Biography|Stephen J. Adler — Legal Editor at the World Financial Center

In 1988 Stephen J. Adler joined The Wall Street Journal as legal editor.

Dow Jones had just moved the paper into the new World Financial Center. One World Financial Center, now 200 Liberty Street, opened in 1986. Cesar Pelli designed the forty-storey tower with the truncated-pyramid roof.

That is the pin: the public office tower where the Journal sat when Adler arrived, not a private newsroom floor.

He stayed sixteen years. McGraw-Hill's 6 December 2004 appointment release listed the sequence: legal editor in 1988, special-projects editor on the page-one staff in September 1994, deputy page-one editor in January 1997, deputy managing editor in 1999.

As investigative editor he managed reporting teams that won three Pulitzer Prizes between 1995 and 1999. Thomson Reuters later repeated that count on his executive biography.

As deputy managing editor he also oversaw The Wall Street Journal Online and the paper's book imprint, and co-taught the ethics course required of Dow Jones news staff.

The Journal later left this complex for 1211 Avenue of the Americas. In 1988 the address that mattered was here, two years into Pelli's tower, across West Street from the old World Trade Center site.

The building took heavy damage on 11 September 2001 and reopened after repairs. Adler was still on the Journal's masthead then.

Photo: Don Ramey Logan, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.