…The company was founded in 1939 as Timely Publications, based at his existing company in the McGraw-Hill Building at 330 West 42nd Street in New York City. In 1942, it moved to the 14th floor of the Empire State Building, where it remained until 1951.
...The Empire State Building also played a special role in Marvel’s real-life history. From 1942 to 1951, Timely Comics, the company now known as Marvel, was based on the building’s fourteenth floor.
Simon and Schuster, 2007
Timely Comics move from the McGraw-Hill Building to the Empire State Building happened later according to The New York Sun, July 14, 1943:
New Tenants ListedBelow are the article and part of the The New York Sun page with the date and page number.
H. Hamilton Weber, rental manager of Empire State, Inc., reports leases of large space on the eighteenth floor of the Empire State Building to Scott & Williams, Inc., machinery dealers. Other new tenants include Mayer & Alex Oliver, hosiery; Joseph M. Fried land, hosiery; Guilford Hosiery Mills, Inc.; Virginia Maid Hosiery Mills, Inc.; Walter J. McChesney, hosiery; Hatch Full-Fashioned Hosiery Company, Edward Roskind, hosiery; Mack Manufacturing Corporation; Talon, Inc.; National Economic Council, Inc.; Henry W. Sharkey, C. P A.; Noah Bass & Co., C. P. A., and to Timely Comics, Inc., publishers.
UPDATE 1
Manhattan, New York City, Telephone Directory
December 1942, New York Telephone Company
Page 997: Timely Comics Inc 330 W 42…….BR yant 9-5965
(McGraw-Hill address)
December 1942, New York Telephone CompanyPage 390: Goodman Martin pubr 330 W 42…….BR yant 9-5965
(McGraw-Hill address)
Summer–Fall 1943, New York Telephone Company
Page 1013: Timely Comics Inc 350 5 Av…….BR yant 9-5965
(Empire State Building address)
Manhattan, New York City, Telephone Directory
Summer–Fall 1943, New York Telephone CompanyPage 395: Goodman Martin pubr 350 5 Av…….BR yant 9-5965
(Empire State Building address)
UPDATE 2
In Alter Ego #11, November 2001, Vince Fago was interviewed by Jim Amash who asked, “How did you become the editor-in-chief? who hired you—Stan or Martin Goodman?” Fago answered
Stan hired me, because he got drafted. [Stan Lee enlisted in the Army on November 9, 1942.] He says, “How would you like to take my job?” I said I’d have to think about it….I started editing when Timely moved from the McGraw-Hill Building to the Empire State Building. I think that was in August of 1942. Christmas of ’42, I received a $300 bonus, so I was editor by that time. Stan never really worked as an editor in the Empire State Building until after the war. I was the editor when we moved.
Fago thought 1942 was the year that Timely moved but it was 1943.
UPDATE 3
Writer’s Digest, June 1943, page 42:
Martin Goodman’s magazines have left the crowded old offices in the McGraw-Hill Building at 330 West 42nd Street, and have moved in two different directions.The comics (Timely Comics, Inc.) now located in spacious new offices in the Empire State Building, 34th Street and Fifth Avenue. ...
Further Reading
(Updated June 21, 2023; next post on Monday: Timber Wolf)
