50 Rockefeller Plaza (formerly the Associated Press Building) is a 15-story building located at

Rockefeller Plaza Rockefeller Center is a large complex consisting of 19 commerce, commercial buildings covering between 48th Street (Manhattan), 48th Street and 51st Street (Manhattan), 51st Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The 14 original Art Deco ...

between 50th and 51st Streets in

Midtown Manhattan Midtown Manhattan is the central portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan and serves as the city's primary central business district. Midtown is home to some of the city's most prominent buildings, including the Empire State Buildin ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. Completed in 1938, the building is part of

Rockefeller Center Rockefeller Center is a large complex consisting of 19 commerce, commercial buildings covering between 48th Street (Manhattan), 48th Street and 51st Street (Manhattan), 51st Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The 14 original Art Deco ...

, which was built in the

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

style.

History

Rockefeller Center occupies three blocks in Midtown Manhattan bounded by Fifth and Sixth Avenues to the east and west, between 48th Street to the south and 51st Street to the north. By 1936, most of the complex had been completed. Rockefeller Center Inc. only needed to develop three empty plots in the middle of the complex's northern and southern blocks. Rockefeller Center's executives went into talks with the

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...

for a building on the northern empty lot, which was occupied by the complex's truck delivery ramp. The lot had been reserved for the Metropolitan Opera house, but the managers could not wait to develop the lot anymore, so in 1937, the opera plans were formally scrapped. The lot had also been planned as a hotel site, but this was also deemed economically infeasible. In January 1938, Associated Press agreed to rent the fourth through seventh floors of the structure, with the building to be named for the company. Construction of the steelwork started in April 1938, and after 29 working days, it was topped out by June. The Associated Press moved into the structure in December. The building, located at 50 Rockefeller Plaza, was built to the outer limits of its lot without any setbacks or rooftop gardens; it rose only 15 floors because of the 1916 zoning law and the paucity of other tenants. The presence of Associated Press and Time Inc. expanded Rockefeller Center's scope from strictly a radio-communications complex to a hub of both radio and print media. In 1938, the Associated Press opened the Guild, a newsreel theater, along the curve of the truck ramp below the building. In the late 2010s and early 2020s, Studio Mellone renovated the lobby of 50 Rockefeller Plaza. The lobby received black-terrazzo floors with brass detail; several pieces of artwork; curved limestone walls; and bronzed-steel urns.

Description

50 Rockefeller Plaza is located on the west side of Rockefeller Plaza between 50th and 51st Streets. The only building in the Center built to the outer limits of its lot line, the 15-story building took its shape from Associated Press's need for a single, undivided, loft-like newsroom as large as the lot could accommodate—namely, a blocky structure with no setbacks. At one point, of transmission wire were embedded in conduits on the building's fourth floor. The complex's truck ramp descends under the building from 50th Street, while the rear of the building is located next to the Radio City Music Hall. The building also contained the Guild Theater, a 450-seat newsreel theater, from 1938 to 1999.

Isamu Noguchi was an American artist and landscape architect whose artistic career spanned six decades, from the 1920s onward. Known for his sculpture and public artworks, Noguchi also designed stage sets for various Martha Graham productions, and several ...

's stainless steel panel, ''News'', is located above the building's entrance. His work, which depicts the various forms of communications used by journalists in the 1930s, honors the different occupations in the news industry. It is one of Noguchi's last abstract works as well as the only stainless steel work he ever commissioned.

References

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External links

* {{Midtown North, Manhattan Rockefeller Center Art Deco architecture in Manhattan 1938 establishments in New York City Office buildings completed in 1938