Description
Rockefeller Center is a complex of Art Deco skyscrapers in Midtown Manhattan, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues and 48th and 51st Streets: 19 buildings on 22 acres, with a sunken plaza, an ice rink, a theater, an observation deck and art almost everywhere you look.
The heart is the sunken plaza, where Prometheus, a gilded bronze by Paul Manship, looks over the ice rink. In winter the famous Christmas tree rises above it. Leading to it from Fifth Avenue are the Channel Gardens, a path between flower beds.
Facing St. Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, Atlas by Lee Lawrie holds up the heavens. Radio City Music Hall, opened in 1932, is a 6,000-seat theater. And Top of the Rock, the observation deck at the top of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, looks straight at the Empire State Building.
It was supposed to grow around an opera house. In 1928 John D. Rockefeller Jr. leased the land from Columbia University to give the Metropolitan Opera a new home. Then came the 1929 crash, and the opera pulled out.
Rockefeller was left with a lease of 87 years and nobody to fill it. So he turned to the new medium of the day: radio. RCA and its companies, NBC and RKO, agreed to move in. The first scandal broke before the doors even opened.
For the lobby of the RCA Building, his son Nelson commissioned a fresco from Diego Rivera. In it appeared a clear portrait of Lenin. Nelson asked for an anonymous face instead; Rivera refused, offering to add Lincoln as a balance.
The painter was paid in full, the mural was covered with paper and, nine months later, destroyed. In its place the Catalan Josep Maria Sert painted American Progress, with Lincoln, Gandhi and Emerson among the builders of modern America.
Between 40,000 and 60,000 people worked on the complex in the depths of the Depression. In 1936 some shops on the sunken plaza failed, and an ice rink took their place, as a "temporary" measure.
Don't miss
• Prometheus and the rink.
• Atlas on Fifth Avenue.
• Radio City Music Hall.
• Top of the Rock.
Did you know?
• In 1801 the site held the country's first public botanical garden, opened by the physician David Hosack.
• At first Rockefeller did not want his family name on a commercial project: his publicity adviser, Ivy Lee, convinced him that it would attract tenants.
The heart is the sunken plaza, where Prometheus, a gilded bronze by Paul Manship, looks over the ice rink. In winter the famous Christmas tree rises above it. Leading to it from Fifth Avenue are the Channel Gardens, a path between flower beds.
Facing St. Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, Atlas by Lee Lawrie holds up the heavens. Radio City Music Hall, opened in 1932, is a 6,000-seat theater. And Top of the Rock, the observation deck at the top of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, looks straight at the Empire State Building.
It was supposed to grow around an opera house. In 1928 John D. Rockefeller Jr. leased the land from Columbia University to give the Metropolitan Opera a new home. Then came the 1929 crash, and the opera pulled out.
Rockefeller was left with a lease of 87 years and nobody to fill it. So he turned to the new medium of the day: radio. RCA and its companies, NBC and RKO, agreed to move in. The first scandal broke before the doors even opened.
For the lobby of the RCA Building, his son Nelson commissioned a fresco from Diego Rivera. In it appeared a clear portrait of Lenin. Nelson asked for an anonymous face instead; Rivera refused, offering to add Lincoln as a balance.
The painter was paid in full, the mural was covered with paper and, nine months later, destroyed. In its place the Catalan Josep Maria Sert painted American Progress, with Lincoln, Gandhi and Emerson among the builders of modern America.
Between 40,000 and 60,000 people worked on the complex in the depths of the Depression. In 1936 some shops on the sunken plaza failed, and an ice rink took their place, as a "temporary" measure.
Don't miss
• Prometheus and the rink.
• Atlas on Fifth Avenue.
• Radio City Music Hall.
• Top of the Rock.
Did you know?
• In 1801 the site held the country's first public botanical garden, opened by the physician David Hosack.
• At first Rockefeller did not want his family name on a commercial project: his publicity adviser, Ivy Lee, convinced him that it would attract tenants.