. Street & Smith published comic books from 1940–1949, their most notable titles being The Shadow, from their pulp magazine line, Super-Magician Comics, Supersnipe Comics, True Sport Picture Stories, Bill Barnes/Air Ace and Doc Savage Comics, also from pulp magazine line.
Demise
Street & Smith stopped publishing all their pulps and comics in 1949, selling off several of their titles to Popular Publications. Sales had declined with the advent of television. Street & Smith continued to publish Astounding Science Fiction well into the late 1950s. Condé Nast Publications, a subsidiary of the Newhouse family's Advance Publications, bought the company for more than $3.5 million in 1959. The company's name continued to be used on the sports pre-season preview magazines until 2007 when Advance division American City Business Journals acquired the Sporting News, originally The Sporting News, and merged Street & Smith's annuals into TSNs annuals. However, in 2017, American City Business Journals revived the Street & Smith name for its sports annuals. The Street & Smith name survives as the named publisher of Sports Business Journal, a Condé Nast periodical.
