Radio City Music Hall opened to the public on
December27, 1932. Located in New York City's Rockefeller Center, this fabulous Art Deco theater is home to the The Radio City Christmas Spectacular, a
New York Christmas tradition since 1933, and to the women's precision dance team known as the "Rockettes."
Designed by Donald Desky, the interior of the theater incorporates glass, aluminum, chrome, and geometric ornamentation. Desky rejected the Rococo embellishment generally used for theaters at that time in favor of a contemporary Art Deco style.
The Great Stage, measuring sixty-six and one half feet deep and 144 feet wide, resembles a setting sun. Its system of elevators was so advanced that the U.S. Navy incorporated identical hydraulics in constructing World War II aircraft carriers. According to Radio City lore, during the war government agents guarded the basement to assure the Navy's technological advantage.
The twelve-acre complex in Midtown Manhattan known as Rockefeller Center was developed between 1929 and 1940 by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., on land leased from Columbia University. Rockefeller initially planned an opera house on the site, but changed his mind after the stock market crash of 1929. One of the complex's first tenants was The Radio Corporation of America, hence the names "Radio City" and "Radio City Music Hall."
The Gottscho-Schleisner Collection has more than one hundred detailed architectural photographs of this New York landmark; to explore, search on Rockefeller Center in Architecture and Interior Design for 20th Century America, 1935-1955.
The Today in History Archive contains many features focusing on the cultural life of New York City. Search on New York City to read about Jenny Lind's debut at the Castle Garden Theater in 1850, the opening of the Metropolitan Opera House in 1883, and the 1955 Met debut of Marian Anderson.
John Rockefeller, Sr. and John Rockefeller, Jr. were both interested in architectural and landscape design, as well as real estate development. To landscape Kykuit, the family estate in Pocantico Hills, New York, they hired the landscape design firm of Olmsted, Olmsted and Eliot. To see the results, search on the keyword Rockefeller in American Landscape and Architectural Design, 1850-1920.
Search on the term Kykuit in Built in America: Historic Building and Engineering, 1933-Present to see additional views of the Rockefeller's Pocantico Hills estate. 
