behind the sunken plaza. The building is the setting for
the famous “Lunchtime atop a Skyscraper” photograph,
taken by Charles C. Ebbets in 1932 of workers having
lunch, sitting on a steel beam, without safety harnesses.
Unlike most other Art Deco towers built during the
1930s, the GE Building was constructed as a slab with a
fl at roof. The Center’s newly-renovated “Top of the Rock”
observation deck, dating originally from 1933, is located
on the GE Building roof.
At the front of 30 Rock is the Lower Plaza, in the very
center of the complex, which is reached from 5th Avenue
through the Channel Gardens and Promenade. The
acclaimed sculptor Paul Manship was commissioned in
1933 to create a masterwork to adorn the central axis,
below the famed annual Rockefeller Center Christmas
Tree, but all the other original plans to fi ll the space were
abandoned over time. It was not until Christmas Day in
1936 that the ice-skating rink was fi nally installed and the
popular Center activity of ice-skating began.
Radio City Music Hall at 50th Street and Avenue of the
Americas was completed in December, 1932. At the time it
was promoted as the largest and most opulent theater in
the world. Its original intended name was the “International
Music Hall” but this was changed to refl ect the name of
its neighbor, “Radio City”, as the new NBC Studios in the
RCA Building were known. RCA was one of the complex’s
fi rst and most important tenants and the entire Plaza itself
was sometimes referred to as “Radio City”.
Roof garden of Rockefeller Center
buildings. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
Lower Plaza of Rockefeller Center.
(Image: Wikimedia Commons)
8
21007_BI.indd 821007_BI.indd 8 27/08/2010 2:17 PM27/08/2010 2:17 PM
To Next Page
Loading...
