1 Rockefeller Plaza

 office building, skyscraper, Art Deco (architecture), 1937_construction

489-foot, 34-story Art-Deco office building completed in 1937. Designed by The Associated Architects, it was the 11th building in the Rockefeller Center complex. This was the original Time & Life Building, before the publishing company moved west to 1271 Avenue of the Americas in 1959. Another original tenant was General Dynamics, for whom the building was briefly named after Time-Life moved. General Dynamics remained in the building until 1971 at which point the building name reverted to its street address.

The building, the 3rd-tallest of the original complex, is recessed back from the 49th Street property line, allowing it to rise sheer from the pavement. By contrast, the 48th Street facade is set back above the 10th floor. The structure set a new record for speed in skyscraper construction. Its steel frame was begun on September 25, 1936 and completed 43 working days later. It was not until late April 1938 that Time-Life occupied the seven upper floors and gave its name to the building.

It is clad in limestone with a grey granite water table. There are entrances on Rockefeller Plaza, and 48th & 48th Street, both topped by polychromed bas-reliefs. The north entrance, at the east end of the building, is recessed behind a small, bluestone-paved plaza with planters and patio seating for the restaurant in the ground floor. It has a revolving door flanked by two traditional glass doors, and is topped by Lee Lawrie's bas-relief symbolizing human progress. A black pegasus represents poetic "Inspiration", the brown eagle "Aspiration", and the grey-robed figure, "Progress". She holds a branch of bay in one hand, a pan of divine fire in the other. At the left of the composition are several stars, gilded as are all of the linear details on the relief (including the edges of its 3-tone brown clouds). To the west of the entrance are three storefront bays.

The south entrance, in the 2nd-from-easternmost of the five ground-floor bays, is very deeply recessed and topped by Attilio Piccirilli's only limestone relief at Rockefeller Center. It portrays the "Joy of Life" in which a young Bacchus, suspending gilded grapes above his head, sits oblivious to the tribulations of adult life around him. The two serene groups on either side are draped in brown. They stand with golden jugs against an amoeboid, light blue-green ground. The latter is highlighted with black and gold flowers; each of the seven figures has gilded hair. The storefront to the east of the entrance is narrower and taller than the other three, reaching the 2nd floor.

The west facade on Rockefeller Plaza has seven bays, with the recessed entrance in the middle and storefronts in the rest. This entrance is framed by Carl Paul Jennewein's figures of "Industry" and "Agriculture", their incised profiles uniformly gilded. Holding tools and resting an arm atop the limestone jambs, they look at each other across the expansive doorway. At the west part of the south facade, and most of the west facade (except for the north bay), the 2nd floor has square windows. The upper floors on all the facades have uninterrupted piers dividing bays of windows and black, ridged aluminum spandrels. The north and south facades are eight windows across, with the south elevation having an additional three windows at the east end. The west and east elevations have end bays of two windows and four center bays of three windows each; there is an extra bay of two windows at the south end, that ends at the 10th floor. Two flagpoles project from the center bay at the 4th floor on the west facade.

The tower rises 32 stories before tapering in at each side in a setback. Grey cast aluminum stepped terminations distinguish the lateral setbacks from the central tower with grey cast aluminum terminal foliage. A 7-story section at the east end links the tower to the Manufacturers Hanover Trust Building.

The large wooden sculptures by Carl Milles on the west wall of its lobby are home to one of Rockefeller Center’s most charming yet little-known features. Above the head of the woodsman in the middle piece of the triptych, a mechanical bird chirps every hour. The original bird in the featured role was a clarino, or Mexican thrush, that belonged to Bronx Zoo president Fairfield Osborn. After two other birds failed their auditions, NBC engineers were dispatched to Osborn’s house on East Sixty-First Street to record the clarino’s singing for posterity.

The ground floor is occupied by Morrell & Company wine bar & cafe, and Lodi restaurant on the north side, and By Beatnic vegetarian restaurant, and a Citibank branch on the south side.

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