Awards of Excellence:

Fort Scott Tribune – Monitor Building

The Tribune-Monitor Building is a contributing property located in the National Register Fort Scott Downtown Historic District, which is in the central business district of Fort Scott, Kansas and the county seat of Bourbon County. The District comprises nine and one-half blocks incorporating approximately eighty-eight buildings with fifty-eight of those being contributing historic structures.

On March 31, 1917, the property that the Tribune-Monitor building would be located on was sold to George Watson Marble. A native to Fort Scott, Marble was born on October 9, 1871. In 1885, at the age of 15, Marble began working at the Fort Scott Tribune sweeping floors and cleaning the presses. He then advanced to a “printer’s devil” and served as an apprentice at the newspaper. In 1891, Marble was noted as attending business college in Chicago. In the 1896 Fort Scott City Directory, Marble is listed as “City Editor” of the Fort Scott Tribune and it is at that time he acquired a small-interested in Ownership of the business with George W. Martin. In 1902, Marble purchased full ownership of the Fort Scott Tribune and became publisher and president of the company. In 1925, the Tribune-Monitor Building was erected.

The new construction was fabricated specifically to house the Tribune-Monitor publication and distribution equipment and offices for the running of the newspaper. The Tribune-Monitor had presses in the basement of the eastern part of the building with business offices on the first floor and news-writing and layout areas, conference room, and executive offices on the second floor. The building has been under-utilized and partially vacant for more than five years.