Rockefeller Center

There’s something special about every moment you spend at Rockefeller Center. Because these experiences can only happen here, this is the epicenter of everything in New York. And it delivers every time.

Amid the Great Depression, in 1931, demolition workers in the area where Rockefeller Center would be built pooled their money to buy a 20-foot-high Christmas tree adorned with homemade garlands and even tin cans. It stood as a symbol of American persistence even during tough economic times. In 1933, a publicist was inspired by that first tree and decided to make this an official yearly tradition.

Rockefeller Center is a 22-acre multipurpose complex of 19 commercial and entertainment buildings located between 48th and 51st streets and between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in the heart of Manhattan. It is one of the city’s most-visited tourist attractions and a national historic landmark.

Originally built between 1929 and 1940, Rockefeller Center began as a 12-acre complex of 14 Art Deco limestone buildings between Fifth and Sixth avenues. The complex was commissioned by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., of the famed Rockefeller family—principally to house a new home for the Metropolitan Opera, a building move later canceled because of the financial straits of the Great Depression—and designed by a team of architects headed by Henry Hofmeister, H.W. Corbett, and lead designer Raymond Hood. Although much criticized in its early days, Rockefeller Center has since been a model for other such urban developments.