Quick answer
Rockefeller Center is a complex of 19 commercial buildings covering 22 acres between 48th and 51st Streets in Midtown Manhattan, built by the Rockefeller family through the Great Depression. Its landmarks are Radio City Music Hall, the ice-skating rink, the annual Christmas tree, and the Top of the Rock observation deck.
Full transcript
A bet built through the Depression
The land was meant for a new Metropolitan Opera house, and Columbia University had leased it to John D. Rockefeller Jr. for 87 years at three million dollars a year. Then the stock market crashed in 1929 and the Met backed out. Rockefeller built anyway. Construction began in 1931: 228 buildings were razed, about 4,000 tenants were displaced, and thousands of workers found jobs at the worst moment of the Depression. The first buildings opened in 1933, the core was complete by 1939, and the 14 original Art Deco towers — by a consortium led by Raymond Hood — became a landmark in 1987.
Radio City, the roof, and the rink
The centerpiece is 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the 66-story, 850-foot Art Deco tower built for RCA and still home to NBC — the nickname 30 Rock even inspired the sitcom. Radio City Music Hall opened next door in December 1932. Above it all, the Top of the Rock observation deck opened with the building in 1933, closed in 1986, and reopened in 2005; it is the rare rooftop from which you look at the Empire State Building instead of from it. Down in the sunken plaza, the Prometheus statue has watched over the skating rink since the rink opened in 1936.
The tree
The world's most famous Christmas tree began as a workers' gesture: in December 1931, construction crews pooled their money to buy a 20-foot balsam fir and decorated it with handmade garlands. The official lighting ceremony followed in 1933, and every year since, the tree has gone up in November above the rink. Go in December for the tree and the skaters, or ride to the Top of the Rock at sunset any other season, then take the underground concourse down to the subway without stepping outside.