Please forgive a bit of self-indulgence this week as the Past Times spotlight turns on the Telegraph & Argus itself, specifically on the glass press hall which 25 years ago this summer began to reflect the city-scape by day while illuminating it by night.

It was a very up-to-date new use for an historic piece of land which Bradford & District Newspapers initially obtained on a 99-year lease. However, the repeal of the Community Land Act in the late 1970s meant that the company was able to buy the plot freehold. With it came the title deeds.

These revealed that the land came into the possession of the Booth family of Bradford in 1731 when the Rev Charles Booth married Sarah Fields, who had inherited the land from her father, William Field.

At that time trout were being caught in the nearby beck. The city centre was full of meadows and trees galore. And the land in what was known as Hall Ings was soft and marshy.

The plot eventually passed to Charles Swaine Booth Sharp, and on his death in 1826 the tenant for life became the Rev Godfrey Wright who in 1833 agreed to sell it (quite how the legalities of that were overcome isn't clear) to the Committee of the Magistrates for the West Riding at 10s. 9d (about 54p) per square yard.

They wanted it to build a court house and prison on the site. The building went ahead quickly. By 1834 it was up and running.

Three years later it was the scene of serious rioting when a large crowd gathered to protest against the hated Poor Law while the Union Guardians held their first meeting there. The mob pelted the building and the magistrates with stones, and soldiers had to be called to clear them off.

The County Council sold the land, including the West Riding Court House, to Bradford City Council for £25,000 in 1957. The building was found to be riddled with dry rot and a year later it had to be demolished.

For 20 years the plot stood unused except as a car park. And then Bradford & District Newspapers, publishers of the Telegraph & Argus, took the land into a new era with a bold new use.

More than half a century earlier, in 1925, the newspaper had moved into the adjacent building which, when it was constructed in 1853 as a wool warehouse for Milligan, Forbes & Co, had been described as "the most imposing commercial building yet erected within the precincts of Bradford", built in a "neo-Mannerist palazzo" style.

The building needed to be more-or-less gutted before the staff could move in and the printing press was installed in the basement. All went well until 1950 when it was discovered that the building was shifting, probably due to a combination of the vibration of the press and the softness of the ground.

Doors were jamming. Locks didn't engage properly. Cracks started to appear in some ceilings and floors.

Architects surveying the building found that beams were up to five inches out in a distance of ten feet. Walls were startling out of plumb up to 13 inches in a height of 50 feet.

The warning was issued that "in an unknown time a collapse may occur or a condition may arise which will necessitate immediate and total evacuation."

A massive project of stabilisation work took place while the paper continued to print every day. Iron supports were inserted, pile-driven into the ground below the building. Ceilings were torn out. Every wooden beam or joist in the place had steel channels inserted on each side of it. Then the walls were rebuilt, the lighting and sprinklers reinstated and the ceilings restored.

Such a good job was done that when a further survey was carried out in 1976 there had been no further movement.

That survey was done at a time when the company, aware that it needed new presses to meet technological changes and the public's growing expectations of colour in their local newspaper, was toying with the idea of selling up in Hall Ings and moving to a purpose-built site in Canal Road. Instead, though, it decided to stay put and expand sideways, on to the car park where the Court House had once stood.

The land was acquired. And then came the big decision. What architectural style could match or complement an ornate Victorian edifice designed in the style of a Florentine palace of the 16th century?

In the end it was decided to go for something completely different not in stone, brick or concrete, which it was felt would jar with the style of the old building, but in super-strength glass.

Excavation work began in August, 1979. The following June, with Hall Ings traffic halted for a day, a giant crane hoisted the roof sections into place. And the following summer, 25 years ago, the building was officially opened by the Duchess of Gloucester who pressed the button which started the afternoon run of the T&A on magnificent new presses in their new see-through home.