Rockefeller Center is a complex of 19 commercial buildings between 48th and 51st Streets in New York.
Today's Rockefeller Center is a combination of two building complexes: the older Art Deco office buildings from the 1930s, and a set of four International-style towers built along the Avenue of the Americas during the 1960s and 1970s. (The Time-Life Building and the News Corporation/Fox News Channel headquarters are part of the "newer" Rockefeller Center buildings.)

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 Met 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.


Tag this location on
Mail this location to a friend