November 2006

November 1, 2006

Rockefeller Center Skating Rink

Rockefeller Center, an Art Deco masterpiece, began construction in 1931 and was designated a landmark in 1989. Occupying several blocks between 48th and 51st Street and Fifth and Sixth Avenue on land that John D. Rockefeller, Jr. originally leased from Columbia University, Rockefeller center is the largest privately owned commercial complex in the world.

Paul Manship's famous statue of Prometheus dominates this photo and is a recognizable symbol of Rockefeller center. A mythological Titan trickster seems to me a somewhat appropriate symbol for the heart of New York's commercial center. Prometheus had the temerity to deceive the gods for the glory of mankind, stealing fire and becoming the patron of human civilization. New York itself would seem to bait the diety similarly, reaching outrageously heavenward and scraping the skies. Perhaps Icarus would be a more fitting representative for the city's engineering marvels, but the Rockefeller Center's Prometheus inaugurates a brief period in the city's history where art and commerce had a more amicable relationship than they do these days, and the idea of fire--intellectual and creative--makes sense. Rockefeller Center itself benefitted greatly from a very 1930s program of "public art," seen not just in this sculpture but in Lee Lawrie's Atlas sculptures and in Diego Rivera's (tragically rejected) frescoes for the RCA Building.