Rockefeller Centre & Fith Avenue

Photos >> Holidays >> New York Xmas '07 >> Rockefeller Centre & Fith Avenue
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Fifth Avenue is a major thoroughfare in the center of the borough of Manhattan in New York City. Lined with expensive park-view real estate and historical mansions, it is a symbol of wealthy New York. Between Thirty-fourth and Fifty-ninth streets, it is also one of the premier shopping streets in the world, on par with Oxford Street in London and the Champs-Élysées in Paris. It's also home to the Rockefeller Centre (with its "the top of the rock" observatory) and St. Patrick's Cathedral as well as the Empire State Building and the New York Public Library. Radio City Music Hall and other New York features are also within walking distance.
 
 
Rockefeller Center is a complex of 19 commercial buildings covering 22 acres between 48th and 51st Streets in New York City. Built by the Rockefeller family, it is located in the center of Midtown Manhattan, spanning between Fifth Avenue and Seventh Avenue. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1987. It is the largest privately held complex of its kind in the world, and an international symbol of modernist architectural style blended with capitalism.
 
St. Patrick's Cathedral is the largest decorated Neo-Gothic-style Catholic cathedral in North America. It is the seat of the archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, and a parish church, located on Fifth Avenue between 50th and 51st streets in Manhattan. It faces Rockefeller Center.
 
 
 
The Radio City Music Hall was completed in December, 1932. At the time it was the largest and most opulent theater in the world. Its original name was the International Music Hall but was changed to reflect the new technology of the time - radio. One of the complex's first and most important tenants was RCA, hence the other name the Center itself was dubbed was "Radio City."
 
 
 
 
The Time-Life Building, located at 1271 Avenue of the Americas (6th Avenue) in Rockefeller Center in New York is an historically important building opened in 1959 and designed by the Rockefeller family's architect Wallace Harrison, of Harrison, Abramovitz, and Harris. The building was the first expansion of Rockefeller Center west of the Avenue of the Americas and is credited with launching the renaissance of this area, as well as to the redevelopment of Rockefeller Center itself.
 
 
 
 
 
$1 million in pennies. Wow! That is expensive art! This art installation holds approximately 100 million pennies collected by students in New York city. I will have to admit to seeing silver-coloured coins in the mix. But I imagine that those were added later by the visitors to the exhibit.
 
 
The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree is an annual tradition in New York City's Rockefeller Center, and is lit in early December or late-November. The tree, usually a Norway spruce 75 to 90 feet (23 to 27 m) tall, has been put up since 1931.
 
 
The skating rink is another famous part of Rockefeller. Since it first opened on Christmas Day, 1936, the Rink has attracted over a quarter million people each year. The Rink is open from October to April. The skating surface is 122 feet long and 59 feet wide and can accommodate only 150 skaters at one time.
 
Prometheus at Rockefeller Center. Paul Manship's highly recognizable bronze gilded statue of the Greek legend of the Titan Prometheus recumbent, bringing fire to mankind.
 
 
 
 
 
 
The tree is supported by four guy wires attached at its midpoint, and by a steel spike at its base. Scaffolding is put up around the tree to assist workers in putting up 30,000 lights attached to 5 miles (8 km) of wiring. The star that has topped the tree since 2004 is 9.5 feet (3 m) in diameter and weighs 550 pounds (249.5 kg).
 
 
The centerpiece of Rockefeller Center is the 70-floor, 872-foot (266 m) GE Building at 30 Rockefeller Plaza ("30 Rock") - formerly known as the RCA Building - centered behind the sunken plaza. The building is the setting for the now famous photograph taken by Charles C. Ebbets in 1932 of workers lunching on a steel beam without harnesses. The 850 feet drop lies below.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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