Built between 1931 and 1939 as a 14-building Art Deco complex under lead architect Raymond Hood, the site includes Lee Lawrie's Atlas statue facing Fifth Avenue, one of twelve sculptural works he contributed there.
Top of the Rock observation deck tickets and the seasonal outdoor ice rink both sell out on busy days, so book online in advance rather than counting on same-day box office tickets.
The complex was never meant to be this. John D. Rockefeller Jr. had taken a long lease on three midtown blocks in order to host a new Metropolitan Opera House; the opera withdrew and the scheme was canceled on December 6, 1929, weeks after the crash, leaving him holding the rent with no tenant. What he built instead was speculative office space organized around the newer businesses of radio and film.
Authorship was deliberately blurred. Three firms — Reinhard and Hofmeister; Corbett, Harrison and MacMurray; Hood, Godley and Fouilhoux — worked under the single name Associated Architects so that no building could be credited to any one of them, though Raymond Hood's judgment carried the most weight. Construction began in 1931, the first buildings opened in 1933, and the core of fourteen was complete by 1939. The stepped massing of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, 70 floors and 872 feet, follows the setback rules of the 1916 zoning resolution, and those setbacks were planted as roof gardens.
The invention is at ground level. The Channel Gardens slope gently down from Fifth Avenue between two low buildings, pulling pedestrians off the avenue toward a sunken plaza that was designed as the entrance to an underground shopping concourse and failed at it: shoppers would not walk down. An ice rink took the empty space in 1936, and the failure became the best-known room in the complex. Paul Manship's Prometheus was installed above it in 1934.
Lee Lawrie's Atlas, dating from 1937, stands in the forecourt of the International Building facing Fifth Avenue. Lawrie made twelve works for the site, more than any other artist here, and they reward looking at doorway height rather than at the towers. Diego Rivera's lobby mural at 30 Rockefeller Plaza was destroyed and replaced with one by José María Sert. The complex became a New York City landmark in 1985 and a National Historic Landmark in 1987.
45 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10111 · Official site ↗
Rockefeller Center is a complex of 19 commercial buildings covering 22 acres (8.9 ha) 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.
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