Rockefeller Center - History, Radio City Music Hall, The GE Building (RCA Building), Art, Flags

A complex of 14 skyscrapers commissioned by John D Rockefeller Jr (18741960) and built (193140) in Manhattan, New York City. The centre now consists of 21 buildings housing offices, restaurants, shops, cinemas, broadcasting stations, and the Radio City Music Hall.

Rockefeller Center is a complex of 19 commercial buildings covering 22-acres between 48th and 51st Streets in New York. Rockefeller Center is 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.)

The entire Rockefeller Center complex was purchased by Mitsubishi Estate, a real estate company subsidiary of Mitsubishi, in 1989. In 2000, Jerry Speyer (a close friend of David Rockefeller), of Tishman Speyer Properties, L.P., together with the Lester Crown family of Chicago, bought out for $1.85 billion the previous owners: Goldman Sachs (which owned half the complex), the Giovanni Agnelli family, Stavros Niarchos and David Rockefeller.

History

Rockefeller Center was named after John D. 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 Metropolitan from the project.

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. Junior initially didn't want the Rockefeller family name associated with the commercial project, but was persuaded on the grounds that the name would attract far more tenants.

This subsequently became the primary location of the US operations of British Intelligence (MI6) during the War, with Room 3603 becoming the principal operations center for US intelligence, organised by William Joseph Donovan, as well as the office of the future head of what was later to become the Central Intelligence Agency, Allen Dulles.

Radio City Music Hall

The nation's largest indoor theater, Radio City Music Hall, is located in the complex.

The GE Building (RCA Building)

The centerpiece of Rockefeller Center is the 71-floor, 872-foot (266-m) GE Building at 30 Rockefeller Plaza - formerly known as the RCA Building - centered behind the sunken plaza. 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.

Art

Rockefeller Center represents a turning point in the history of architectural sculpture: it's among the last major building projects in the United States to incorporate a program of integrated public art.

Paul Manship's highly recognizable gilded statue of Prometheus recumbent, bringing fire to mankind, features prominently in a sunken plaza which is used as an ice-skating rink during winter. Famously the Mexican socialist artist Diego Rivera was commissioned to create a fresco for the lobby of the RCA Building, but his Man at the Crossroads became controversial because it contained a portrait of Lenin, and was removed from the building at the instigation of Nelson Rockefeller.

Flags

At street level, the plaza has about 200 flagpoles.

Major buildings/corporate tenants in its history

General Electric/NBC - (Formerly RCA) - 30 Rockefeller Plaza AOL Time Warner (Formerly Esso) - 75 Rockefeller Plaza News Corporation (Celanese Building) - 1211 Avenue of the Americas JP Morgan Chase another tenant. Life Building (Formerly the Exxon Building) - 1251 Avenue of the Americas Associated Press Building - 50 Rockefeller Plaza Simon & Schuster Building (Formerly U.S. Rubber) - 1230 Avenue of the Americas Radio City Music Hall (RCA venture) - 1260 Avenue of the Americas Eastern Airlines (former) - 10 Rockefeller Plaza The Americas Building (Formerly RKO) - 1270 Avenue of the Americas La Maison Française - 610 Fifth Avenue British Building - 620 Fifth Avenue Palazzo d'Italia - 626 Fifth Avenue International Building - 630 Fifth Avenue

Gallery

Prometheus at Rockefeller Center	Lower Plaza of Rockefeller Center in March 2006.	The GE Building at night	4th of July (U.S. flags).
View north from 30 Rock's Top of the Rock.	Atlas Statue at Rockefeller Center.