The boxes are packed. Worn-out chairs and empty cubicles have been abandoned. The precious files of old clippings from the morgue have moved to the downtown library. The slick corporate conference rooms and offices are empty. And a maze of rooms where employees once sold ads, laid out type and did the countless other tasks it took to publish a daily newspaper are now silent.

Staffers at the Times-Union have left 1 Riverside Ave., almost 52 years to the day after the building — dubbed then as an "ultra-modern new riverfront complex"— was dedicated, with great fanfare, on April 15, 1967.

You'll find us now at the Wells Fargo Center, that iconic downtown skyscraper that's in all the skyline shots, just up the escalators on the second floor, overlooking the atrium.

Leaving 1 Riverside (is that a great address, or what?), there is some nostalgia, some sentimental tug to a place where so many people, thousands of them, spent so much of their working lives. But frankly, the old buildings are not what they used to be.

They've emptied out over the years, as most newspaper buildings have, and they've gotten run-down too, so there's little sadness at getting out — and a great bit of anticipation about the new digs.

The new place is smaller, as befitting the smaller staff, and it's in the heart of downtown, in a good building, surrounded by signs of life. It's far better, most reckon, than moving to some suburban warehouse, as has happened to some newspaper staffs in similar situations.

"I think it'll be good over there," said Dianne Knapp. "We'll all fit exactly, instead of just being in this big empty building."

Knapp, advertising operations coordinator, is a newspaper person. She came to the paper full time in 1985, though she'd already been delivering papers for 10 years before that. She even kept up a delivery route until seven years ago.

She remembers how the vast riverfront parking lot at 1 Riverside used to be so full you sometimes had to hunt for a spot, hoping someone would leave and make one open.

These days? Everyone knows about the decline in newspaper revenues and jobs around the country. Take your pick of any parking space you want.

"There are so many people I know who have come and gone," she said.

The newspaper's move has been expected since at least 2017, when GateHouse Media bought the Times-Union from the Morris family of Augusta, Ga. The Morrises kept the newspaper property, a prime spot where redevelopment is anticipated, right across from the growing Brooklyn area.

That meant there would no longer be room at 1 Riverside for either presses nor newspaper employees. The giant presses were shut down in February 2018, dismantled and moved out, with Jacksonville's printing now done by GateHouse papers in Gainesville and Daytona Beach. Such arrangements are pretty common among newspapers these days.

Whatever happens at 1 Riverside will likely mean the destruction of the T-U's administration building, which to some preservationists is a shame. You can see their point.

Even in old age, it retains enough mid-century modern "Mad Men" swagger to make fans of such things swoon, starting with those white exterior panels contrasting with the dark windows. With that big "Times-Union" logo on it, the building has been a nice feature on the city skyline for decades. For sentimental newspaper people anyway.

The production building that squats behind it was built to be far less swoon-worthy. Home of the newsroom, among other departments, it's a concrete bunker where windows, until a renovation about 15 years ago, were seen as a luxury, or perhaps a distraction.

With age, the building is now pretty crummy, noted reporter Steve Patterson, who's spent long hours in the newsroom since 1987. His desk — long invisible under a growing mountain of documents, several feet high, that threatened to topple at any minute — became a tourist stop on the once-regular tours that local schoolchildren took of the building. Occasional visiting international journalists would also come by to gawk.

Starting a new mountain of papers on a new desk isn't a bad prospect. Still, you can get attached to a building, even one that's seen far better days.

"I'm OK with leaving this place," Patterson said. "But doing that is an emotionally complicated thing."

After all, thousands upon thousands of stories were written there, on hurricanes and murders and politicians, on heroes and villains and countless regular people who'd done something deemed newsworthy. Recipes were printed there, movies were reviewed, restaurants got write-ups that left them either packed with crowds or just plain doomed. High-school athletes shared space with Jaguars stars and pro golfers, with both Gators and Bulldogs.

Extra editions were rushed into print on occasions both celebratory ("WE DID IT!," with the arrival of the Jaguars) and horrific ("TERROR," on Sept. 11, 2001).

Photos were processed there — first in darkrooms, then digitally — that showed crashes and shooting scenes, victory celebrations and concerts, cute kids and odd zoo animals, parades and funeral processions.

That saying about newspapers being the first rough draft of history? That's about right.

Still, 1 Riverside was far from being all about the newsroom. Newspapers are labor-intensive things, 365 days a year, and many people worked to make sure that the stories were composed and printed there, that ads were sold, that obituaries were taken in. Budgets were made there, accounts were settled, office equipment and computers were maintained, floors were vacuumed and leaks were mopped up after heavy rains.

For many in Jacksonville it was considered good work, said Darryl Swearingen, who retired as production manager over the composing and ad service rooms after 44 years at the paper.

"They had over 1,000 employees at one time, a lot of people in different departments," he said. "Most of the people who worked there had been there for years. It was in their blood. It was the thing they’d done since they came out of high school.”

Swearingen is a Jacksonville native, who was born in a hurry, in an ambulance heading to St. Vincent's, and he came into the world on Riverside Avenue. Right about 1 Riverside, in fact.

He said he never really thought, after making the move to the new building in 1967, that it would one day come to an end. But he looks at it this way: “Everything is not going to be the same all the time."

Reporter Sandy Strickland, a Jacksonville native, started at the Jacksonville Journal in the last month of 1969. Before that though, like countless citizens, she was featured in the newspaper pages for a noteworthy achievement. Her moment of distinction came after winning a Good Citizenship award while in fourth grade. In the write-up about her, the story noted: "Sandra wants to be a reporter one day."

She's said she is looking forward to the move. Still, on Thursday, her last day at 1 Riverside, she stood up from her desk and looked around the newsroom, now largely empty, packed-away. She thought of all the people she'd worked with there, then she thought this: I'll never set foot in this building again.

She didn't think she would get emotional. It hadn't really hit her yet. "Then I started crying," she said. "That was the first time I got teary-eyed. Then I started sobbing."

Matt Soergel: (904) 359-4082