The deck debuted in 1933 but closed in 1986; the modern Top of the Rock reopened in 2005 after a renovation that added lengthened elevator shafts and a new entrance.
Book a timed slot ahead, since the deck sells out at popular hours, and treat sunset visits as the most crowded window of the day.
Top of the Rock is the shortest of the five decks at 850 feet, and that is its argument rather than its handicap. It stands about fifteen blocks north of the Empire State Building and a short walk south of Central Park, which puts both of the things visitors most want to photograph where a lens can actually hold them. Turn north and the park reads as a complete green rectangle, close enough to pick out the Reservoir and the Great Lawn. Turn south and the Empire State Building stands square in the middle of the frame with One World Trade Center rising behind it. From inside the Empire State Building, neither of those pictures exists.
The deck occupies three levels of 30 Rockefeller Plaza. The 67th and 69th floors are terraces behind frameless safety glass, sheltered and clear. The 70th floor is why photographers come: it is set back from the building's edge, so there is no glass and no railing at eye level, only open air with the parapet standing well below the sightline.
Two attractions have been grafted on more recently. The Beam, on the 69th floor, is a movable steel beam that lifts and rotates to restage the 1932 Rockefeller Center construction photograph. Skylift, which opened in October 2024, is a rotating open-air glass platform that raises a small group three stories above the 70th floor to roughly 900 feet, turning a full circle as it goes.
Be clear-eyed about the trade. This is the lowest of the five decks, and from the 70th floor you can see two of the others: Edge off to the southwest and SUMMIT to the southeast. What you are buying at 30 Rock is not altitude but angle, and the angle is the reason this deck keeps its reputation.
30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10112 · Official site ↗
30 Rockefeller Plaza is a skyscraper that forms the centerpiece of Rockefeller Center in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York. Completed in 1933, the 66-story, 850-foot-tall building was designed in the Art Deco style by Raymond Hood, Rockefeller Center's lead architect. 30 Rockefeller Plaza was known for its main tenant, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), from its opening in 1933 until 1988 and then for General Electric until 2015, when it was renamed for its owner Comcast. The building also houses the headquarters and New York studios of television network NBC; the headquarters is sometimes called 30 Rock, a nickname that inspired the NBC sitcom of the same name. The tallest structure in Rockefeller Center, the building is the 28th tallest in New York City and the 65th tallest in the United States, and was the third tallest building in the world when it opened.
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