page_title: Rockefeller Center
section_title: Critical review
hierarchical_section_title: Rockefeller Center / Critical review
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Panoramaaufnahme vom der oberen Aussichtsplattform Top of the Rock auf dem GE Building im Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, New York. Unter anderem zu sehen sind von links nach rechts das Chrysler Building (hinter dem MetLife Building), Manhattan Bridge, Brooklyn Bridge, Verrazano-Narrows-Brücke (am Horizont), MetLife Tower (mit der weiss beleuchteten Spitze), das Empire State Building (in rot grüner Weihnachtsbeleuchtung) und das Condé Nast Building (mit dem großen Mast). Die untere Aussichtsplattform mit ihrer gläsernen Barriere ist am rechten Rand zu sehen. English: Panoramic image looking south from the upper deck of the 'Top of the Rock' observation deck on Rockefeller Center. Lower deck is visible on the right edge of the frame. Français&#160;: Image panoramique en regardant vers le sud depuis la terrasse supérieure "Top of the Rock" du Rockefeller Center. La terrasse inférieure est visible sur la droite.
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: In its earliest years, Rockefeller Center received largely negative and pessimistic reviews from architectural critics. The most cynical opinion came from architectural scholar Lewis Mumford, who so hated the "weakly conceived, reckless, romantic chaos" of the March 1931 plans for Rockefeller Center that he reportedly went into exile in upstate New York. He blamed John Rockefeller Jr. for the complex's "inability to consider a new type of problem in any form except the skyscraper stereotype". Mumford's view of the complex was only marginally less negative when he revisited the issue in December 1933: he said that it could be "large, exciting, [and] romantic" at night, but that "a mountain or ash heap of the same size would do the trick almost as well, if the lights were cleverly arranged". Ralph Adams Cram, who adhered to a more classical architectural style, also had a pessimistic view of the plans unveiled in March 1931. He called the plan for Rockefeller Center "an apotheosis of megalomania, a defiant egotism" arising from an ostentatious display of wealth, and said that "the sooner we accomplish the destiny it so perfectly foreshadows, the sooner we shall be able to clear the ground and begin again". Douglas Haskell, who formerly edited Architectural Forum magazine, wrote that Rockefeller Center's ambiance was "gray, unreal, baleful".
  The urban planner Le Corbusier had a more optimistic view of the complex, expressing that Rockefeller Center was "rational, logically conceived, biologically normal, [and] harmonious". He wrote that although Rockefeller Center would inevitably be disorganized in its earliest years, it would eventually adhere to a certain "order", and he also praised the complex for being a paragon of "noble" and "efficient" construction. The writer Frederick Lewis Allen took a more moderate viewpoint, saying that negative critics had "hoped for too much" precisely because Rockefeller Center had been planned during an economically prosperous time, but was constructed during the Depression. Even though Allen thought that the art was mediocre and the opportunities for a less lively complex were wasted, he stated that Rockefeller Center had an aura of "festivity" around it, unlike most other office buildings in America. Sigfried Giedion wrote in his book Space, Time and Architecture that Rockefeller Center's design was akin to a "civic center" whose design represented the 1930s version of the future. Henry Luce, the founder of Time Inc., said in 1941 that Rockefeller Center represented "the true world of tomorrow", as opposed to the 1939 New York World's Fair, whose "World of Tomorrow" representations "are today junk piles under the winter snow". Novelist Gertrude Stein said in 1935, "The view of Rockefeller Center from Fifth Avenue is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen."
  By the 1940s, most critics had positive views of Rockefeller Center. Even Mumford praised the complex, lamenting in 1947 that the new headquarters of the United Nations on First Avenue had no "human scale" or "transition from the intimate to the monumental", whereas Rockefeller Center's buildings "produce an aesthetic effect out of all proportion to their size". Haskell wrote in 1966 that Rockefeller Center's designers "seemed to have regarded urban life as an enhanceable romance". In 1969, the art historian Vincent Scully wrote, "Rockefeller Center is one of the few surviving public spaces that look as if they were designed and used by people who knew what stable wealth was and were not ashamed to enjoy it." The New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation commissioned a report in 1974 entitled "Grand Central Terminal and Rockefeller Center: A Historic-Critical Estimate of Their Significance", in which they concluded that Rockefeller Center, along with Central Park and Grand Central Terminal, were the only three developments that could slow down Manhattan's "remorseless process of expansion and decay". In 1976, New York Times architectural critic Paul Goldberger wrote, "What makes Rockefeller Center work is 
caption: View of New York City looking south from 30 Rockefeller Plaza's observatory, Top of the Rock, in December 2005
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