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Rockefeller
Center: Complex of 14 limestone
skyscrapers set amid a series of
outdoor spaces on a 12-acre (5-hectare)
site, built between 1929 and 1940
in midtown Manhattan. It was designed
by a team of architects headed by
Henry Hofmeister, H. W. Corbett,
Raymond Hood, and Wallace K. Harrison.
Wood veneering, mural painting,
mosaics, sculpture, metalwork, and
other allied arts were integrated
with the architecture. Radio City
Music Hall (1932) is noted for its
Art Deco interior. |
Rockefeller
Center, complex of buildings in central
Manhattan, New York City, between 48th
and 51st streets and Fifth Ave. and
the Ave. of the Americas (Sixth Ave.).
The project was sponsored by John D.
Rockefeller, Jr., with fourteen of the
buildings built between 1931 and 1939.
These include the 70-story GE (General
Electric) Building, known prior to 1989
as the RCA (Radio Corp. of America)
Building. The Time-Life Building (built
1960–61), the most recent addition to
the group, extended the center's boundaries
west of the Ave. of the Americas. The
buildings house offices, shops, restaurants,
exhibition rooms, broadcasting studios,
and the opulently Art Deco Radio City
Music Hall, New York City's largest
theater. Five of the western buildings
of Rockefeller Center in the broadcasting
and entertainment section are known
as Radio City. Many sculptors and painters
are represented in the decoration of
the buildings and grounds. Paul Manship
designed the Prometheus of the central
fountain, which overlooks an outdoor
skating rink and mall.
Rockefeller
Center was named after John D. Rockefeller
Jr. ("Junior"), who leased
the space from Columbia University in
1928 and developed it between 1929 and
1940. 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. Construction of buildings
in the Art Deco style began in 1931.
Principal architect for the complex
was Raymond Hood, working with a team
that included a young Wallace Harrison.
It
was the PR 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.
What
could have become a major controversy
in the mid-1930s concerned the last
of the four European buildings that
remained unnamed. Attempts were made
by Ivy Lee and others to rent out the
space to German commercial concerns
and name it the Deutches Haus. Junior
ruled this out after being advised of
Hitler's Nazi march towards World War
II, and thus the empty office site became
the International Building North.
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.
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