ROCKEFELLER CENTER - BOTTOM OF THE ROCK

PROMETHEUS RECUMBENT

Rockefeller Center is a complex of 19 commercial buildings covering 22 acres between 48th and 51st Streets in New York. Built by the Rockefeller family, it is located in the center of Midtown Manhattan, spanning between Fifth Avenue and Seventh Avenue. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1988. It is the largest privately held complex of its kind in the world, and an international symbol of modernist architectural style blended with capitalism.

Rockefeller Center was named after John D. Rockefeller Jr. ("Junior"), who leased the space from Columbia University in 1928 and developed it from 1930. 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. He took on the enormous project as the sole financier, on a ninety-nine-year lease for the site from Columbia; negotiating a line of credit with the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and covering ongoing expenses through the sale of oil company stock. It was the largest private building project ever undertaken in modern times. Construction of the 14 buildings in the Art Deco style began on May 17, 1930 and was completed on November 1, 1939 when Rockefeller drove in the final (silver) rivet into 10 Rockefeller Plaza.

ROCKEFELLER CENTER AT CHRISTMAS

The Center is a combination of two building complexes: the older and original 14 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, McGraw Hill and News Corporation/Fox News Channel headquarters are part of these "newer" Rockefeller Center buildings, which are now owned/managed by the major private real estate firm, Rockefeller Group.

Radio City Music Hall

The Radio City Music Hall was completed in December, 1932. At the time it was the largest and most opulent theater in the world. Its original name was the International Music Hall but was changed to reflect the new techonology of the time - radio. One of the complex's first and most important tenants was the Radio Corporation of America, hence the other name the Center itself was dubbed was "Radio City".

The Music Hall was planned by a consortium of three architectural firms, who employed Edward Durrell Stone to design the exterior. The interior design was given to the expert of the then European Modernist style and the expression of a new American aesthetic, Donald Deskey, through the direction of Abby Rockefeller. He believed the space would best be served by sculptures and wall paintings and commissioned various artists for the elaborate and now showpiece work. The theater seated 6,000 people and after an initial slow start became the single biggest tourist destination in the city. Its interior was declared a New York City landmark in 1978.

The GE Building (RCA Building)

30 ROCKEFELLER CENTER - HOME TO "TOP OF THE ROCK"

The centerpiece of Rockefeller Center is the 70-floor, 872-foot GE Building at 30 Rockefeller Plaza ("30 Rock") - formerly known as the RCA Building - centered behind the sunken plaza. The building was renamed in the 1980s after General Electric (GE) re-acquired RCA, which it helped found in 1919. The famous Rainbow Room club restaurant is located on the 65th floor; the Rockefeller family office covers the 54-56th floors. 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. NBC currently owns the space it occupies in the building as a condominium arrangement.

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 newly renovated observation deck, the Top of the Rock is located, which was first built in 1933. The $75 million makeover of the observation area was carried out by the Center's owner, Tishman Speyer Properties and was finally completed in 2005. It spans from the 67-70th floors and includes a multimedia exhibition exploring the history of the Center. On the 70th floor, reached by both stairs and elevator, there is a 20-foot wide viewing area, allowing visitors a unique 360-degree panoramic view of New York City.

At the front of 30 Rock is the Lower Plaza, in the very center of the complex, which is reached from 5th Avenue through the Channel Gardens and Promenade. The acclaimed sculptor Paul Manship was commissioned in 1933 to create a masterwork to adorn the central axis, below the famed annual Yule tree, but all the other original plans to fill the space were abandoned over time. It wasn't until Christmas Day in 1936 that the ice-skating rink was finally installed and the popular Center activity of ice-skating began.

Center Art

Rockefeller Center contains, amongst many other corporate tenants, the New York headquarters of the world's biggest auction house by revenue, Christies. The Center represents a turning point in the history of architectural sculpture: It is among the last major building projects in the United States to incorporate a program of integrated public art. Sculptor Lee Lawrie contributed the largest number of individual pieces, twelve, including the statue of Atlas facing Fifth Avenue, and the conspicuous friezes above the main entrance to the RCA Building.

Lower Plaza at Rockefeller Center.Paul Manship's highly recognizable bronze gilded statue of the Greek Legend of the Titan Prometheus recumbent, bringing fire to mankind, features prominently in the sunken plaza at the front of 30 Rockefeller Plaza. The model for Prometheus was Leonard Nole and the inscription from Aeschylus, on the granite wall behind, reads: "Prometheus, teacher in every art, brought the fire that hath proved to mortals a means to mighty ends". Although some sources cite it as the fourth-most familiar statue in the United States, behind the Lincoln Memorial, Mount Rushmore and the Statue of Liberty, Manship was not particularly fond or proud of it.

In 1962, a plaque was placed at the plaza with a list of principles in which John D. Rockefeller Jr. believed in, first expressed by him in 1941. It begins with: "I believe in the supreme worth of the individual and in his right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", and includes a list of other lifelong beliefs encompassing free enterprise and religion.