page_title: Rockefeller Center
section_title: Late 20th and early 21st centuries
hierarchical_section_title: Rockefeller Center / History / Late 20th and early 21st centuries
context_page_description: Rockefeller Center is a large complex consisting of 19 commercial buildings covering 22 acres between 48th Street and 51st Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The 14 original Art Deco buildings, commissioned by the Rockefeller family, span the area between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue, split by a large sunken square and a private street called Rockefeller Plaza. Later additions include 75 Rockefeller Plaza across 51st Street at the north end of Rockefeller Plaza, and four International Style buildings located on the west side of Sixth Avenue.
  In 1928, the site's then-owner, Columbia University, leased the land to John D. Rockefeller Jr., who was the main person behind the complex's construction. Originally envisioned as the site for a new Metropolitan Opera building, the current Rockefeller Center came about after the Met could not afford to move to the proposed new building. Various plans were discussed before the current one was approved in 1932. Construction of Rockefeller Center started in 1931, and the first buildings opened in 1933. The core of the complex was completed by 1939.
  The original center has several sections.
context_section_description: 600 Fifth Avenue and 75 Rockefeller Plaza received renovations in the early 1970s. Unlike in the rest of the complex, where different components were renovated one at a time to avoid disturbing tenants, the two structures were renovated all at once because their space was largely vacant. Rockefeller Center Inc. renewed their lease on the complex in 1973.
  Through the 1960s, the Music Hall was successful regardless of the status of the city's economic, business, or entertainment sectors as a whole.  However, by the early 1970s, the proliferation of closed-captioned foreign movies had reduced attendance at the Music Hall. The first round of staff and performer firings began in 1972. By January 1978, the Music Hall was in debt, and the hall's annual attendance had declined to 1.5 million visitors, down from 5 million in 1968. Officials stated that it could not remain open after April. A grassroots campaign formed the Showpeople's Committee to Save Radio City Music Hall, and after several weeks of lobbying, the interior was made a city landmark in March, followed by a National Register of Historic Places listing in May. The hall was set to close on April 12, but five days before the planned closing date, the Empire State Development Corporation voted to create a nonprofit subsidiary to lease the Music Hall.
  A New York Times report in 1982 stated that Rockefeller Center had been popular among tenants from its inception, being almost fully rented for much of the first half-century of its existence. The major exception was in the 1970s, when it was only 85% rented. However, Rockefeller Center was not popular as an entertainment complex, having been used for mainly commercial purposes through its history. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission extended the Music Hall's landmark status to the exteriors of all of the original complex's buildings in 1985. In its approval of the complex's status, the commission wrote, "Rockefeller Center ranks among the grandest architectural projects ever undertaken in the United States". The buildings became a National Historic Landmark two years later. The United States Department of the Interior wrote in its report that the center was "one of the most successful urban planning projects in the history of American architecture".
  Columbia University was not making enough money from Rockefeller Center leases by the 1970s, since a series of negotiations with Rockefeller Center Inc. (now Rockefeller Group) had effectively reduced the annual lease payment to $11 million. The university's funds had dwindled so much that by 1972, their expenses were paid for by their endowment fund. In 1983, Columbia University started looking to sell the land beneath Rockefeller Center. Two years later, Columbia agreed to sell the land to the Rockefeller Group for $400 million. The Rockefeller Group immediately set out to modernize many aspects of the complex. The Rainbow Room was closed for a $20 million restoration and expansion that brought the restaurant's floor area to 4,500 square feet (420 m²), and it reopened in December 1987. The RCA Building's observation deck was subsequently closed because the Rainbow Room's expansion eliminated the only passageway to the observatory's elevator bank. In mid-1988, the RCA Building was renamed the GE Building.
  Mitsubishi Estate, a real estate company of the Mitsubishi Group, purchased the Rockefeller Group in 1989. Seven years later, in July 1996, the entire complex was purchased by a consortium of owners that included Goldman Sachs (which had 50 percent ownership), Gianni Agnelli, Stavros Niarchos, and David Rockefeller, who organized the consortium. Before the sale was even completed, the consortium sold 1,600,000 square feet (150,000 m²) of space in 30 Rockefeller Plaza to NBC, who had rented that space in the tower since the beginning. Tishman Speyer, led by Jerry Speyer, a close friend of David Rockefeller, and the Lester Crown family of Chicago, bought the original 14 buildings and land in 2000 for $1.85 billion. Owing to the decline of the newsreel theater i
caption: Rockefeller Center's landmark plaque
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