Associated Press Building (New York City, New York)

 office building, high-rise, press / news agency, 1938_construction, commercial building

228-foot, 15-story Art-Deco office building completed in 1938. Designed by The Associated Architects for the Associated Press, 50 Rockefeller was also for many years the home to many news agencies, press bureaus and other journalistic practitioners. The only building in the Center built out to the limits of its lot line, 50 Rock took its shape from main tenant’s need for a single, undivided, loft-like newsroom as large as the lot could accommodate. At one point, four million feet of transmission wire were embedded in conduits on the building’s 4th floor.

The building has abutting 5-story wings on the north and south. The main slab, with its central entrance on Rockefeller Plaza, is recessed by one bay between the corner wings; above the wings the slab is flanked on the north and south by a slightly recessed, slightly lower 2-bay-wide portion. The 1st-3rd-floor levels on the Rockefeller Plaza facade are given over to triple-height bays, two each of windows on the lower wings, and two each of windows in the center of the slab, flanked a central entranceway. The triple-height window bays in the north wing have structural black glass lintels in their central portions.

The central entrance comprises two bronze-framed revolving doors flanked central paired doors, rising above which is the 2-story stainless-steel sculpture of "News" by Isamu Noguchi’s. The design, selected from a competition conducted by Rockefeller Center managers, depicts the various forms of communications used by journalists in the 1930s. The entrance is slightly recessed, and on the narrow side-walls thus formed are triple-height bronze grilles. Besides this main entrance, each wing has a subsidiary single-story entrance set between its two triple-height windows.

The remainder of the slab and its wings is articulated with typical vertical window-spandrel bays set between limestone piers; the spandrels, vertically ridged, are also limestone. The window bays in the wings rise to decorative pier and roof line terminations, as do those in the slab. Two floors of bays at the top of the slab hold metal grilles instead of windows.

On the 51st Street facade, the 5-story wing continues down the street, with the slab rising behind and above it. It has triple-story window bays at the base and a central recessed entrance in the same configuration. Most of the triple-window bays retain their structural black glass lintels. The entrance includes two bronze-framed revolving doors, and is framed by a triple-height band of diagonally-set, vertical bronze slats. There is a smaller window to the left of the entrance, and a service door to the right.

The 50th Street facade is treated identically to the 51st, but in place of a central entrance there is the entrance to the former Guild Theater, with a modern marquee. The theater closed in 1999 and was remodeled into retail space. Three plate-glass display windows are located to the west and four to the east of the storefront entrance. The two westernmost bays of the ground floor open to the ramp of the Center's truck entrance. The western central wing that projects from the rear of the main slab of the building is visible from either street.

The ground floor is occupied by Anthropologie, and Del Frisco's Grille.

www.rockefellercenter.com/art-and-history/history/50-ro...