From 1946, a view from 501 Madison Avenue looking southwest past St. Patrick’s Cathedral to Rockefeller Center. The International Building on the right partially blocks the view of the taller RCA Building, with the (old) Time-Life building off to the left. The construction site is a minor mystery: the location and form suggest it’s the Look Building at 488 Madison, but the readily available records say that building didn’t top out until 1949. Maybe that’s wrong, maybe the date on the photo is wrong, maybe I’ve misidentified the site. Off in the distance, just to the right of the cathedral tower, is the Paramount Building at Times Square.
The amazing thing about this picture isn’t the tall buildings, it’s how few of them there are. We’re at roughly the same height as the spires of the cathedral, so about 330 feet up, or thirty stories. We’re looking from Madison Avenue and 52nd Street, at that elevation, across to Seventh Avenue and 43rd Street, something that’s not been possible for 50 or 60 years now.
The RCA Building is one of my favorite skyscrapers, but it occurs to me that my mental image of it, like my mental image of the Empire State Building, is influenced by how, from some angles, it stands alone in the sky. These days, building a 300-foot tall building like Look will barely be noticed by anyone more than a block or two away; back then tall buildings even in midtown and the financial district were individually visible from some distance away.
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