A Lot Of Construction

From February 16, 1932, Rockefeller Center:

It was probably taken from a high-floor window or the roof of 609 Fifth Avenue, a 1920s office building on the east side of Fifth, looking west. To give a sense of what Rock Center replaced, look at the clump of dark-colored buildings on the left, just past the excavation: Old Law and pre-Old-Law tenements, facing the Sixth Avenue elevated structure. The high-rises further back front on Broadway.

The big excavation is where the RCA Building, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, was being built. If you look closely, the two pre-Old-Law tenements at the corners of the block were not demolished: the owners refused to sell to the Rockefellers, probably because they guessed that improvements in the area would make their buildings more valuable. Those two little buildings are still there, over 90 years later, with some very expensive retail space in their ground floors.

The nearly-topped out high-rise to the right is 1270 Sixth Avenue, originally known as the RKO Building, and then later sold to American Metal Climax Company which, depending on your taste, is either a vastly better or vastly worse name for a skyscraper.

The most interesting thing in the picture is the low-level steel to the right of RKO/AMAX. That is the future site of the auditorium of Radio City Music Hall. The main entrance to the theater is at the corner of Sixth Avenue and 50th Street – through RKO/AMAX – and the stage and flyloft portion of the building had not yet been started and would be built at the far right of the photo, mid-block between Sixth and Fifth Avenues. If you look closely at that steel. it’s sloped down, left to right, and you can see the foundation wall past it on the right. The street-level entry brings you into the theater at the back, and top, of the sloped orchestra-level seating. In other words, the lower-level seats are below street level, which is why we’re seeing that sloped steel below street level.