Rockefeller Center Part One

I think most people who know anything about New York City know a little about Rockefeller Center...the ambitious mid-Midtown project the Rockefellers started before the crash of 1929 and just kept pouring money into, depression or no depression, until it was finished in 1933.

The area has so many photo opportunities and is such an  overhwelming Art Deco monument that I am just going to post part of my coverage of it tonight and do some more photography and the rest of the story tomorrow.

Here is just a partial bit from the internet --basic history

Rockefeller Center is a complex of 19 commercial buildings covering 22 acres (89,000 m²) between 48th and 51st streets in New York City, United States. Built by the Rockefeller family, it is located in the center of Midtown Manhattan, spanning the area between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1987.^[2][3][4]

History

Rockefeller Center under construction in 1932

Rockefeller Center was named after John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who leased the space from Columbia University in 1928 and developed it from 1930. Rockefeller initially planned a syndicate to build an opera house for the Metropolitan Opera on the site, but changed his mind after the stock market crash of 1929 and the Metropolitan's continual delays to hold out for a more favorable lease, causing Rockefeller to move forward without them. Rockefeller stated "It was clear that there were only two courses open to me. One was to abandon the entire development. The other to go forward with it in the definite knowledge that I myself would have to build it and finance it alone."^[5] He took on the enormous project as the sole financier, on a 27-year lease^[6] (with the option for three 21-year renewals for a total of 87 years) 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. The initial cost of acquiring the space and razing some of the building and construction of new building was an estimated $250,000,000 dollars; a staggering sum in 1930.^[7]
It was the largest private building project ever undertaken in modern times.^[8] Construction of the 14 buildings in the Art Deco style (without the original opera house proposal) began on May 17, 1930, and was completed in 1939. Principal builder and "managing agent" for the massive project was John R. Todd. Principal architect was Raymond Hood, working with and leading three architectural firms on a team that included a young Wallace Harrison, later to become the family's principal architect and adviser to Nelson Rockefeller. The construction of the project employed over 40,000 people.^[9]
It was the public relations pioneer Ivy Lee, the prominent adviser to the family, who first suggested the name "Rockefeller Center" for the complex, in 1931. Rockefeller, Jr., initially did not want the Rockefeller family name associated with the commercial project, but was persuaded on the grounds that the name would attract far more tenants.^[10]
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 Deutsches Haus. Rockefeller ruled this out after being advised of Hitler's Nazi march toward World War II, and thus the empty office site became the International Building North.^[11]
This subsequently became the primary location of the U.S. operations of British Intelligence, British Security Coordination (BSC) during the War, with Room 3603 becoming the principal operations center for Allied intelligence, organized by William Stephenson, as well as the office of the future head of what was later to become the Central Intelligence Agency, Allen Welsh Dulles.^[12]
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 west side of Avenue of the Americas during the 1960s and 1970s (plus the Lehman Brothers Building). (The Time-Life Building, McGraw-Hill and News Corporation/Fox News Channel headquarters are part of the Rockefeller Center extension now owned/managed by the major private real estate firm, Rockefeller Group.)