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Rockefeller Center
®
New York City, New York, USA
John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
John Davison Rockefeller, Jr. (January 29, 1874 – May 11,
1960) was a major philanthropist and a pivotal member
of the prominent Rockefeller family. He was the sole son
among the fi ve children of businessman and Standard
Oil industrialist John D. Rockefeller and the father of the
fi ve famous Rockefeller brothers. In biographies, he was
invariably referred to as “Junior” to distinguish him from
his more celebrated father, known as “Senior”.
After graduation, Rockefeller, Jr. joined his
father’s business (October 1, 1897) and set up operations
in the newly-formed family o
ce at Standard Oil’s
headquarters at 26 Broadway. He became a Standard Oil
director; he later also became a director in J. P. Morgan’s
U.S. Steel company, which had been formed in 1901. After
a scandal involving the then head of Standard Oil, John
Dustin Archbold (the successor to Senior), and bribes he
had made to two prominent Congressmen, unearthed
by the Hearst media empire, Junior resigned from both
companies in 1910 in an attempt to “purify” his ongoing
philanthropy from commercial and fi nancial interests.
During the Great Depression he developed and was the
sole fi nancier of a vast 14-building real estate complex in
the geographical center of Manhattan, Rockefeller Center.
He probably gave more attention to the development of
Rockefeller Center than to any other project.
John D. Rockefeller, Jr., leased the space from
Columbia University in 1928 and began development in
1930. The land was cleared of more than 200 browstone
houses and other antiquated buildings. 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
withdrawal of the Metropolitan from the project. 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 defi nite knowledge
that I myself would have to build it and fi nance it alone.”
Negotiating a line of credit with the Metropolitan Life
Insurance Company and covering ongoing expenses
through the sale of oil company stock, he took on the
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enormous project as the sole investor, entering into an
87-year lease agreement with Columbia. It was the largest
private building project ever undertaken in modern times.
More than 75,000 people worked on the construction of
the Center during those Depression years.
The name “Rockefeller Center” was fi rst suggested
for the complex in 1931 by Ivy Lee, public relations pioneer
and prominent adviser to the family. Junior 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.
Within its fi rst decade, the complex had
attracted exciting tenants such as the RKO Pictures, the
French bookstore Librairie de France and the brand new
publication
News-Week
(as it was originally called). The
Center’s western side was home to many show business
fi rms, but movie history was also made in one of the Fifth
Avenue. buildings, where John Hay Whitney and David O.
Selznick decided to produce
Gone with the Wind
.
John D Rockefeller, Jr.
3
Building Rockefeller Center
Construction of the 14 buildings in the Art Deco style
(without the originally proposed opera house) began on
May 17, 1930 and was completed on November 1, 1939,
when John D. Rockefeller, Jr. drove the fi nal (silver) rivet
into 10 Rockefeller Center.
Built between 1932 and 1940, the original
buildings have a similar architectural vocabulary that
features gray Indiana limestone, simple geometric forms,
and bold facades with little decoration except for vertical
lines used to emphasize the height of the buildings. The
central focus of the project is the former RCA building, a
tower rising 70 stories above the Channel Gardens, which
serve as a monumental passage to the building from Fifth
Avenue.
Seventy-fi ve thousand construction workers made
the site a center of activity so attractive to passers-by that
The fi nal design of Rockefeller Center was unveiled to the press on March 5, 1931.
(Image: Wired New York)
During the preliminary design phase in 1931, Hood experimented with many ideas
for the facade of the RCA Building. (Image: Wired New York)
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an o
cial “Sidewalk Superintendents’ Club” was established,
complete with membership cards providing access to a
viewing platform.
The principal builder and “managing agent” for
the massive project was John R. Todd and the principal
architect was Raymond M. Hood, who worked with and
directed a team from three diff erent architectural fi rms.
Hood was the greatest skyscraper architect of the 1920s,
embodying and inspiring the evolution of skyscraper
design in America during the decade, and the Rockefeller
Center was his last major project. Though the actual
design was the work of a consortium of architects, he has
been described as the “key man” in its development, and
the massing of the buildings, their monochromatic exteriors,
and their rooftop landscape gardens almost certainly
refl ect his infl uence.
Construction of the RCA Building and Lower Plaza in progress in September 1932.
The Center Theatre, on the left, and the RKO Building, rear right, were already
complete. Next to the RKO Building, the Radio City Music Hall was nearing completion.
(Image: Wired New York)
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