1260 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York. County/parish: New York.
Added to the National Register of Historic Places May 08, 1978. NRIS 78001880.
1 contributing building.Also known as:
Radio City Music Hall (also known as Radio City) is an entertainment venue and theater at 1260 Avenue of the Americas, within Rockefeller Center, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Nicknamed "The Showplace of the Nation", it is the headquarters for the Rockettes. Radio City Music Hall was designed by Edward Durell Stone and Donald Deskey in the Art Deco style.
Radio City Music Hall was built on a plot of land that was originally intended for an opera house for the Metropolitan Opera, plans for which were canceled in 1929. It opened on December 27, 1932, as part of the construction of Rockefeller Center. The 5,960-seat Music Hall was the larger of two venues built for Rockefeller Center's "Radio City" section, the other being the RKO Roxy Theatre (later the Center Theatre); the "Radio City" name came to apply only to Radio City Music Hall. It was largely successful until the 1970s, when declining patronage nearly drove the theater to bankruptcy. Radio City was designated a New York City Landmark in May 1978, and it was restored and allowed to remain open. The theater was extensively renovated in 1999.
Radio City's four-tiered auditorium was the world's largest when it opened. The theater also contains a variety of art. Although Radio City was initially intended to host stage shows, within a year of its opening it was converted into a movie palace, hosting performances in a film-and-stage-spectacle format through the 1970s, and was the site of several movie premieres. By the late 20th and early 21st centuries, it primarily hosted concerts, including by leading pop and rock musicians, and live stage shows such as the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. Radio City has also hosted televised events including the Grammy Awards, Tony Awards, the Daytime Emmy Awards, MTV Video Music Awards, and NFL draft, as well as university graduation ceremonies.
(read more...)National Park Service documentation: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/75319852