Rockefeller Center
Rockefeller Center is a complex of 19 commercial buildings covering 22 acres (89,000 m2) 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.
Location
Manhattan, New York City, New York
22 acres (8.9 ha)
1930–1939
1446
December 23, 1987[7]
December 23, 1987[6]
April 23, 1985
In 1928, Columbia University, the owner of the site, leased the land to John D. Rockefeller Jr., who was the main person behind the complex's construction. 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.
Reception[edit]
Contemporary commentary[edit]
In its earliest years, Rockefeller Center received largely negative and pessimistic reviews from architectural critics. The most cynical opinion came from architectural scholar Lewis Mumford, who so hated the "weakly conceived, reckless, romantic chaos" of the March 1931 plans for Rockefeller Center that he reportedly went into exile in upstate New York.[40] He blamed John Rockefeller Jr. for the complex's "inability to consider a new type of problem in any form except the skyscraper stereotype". Mumford's view of the complex was only marginally less negative when he revisited the issue in December 1933: he said that it could be "large, exciting, [and] romantic" at night, but that "a mountain or ash heap of the same size would do the trick almost as well, if the lights were cleverly arranged".[407] Ralph Adams Cram, who adhered to a more classical architectural style, also had a pessimistic view of the plans unveiled in March 1931. He called the plan for Rockefeller Center "an apotheosis of megalomania, a defiant egotism" arising from an ostentatious display of wealth, and said that "the sooner we accomplish the destiny it so perfectly foreshadows, the sooner we shall be able to clear the ground and begin again".[408][409] Douglas Haskell, who formerly edited Architectural Forum magazine, wrote that Rockefeller Center's ambiance was "gray, unreal, baleful".[330]
The urban planner Le Corbusier had a more optimistic view of the complex, expressing that Rockefeller Center was "rational, logically conceived, biologically normal, [and] harmonious".[407][410] He wrote that although Rockefeller Center would inevitably be disorganized in its earliest years, it would eventually adhere to a certain "order",[411][412] and he also praised the complex for being a paragon of "noble" and "efficient" construction.[413][414] The writer Frederick Lewis Allen took a more moderate viewpoint, saying that negative critics had "hoped for too much" precisely because Rockefeller Center had been planned during an economically prosperous time, but was constructed during the Depression.[415][413] Even though Allen thought that the art was mediocre and the opportunities for a less lively complex were wasted, he stated that Rockefeller Center had an aura of "festivity" around it, unlike most other office buildings in America.[415][416] Sigfried Giedion wrote in his book Space, Time and Architecture that Rockefeller Center's design was akin to a "civic center" whose design represented the 1930s version of the future.[417][418] Henry Luce, the founder of Time Inc., said in 1941 that Rockefeller Center represented "the true world of tomorrow", as opposed to the 1939 New York World's Fair, whose "World of Tomorrow" representations "are today junk piles under the winter snow".[419] Novelist Gertrude Stein said in 1935, "The view of Rockefeller Center from Fifth Avenue is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen."[420]
Retrospective commentary and impact[edit]
By the 1940s, most critics had positive views of Rockefeller Center.[419] Even Mumford praised the complex, lamenting in 1947 that the new headquarters of the United Nations on First Avenue had no "human scale" or "transition from the intimate to the monumental", whereas Rockefeller Center's buildings "produce an aesthetic effect out of all proportion to their size".[421][422] Haskell wrote in 1966 that Rockefeller Center's designers "seemed to have regarded urban life as an enhanceable romance".[330] In 1969, the art historian Vincent Scully wrote, "Rockefeller Center is one of the few surviving public spaces that look as if they were designed and used by people who knew what stable wealth was and were not ashamed to enjoy it."[423][424]
The New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation commissioned a report in 1974 titled "Grand Central Terminal and Rockefeller Center: A Historic-Critical Estimate of Their Significance", in which they concluded that Rockefeller Center, along with Central Park and Grand Central Terminal, were the only three developments that could slow down Manhattan's "remorseless process of expansion and decay".[425] In 1976, New York Times architectural critic Paul Goldberger wrote, "What makes Rockefeller Center work is that it is at once a formal Beaux‐Arts‐influenced complex of dignified towers and a lively, utterly contemporary amalgam of shops, plazas and street life. It is as natural a home for a 1970's street festival as for a 1930's movie about cafe society: few designs can join such disparate worlds so comfortably."[426] The American Institute of Architects' 2007 survey List of America's Favorite Architecture ranked the Rockefeller Center complex among the top 150 buildings in the United States.[427][428]
Several later buildings were inspired by Rockefeller Center and its constituent buildings. 525 William Penn Place in Pittsburgh, also designed by Harrison & Abramovitz, includes limestone piers and steel fins that were inspired by 30 Rockefeller Plaza's design.[429] In the 1960s, David Rockefeller developed the Embarcadero Center in San Francisco, which was nicknamed "Rockefeller Center West".[430][431] Postmodern skyscrapers based on Rockefeller Center include the NBC Tower in Chicago[432] and the Wells Fargo Center in Minneapolis.[433][434]