The first home of the Danville Bee And Register Newspaper, or “Old Bee,” stood at 117 South Union. Built around 1899, this three-story building housed a basement printing press, ground-floor offices, and a second-story office. Following a fire at the adjacent Masonic Temple in 1920, the Register and Bee relocated, leaving the “Old Bee” to various commercial endeavors, from furniture stores to grocery stores. In 1939, the building was extensively renovated and transformed into a stand-alone movie theater, “The Dan,” with a streamlined modern façade. This modern front completely replaced the “Old Bee’s” original brickwork and remains today.
Across from South Union Street Park stood the grand “New Bee” building at 123 South Union. Constructed in 1921 as the James A. Rorer Memorial Building, the “New Bee” was the second home of the Danville Bee and Register Newspaper. Its distinctive design marked the newspaper’s golden age, spanning from the 1920s to the 1990s.
The Register and Bee remained in the Rorer family throughout the 20th century. Its first head was Rorer Abraham James (1859-1921), a journalist, lawyer, and politician who served in the Virginia House of Delegates and Senate, as well as a Democratic U.S. Congressman. Following James’ death in 1921, his son, Rorer Abraham James Jr. (1897–1937), took over the family business. James Jr. died suddenly in 1937, leaving the paper to his daughter, Elizabeth, who was just 17 years old. By age 21, Elizabeth Stuart James Grant (1920-1990) became president of the business but left day-to-day management to her husband, Walter L. Grant (1920–1972), who served as the paper’s publisher from 1945. Mrs. Grant was an active figure in Danville’s preservation movement and instrumental in preserving the birthplace of Lady Nancy Witcher Langhorne Astor, the first Danville native to become a female member of the British House of Commons.
Following a family dispute in the 1970s, Mrs. Grant made the decision to move the newspaper from the “New Bee” on South Union and construct new office and production facilities at 700 Monument Street, the newspaper’s current location. The “New Bee” building on South Union subsequently sat vacant for more than forty years.
By 2020, “The Bee”—a new boutique hotel in Danville—was reconstructed on the foundations of both the 1921 newspaper building and its 1899 predecessor. The hotel features 47 suite-style rooms, some with full apartment amenities, and a stunning rooftop terrace atop the “New Bee.” Many of the buildings’ historic details have been retained and restored, including the original hardwood floors in the “Old Bee’s” lobby, the spiral staircase connecting the printing press room to the third-floor editorial offices in the “New Bee,” the “Rorer A. James” inscription on the façade, and the intricate polychrome terracotta designs on the front porch ceiling and two front display cases. Above the “New Bee’s” South Union Street lobby entrance, the original newsboy statue greets new visitors to the building that once symbolized Danville’s progress.
A 1963 photograph of the “New Bee,” situated across from the Municipal Building, shows that the Register and Bee witnessed the Danville Civil Rights protests that culminated in the summer of 1963. On June 10, white police officers and deputized city workers violently attacked peaceful protestors outside the Municipal Building and the Register and Bee building. Forty-seven people were injured that day, a day referred to as “Bloody Monday.”
