Rockefeller Center
Rockefeller Center is a complex of 19 commercial buildings covering between 48th Street and 51st Street in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The 14 original Art Deco buildings, commissioned by the Rockefeller family, span the area between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue, split by a large sunken square and a private street called Rockefeller Plaza. Later additions include 75 Rockefeller Plaza across 51st Street at the north end of Rockefeller Plaza, and four International Style buildings on the west side of Sixth Avenue.
In 1928, Columbia University, the owner of the site, leased the land to John D. Rockefeller Jr., the complex's developer. Originally envisioned as the site for a new Metropolitan Opera building, the current Rockefeller Center came about after the Met could not afford to move to the proposed new building. Various plans were discussed before the current one was approved in 1932. Construction of Rockefeller Center started in 1931, and the first buildings opened in 1933. The core of the complex was completed by 1939. Described as one of the greatest projects of the Great Depression era, Rockefeller Center became a New York City designated landmark in 1985 and a National Historic Landmark in 1987. The complex and associated land has been controlled since 2000 by Tishman Speyer, which bought the property for $1.85 billion.
The original center has several sections. Radio City, along Sixth Avenue and centered on 30 Rockefeller Plaza, includes Radio City Music Hall and was built for RCA's radio-related enterprises such as NBC. The International Complex along Fifth Avenue was built to house foreign-based tenants. The remainder of the original complex originally hosted printed media as well as Eastern Air Lines. While 600 Fifth Avenue is at the southeast corner of the complex, it was built by private interests in the 1950s and was only acquired by the center in 1963. The complex is noted for the large quantities of art present in almost all of its buildings, its expansive underground concourse, its ice-skating rink, and its annual lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree.
History
Context
The first private owner of the site was physician David Hosack, who purchased twenty acres of rural land from New York City in 1801 and opened the country's first public botanical garden, the Elgin Botanic Garden, on the site. The gardens operated until 1811, and by 1823 the property was under the ownership of Columbia University. Columbia held the property as an investment, and by 1896 consolidated its main campus 60 blocks north in Morningside Heights, in Upper Manhattan.In 1926, the Metropolitan Opera started looking for locations for a new opera house to replace the existing building at 39th Street and Broadway. By 1928, Benjamin Wistar Morris and designer Joseph Urban were hired to come up with blueprints for the house. However, the new building was too expensive for the Met to fund by itself, and John D. Rockefeller Jr. eventually gave his support to the project. Rockefeller hired Todd, Robertson and Todd as design consultants to determine its viability. John R. Todd then put forth a plan for the Met. Columbia leased the plot to Rockefeller for 87 years at a cost of $3 million per year, excluding some properties on Fifth Avenue and a strip on Sixth Avenue. The initial cost of acquiring the space, razing some of the existing buildings, and constructing new buildings was estimated at $250 million.
Rockefeller hired Corbett, Harrison & MacMurray; Hood, Godley & Fouilhoux; and Reinhard & Hofmeister, to design the buildings. They worked under the umbrella of "Associated Architects" so none of the buildings could be attributed to any specific firm. The principal builder and "managing agent" was John R. Todd, one of the co-founders of Todd, Robertson and Todd. The principal architect and leader of the Associated Architects was Raymond Hood, a student of the Art Deco architectural movement. The other architects included Harvey Wiley Corbett and Wallace Harrison. L. Andrew Reinhard and Henry Hofmeister had been hired by John Todd as the "rental architects", who designed the floor plans for the complex. The Metropolitan Square Corporation was formed in December 1928 to oversee construction.
After the stock market crash of 1929, the Metropolitan Opera could not afford to move anymore. After the opera plans were canceled on December 6, 1929, Rockefeller quickly negotiated with Radio Corporation of America and its subsidiaries, National Broadcasting Company and Radio-Keith-Orpheum, to build a mass media entertainment complex on the site. By May 1930, RCA and its affiliates had agreed to develop the site. Todd released a new plan "G-3" in January 1930, followed by an "H plan" that March. Another plan, announced in March 1931, received mostly negative feedback from the public. The design of the complex was affected greatly by the 1916 Zoning Resolution, which required setbacks to all high street-side exterior walls of New York City buildings in order to increase sunlight for city streets. The plan also included rooftop gardens and a recessed central plaza. The International Complex, announced in 1931, replaced an earlier plan for an oval retail building; its name was derived by the British, French, and Italian tenants who eventually occupied it.
During early planning, the development was often referred to as "Radio City", "Rockefeller City", or "Metropolitan Square". Ivy Lee, the Rockefeller family's publicity adviser, suggested changing the name to "Rockefeller Center". John Rockefeller Jr. initially did not want the Rockefeller family name associated with the commercial project, but was persuaded on the grounds that the name would attract far more tenants. The name was formally changed in December 1931. Over time, the appellation of "Radio City" devolved from describing the entire complex to just the complex's western section, and by 1937, only the Radio City Music Hall contained the "Radio City" name.
Construction
For the project, 228 buildings on the site were razed and some 4,000 tenants relocated. Demolition of the properties began in 1930. All of the buildings' leases had been bought by August 1931, though there were some tenants on the western and southeastern edges of the plot who refused to leave their property, and Rockefeller Center was built around these buildings. Excavation of the Sixth Avenue side of the complex began in July 1931, and construction on the first buildings, Radio City Music Hall and the Center Theatre, began later that year. of Indiana limestone were ordered for the project in December 1931, the largest such order at the time.The RKO Building was the first structure to be completed, in September 1932, followed by the Music Hall in December 1932 and the British Empire Building in April 1933. The RCA Building's opening was delayed from May 1 to mid-May because of a controversy over Man at the Crossroads, a painting in the building's lobby, which was later covered up and removed. A new street through the complex, Rockefeller Plaza, was constructed in stages between 1933 and 1937. The complex's famed Christmas tree in the center of the plaza was erected for the first time in December 1933, and the complex's Prometheus statue was constructed in May 1934. By July 1934, the complex had leased 80% of the available space in the six buildings that were already opened.
File:Lunch atop a Skyscraper - Charles Clyde Ebbets.jpg|thumb|The iconic photograph Lunch atop a Skyscraper depicts workers resting for a meal during the construction of 30 Rockefeller Plaza.
Work on two more internationally themed retail buildings and a larger, 38-story, "International Building", started in September 1934. One of the two small buildings was already rented to Italian interests. The final small building would have been rented by Germany, but Rockefeller ruled this out in 1934 after noticing National Socialist extremism from the country's government. The empty office site was downsized and became the "International Building North", rented by various international tenants. In April 1935, developers opened the International Building and its wings.
The underground pedestrian mall and ramp system between 48th and 51st streets was finished in early May. In 1936, an ice skating rink replaced the unprofitable retail space on the lower plaza, below ground level.
The 36-story Time & Life Building, named for anchor tenant Time Inc., was completed in November 1936, replacing an empty plot on the southern block that had been used for vehicle parking. Eleven buildings had been completed by 1937 at a total cost of over $100 million. A building for Associated Press on the northern block's empty lot, was topped out by June 1938 and occupied by December of that year. The presence of Associated Press and Time Inc. expanded Rockefeller Center's scope from strictly a radio-communications complex to a hub of both radio and print media. The Guild, a newsreel theater, opened in 1938 along the curve of the truck ramp below the Associated Press Building. After Nelson Rockefeller became president of Rockefeller Center in 1938, he fired John Todd as the complex's manager and appointed Hugh Robertson in his place. The Rockefeller family started occupying the 56th floor of the RCA Building, though the offices would later expand to the 54th and 55th floors as well.
A proposed 16-story building in the center of the southernmost block was leased to Eastern Air Lines in June 1940. Excavation started in October 1938, and the building was topped out by April 1939. At the same time, Rockefeller Center Inc. wanted to develop the western half of the southern plot, which was partially occupied by the Center Theatre. The United States Rubber Company agreed to occupy the plot, and excavation of the U.S. Rubber Company Building site commenced in May 1939. John Rockefeller installed the building's ceremonial final rivet on November 1, 1939, marking the completion of the original complex. However, although the final rivet had been driven, the Eastern Air Lines Building was not completed until October 1940.
The construction of the project employed between 40,000 and 60,000 people. The complex was the largest private building project ever undertaken in contemporary times. Architectural historian Carol Herselle Krinsky describes the center as "the only large private permanent construction project planned and executed between the start of the Depression and the end of the Second World War". According to writer Daniel Okrent, Rockefeller Center was so extensive that it was said that "you could do anything you wanted except sleep, pray, or not pay rent to ". By fall 1939, the complex had 26,000 tenants and 125,000 daily visitors. That year, 1.3 million people went on a guided tour of Rockefeller Center or visited the RCA Building's observation deck, while 6 million people visited the underground shopping mall, and 7 million saw a performance at Rockefeller Center.