Rockefeller Center is located on one of Columbia University’s former campuses. The center occupies 22 acres in total, with some 17 million square feet of office space. The first edifice was opened in September 1932, and most of the complex was completed by 1935. Four towers were built along the west side of Sixth Avenue in the 1960s and 1970s.
About Construction of Rockefeller Center in brief
Rockefeller Center is located on one of Columbia University’s former campuses. The center occupies 22 acres in total, with some 17 million square feet of office space. The construction project employed more than 40,000 people and was considered the largest private construction project at the time. The first edifice was opened in September 1932, and most of the complex was completed by 1935. The Center Theatre from the original complex was demolished in 1954. Four towers were built along the west side of Sixth Avenue in the 1960s and 1970s, which was the most recent expansion of Rockefeller Center. In 1686, much of Manhattan, including the future Rockefeller Center site, was established as a \”common land\” of the city of New York. The land remained in city ownership until 1801, when the physician David Hosack, a member of the New York elite, purchased a parcel of land in what is now Midtown for USD 5,000, equivalent to USD 77,000 in 2019 dollars. In 1814, the trustees of Columbia. University gave the land to the state legislature for funds when the legislature unexpectedly gave the former college’s. gardens to the St. Patrick Estate. The gardens became part of Columbia’s Upper Estate when the college moved its entire campus to the Upper Estate by 1827. Although Columbia’s trustees did not see the land as helpful or attractive, the land’s value did not increase to any meaningful amount until the late 1850s when the value of the land was $100,000 (USD 75,000 today) The land is bounded by Fifth Avenue to the east, Sixth Avenue to the west, 48th Street to the south, and 51st St to the north.
It is also known as the Elgin Botanic Garden, the country’s first public botanical garden, on the site in 1804. The garden would operate until 1811, when Hosack put the land on sale for USD 100,000 ). As no one was willing to buy the land, the New. York State Legislature eventually bought the land for $75,000. The land would not become developed until the 1830s, and the value would not increase until the 1850s, when it was valued at $50,000 (£40,000) The site is now home to the Museum of Modern Art and the New Museum of Nature and Science, as well as the Metropolitan Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Opera. The Metropolitan Opera’s opera house was built on the former Columbia site in 1928. The Met was unsure about moving there and the Wall Street Crash of 1929 put an end to the plans. A late change to the proposal included a complex of internationally themed structures along Fifth Avenue. The final three buildings were built between 1936 and 1940, although Rockefeller Center was officially completed by November 2, 1939. It had cost the equivalent of USD 1.5 billion in2019 dollars to construct. An additional building at 75 Rockefeller Plaza was constructed in 1947, while another at 600 Fifth Avenue was built in 1952.
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This page is based on the article Construction of Rockefeller Center published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 19, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
