Rockefeller Center
 |
Lower Plaza at Rockefeller Center. |
|
Bird's eye view of Rockefeller Plaza, the heart of Rockefeller Center. |
Rockefeller Center is a complex of 19 commercial buildings between 48th and 51st Streets in
New York. It is located in the center of
Midtown Manhattan, spanning between
Fifth Avenue and
Sixth Avenue.
Today's Rockefeller Center is essentially a combination of two building complexes: the older
Art Deco office buildings from the 1930s and a set of four International-style towers built along the
Avenue of the Americas during the 1960s and 1970s. (The
Time-Life Building and the
News Corporation/
Fox News Channel headquarters are part of the "newer" Rockefeller Center buildings.)
Rockefeller Center was named after
John D. Rockefeller Jr. who leased the space from
Columbia University in
1928 and developed it between
1929 and
1940. Rockefeller initially planned to build an
opera house for the
Metropolitan Opera Company on the site but changed his mind after the stock market
crash of 1929, and withdrawal of the Met from the project. Construction of buildings in the Art Deco style began in
1931. Principal architect for the complex was
Raymond Hood, working with a team that included a young
Wallace Harrison.
The nation's largest indoor theater,
Radio City Music Hall, is located in the Rockefeller Center complex. One of the complex's first tenants was the
Radio Corporation of America, hence the original names "Radio City" and "Radio City Music Hall." It was the public relations pioneer,
Ivy Lee, the prominent advisor to the family, who first suggested the name "Rockefeller Center" for the complex, in 1931. Rockefeller Jr. didn't want his name associated with the commercial project, but was persuaded on the grounds that the name would attract far more tenants.
|
Gardens on the roofs of Rockefeller Plaza buildings. |
The centerpiece of Rockefeller Center is the 71-floor, 872-foot
GE Building (30 Rockefeller Plaza, formerly known as the RCA Building), centered behind the sunken plaza. It was renamed in the 1980s after
General Electric (GE) re-acquired
RCA, which it helped found in 1919. The skyscraper is the headquarters of
NBC and houses most of the network's New York studios, including the legendary Studio 8H, home of
Saturday Night Live. Unlike most other Art Deco towers built during the
1930s, the GE Building was constructed as a slab with a flat roof, where the Center's
observation deck,
Top of the Rock, is located. The
Rainbow Room restaurant is located on the 65th floor. The entire Rockefeller Center complex was purchased by a
Mitsubishi subsidiary in
1989. Ten years later,
Tishman Speyer Properties, L.P., purchased the original Art Deco buildings from Mitsubishi.
Among other public art in the complex,
Paul Manship's highly recognizable
gilded statue of
Prometheus recumbent, bringing fire to mankind, features prominently. It stands above a below-level plaza which is used as an
ice-skating rink during winter. The model who posed for the statue was Leon Nole. Sculptor
Lee Lawrie contributed a number of
friezes and the statue of
Atlas.
Mexican socialist artist
Diego Rivera had been commissioned to create a
mural for the center, but
Man at the Crossroads was removed soon after completion because it contained a portrait of
Lenin. At street level, the plaza has about 200 flagpoles. At varying intervals, the flags of
United Nations member countries, the flags of
United States states and
territories, or various decorative and seasonal flags are flown; during U.S. holidays, every flagpole carries the
Stars and Stripes.
Writer and former
New York Times ombudsman Daniel Okrent wrote
Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center in 2003.
The RCA building is the setting for the now famous photograph taken by Charles C. Ebbets in 1932 of workers lunching on a steel beam without harnesses. The 800 feet drop lies below.
*
General Electric/NBC - (Formerly
RCA) - 30 Rockefeller Plaza
*
News Corporation (
Celanese Building) - 1211 Avenue of the Americas
*
McGraw-Hill Companies (
McGraw-Hill Building) - 1221 Avenue of the Americas
*
Time & Life -
Time & Life Building - 1251 Avenue of the Americas
*
AOL Time Warner (Formerly
Esso) - 75 Rockefeller Plaza
*
Simon & Schuster (Formerly U.S. Rubber) - 1230 Sixth Avenue
*
Associated Press - 50 Rockefeller Plaza
*
Radio City Music Hall (RCA venture) - 1260 Sixth Avenue
*
The Americas Building (Formerly
RKO) - 1270 Sixth Avenue
*
Holland House (Formerly
Eastern Airlines) - 10 Rockefeller Plaza
*
La Maison Française - 610 Fifth Avenue
*
British Building - 620 Fifth Avenue
*
Palazzo d'Italia - 626 Fifth Avenue
*
International Building - 630 Fifth Avenue
*Balfour, Alan.
Rockefeller Center: Architecture as Theater, New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1978.
*Deal, Martha. "Who Posed for the Statue of Prometheus" (Ray Van Cleef and Leon Nole). Iron Game History. Volume 6, Issue 4, Pages 34-35.
*Karp, Walter.
The Center: A History and Guide to Rockefeller Center, New York: American Heritage Publishing Company, Inc., 1982.
*Krinsky, Carol Herselle.
Rockefeller Center, New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.
*Loth, David G.
The City Within a City: The Romance of Rockefeller Center, New York: Morrow, 1966.
* Okrent, Daniel.
Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center, New York: Viking Press, 2003.
*
John D. Rockefeller Jr*
David Rockefeller*
Tishman Speyer Properties*
Nelson Rockefeller*
Rockefeller Family Office (
Room 5600, 56th Floor, GE Building)
*
GE Building*
Diego Rivera*
Buildings and architecture of New York City*
Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree*
Tallest buildings in New York CityImage:PrometheusNYC.jpg|Prometheus at Rockefeller CenterImage:Rockefeller Center (2006).JPG|Lower Plaza of Rockefeller Center in March 2006.Image:GE Building at night.jpg|The GE Building at nightImage:Rockefeller_Center_Prometheus.jpg|4th of July (U.S. flags).Image:TopOfTheRockViewNorth.jpg|View north from 30 Rock's Top of the Rock.Image:NYC_Top_of_the_Rock_Pano.jpg|Looking south from Top of the Rock.Image:Atlas_Rockefeller_Center.jpg|Atlas Statue at Rockefeller Center.*
History of Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree*
Guide to Rockefeller Center*
Rockefeller Center Webcam*
Rockefeller Center homepage*
The World Famous Ice Skating Rink*
Rockefeller Center Winter Photo Gallery*
Virtual Tour of Rockefeller Center*
Photographs of views from the new Top Of The Rock
