Radio City Music Hall is an entertainment venue located in Rockefeller Center in New York City. Nicknamed the Showplace of the Nation, it was for a time the leading tourist destination in the city. Its interior was declared a city landmark in 1978, and the venue is notable as the headquarters for the precision dance company, the Rockettes.
History
Planning
The construction of Rockefeller Center occurred between 1932 and 1940 on land that John D. Rockefeller Jr. leased from Columbia University. The Rockefeller Center site was originally supposed to be occupied by a new opera house for the Metropolitan Opera. By 1928, Benjamin Wistar Morris and designer Joseph Urban were hired to come up with blueprints for the house. However, the new building was too expensive for the opera to fund by itself, and it needed an endowment, and the project ultimately gained the support of John D. Rockefeller Jr. The planned opera house was canceled in December 1929 due to various issues, but Rockefeller made a deal with RCA to develop Rockefeller Center as a mass media complex with four theaters. This was later downsized to two theaters.
Samuel Roxy Rothafel, a successful theater operator who was renowned for his domination of the city's theater industry, joined the center's advisory board in 1930. He offered to build two theaters: a large vaudeville "International Music Hall" on the northernmost block with more than 6,200 seats, and the smaller 3,500-seat "RKO Roxy" movie theater on the southernmost block. The idea for these theaters was inspired by Roxy's failed expansion of the 5,920-seat Roxy Theatre on 50th Street, one and a half blocks away. Roxy also envisioned an elevated promenade between the two theaters, but this was never published in any of the official blueprints.
In September 1931, a group of NBC managers and architects went to tour Europe to find performers and look at theater designs. However, the group did not find any significant architectural details that they could use in the Radio City theaters. In any case, Roxy's friend Peter B. Clark turned out to have much more innovative designs for the proposed theaters than the Europeans did.
Roxy had a list of design requests for the Music Hall. First, he did not want the hall to have either a large balcony over the box seating, or rows of box seating facing each other, as implemented in opera houses. This resulted in a "tiered" balcony system where several shallow balconies were built at the back of the theater, cantilevered off the back wall. Second, Roxy specified that the stage contain a central section with three parts, so that the sets could be changed easily. Roxy also wanted red seats because he believed it would make the theater successful. He wished for an auditorium with an oval shape because contemporary wisdom held that oval-shaped auditoriums had better acoustic qualities. Finally, he wanted to build at least 6,201 seats in the Music Hall so it would be larger than the Roxy Theatre. There were only 5,960 audience seats, but Roxy counted exactly 6,201 seats by including elevator stools, orchestra pit seats, and dressing-room chairs.
Despite Roxy's specific requests for design features, the Music Hall's general design was determined by the Associated Architects, the architectural consortium that was designing the rest of Rockefeller Center. The Radio City Music Hall was designed by architect Edward Durell Stone and interior designer Donald Deskey in the Art Deco style. Stone used Indiana Limestone for the facade, as with all the other buildings in Rockefeller Center, but he also included some distinguishing features. Three 90-foot-tall (27Â m) signs with the hall's name on it were placed on the facade, while intricately ornamented fire escapes were installed on the walls facing 50th and 51st Streets. Inside, Stone designed 165-foot-long (50Â m) Grand Foyer with a large staircase, balconies, and mirrors, as well as a 2,400-square-foot (220Â m2) mural by Ezra Winter that depicted a fable from a Native American tribe in Oregon. Deskey, meanwhile, was selected as part of a competition for interior designers for the Music Hall. He had reportedly called Winter's painting "God-awful" and regarded the interior and exterior as not much better. In order to make the Music Hall presentable in his opinion, Deskey designed upholstery and furniture that was custom to the Hall. Deskey's plan was regarded the best of 35 submissions, and he ultimately used the rococo style in his interior design.
The International Music Hall later became the Radio City Music Hall. The names "Radio City" and "Radio City Music Hall" derive from one of the complex's first tenants, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), who planned a mass media complex called Radio City on the west side of Rockefeller Center.
Construction and early years
Construction on Radio City Music Hall started in December 1931, and the hall topped out in August 1932. In November 1932, Russell Markert's American Rockets (later to be known as the Rockettes) stopped performing the Roxy Theatre and announced that they would be moving to the Music Hall. By then, Roxy was busy adding music acts in preparation for the hall's opening at the end of the year.
The Music Hall opened to the public on December 27, 1932, with a lavish stage show featuring Ray Bolger, Doc Rockwell and Martha Graham. The opening was meant to be a return to high-class variety entertainment. However, the opening was not a success: the program was very long, spanning from 8Â p.m. to 2Â a.m. of the next day, and a multitude of acts were crammed onto the world's largest stage, ensuring that individual acts were lost in the cavernous hall. As the premiere went on, audience members, including John Rockefeller Jr, waited in the lobby or simply left early. Some news reporters, tasked with writing reviews of the premiere, guessed the ending of the program because they left beforehand. Reviews ranged from furious to commiserate. The film historian Terry Ramsaye wrote that "if the seating capacity of the Radio City Music Hall is precisely 6,200, then just exactly 6,199 persons must have been aware at the initial performance that they were eye witnesses to [...] the unveiling of the world's best 'bust'". Set designer Robert Edmond Jones resigned in disappointment, and Graham was fired.
On January 11, 1933, after incurring a net operating loss of $180,000, the Music Hall converted to the then-familiar format of a feature film, with a spectacular stage show that Roxy had perfected. The first film shown on the giant screen was Frank Capra's The Bitter Tea of General Yen, starring Barbara Stanwyck, and the Music Hall became the premiere showcase for films from the RKO-Radio Studio. The film-plus-stage-spectacle format continued at the Music Hall until 1979, with four complete performances presented every day.
Nearing bankruptcy
By the 1970s, changes in film distribution made it difficult for Radio City to secure exclusive bookings of many films; furthermore, the theatre preferred to show only G-rated movies, which further limited their film choices as the decade wore on.
By January 1978, the Music Hall was in debt, with officials stating that it could not remain open after April. Alton Marshall, president of Rockefeller Center, announced that due to a projected loss of $3.5 million for the upcoming year Radio City Music Hall would close its doors on April 12. Plans for alternate uses for the structure included converting the theater into tennis courts, a shopping mall, or the American Stock Exchange. Upon hearing the announcement, Rosemary Novellino, Dance Captain of the Radio City Music Hall Ballet Company, motivated a group of dedicated colleagues and friends to form The Showpeople's Committee to Save Radio City Music Hall. Joining forces with the media and political allies, including New York Lt. Gov. Mary Anne Krupsak, they challenged the Rockefeller establishment, against all odds, to save "The Showplace of the Nation". A monologue by Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show, an irate commentary on Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update" given by John Belushi, local news, "The Today Show", and perhaps most importantly, an appearance by Showpeople's Committee members Rosemary Novellino and Ron Hokuff on "The Tomorrow Show" with Tom Snyder mobilized love for the Music Hall nationally.
Following the closure announcement, the interior was made a city landmark in March. On April 8, four days before the planned closing date, the Empire State Development Corporation voted to create a nonprofit subsidiary to lease the Music Hall. Plans for a 20-story mixed-use tower above the Radio City Music Hall were announced that month, with rents from the proposed tower providing the necessary funds to keep the hall open, although an alternative involving transferring the hall's air rights to another building in the complex was also privately discussed. The office building plans were recommended in a draft study that was published in February 1979. On May 12, 1978, Radio City Music Hall was placed on The National Register of Historic Places. Regular film showings at Radio City ended in 1979. In 1980, after a renovation, it reopened to the public.
Recent years
Radio City Music Hall is currently leased to and managed by The Madison Square Garden Company. Movie premieres and feature runs have occasionally taken place there such as the Harry Potter film series, but the focus of the theater throughout the year is now on concerts and live stage shows, and the Radio City Christmas Spectacular continues to be an important annual event (see below). The Music Hall has presented most of the leading pop and rock performers of the last 30 years, as well as televised events including the Grammy Awards, the Tony Awards, the Daytime Emmy Awards, the MTV Video Music Awards, and the NFL Draft.
Starting in 2013, however, the Tony Awards was the only major televised awards ceremony at Radio City, as the Video Music Awards relocated permanently to the Barclays Center that year. (The Grammys, which alternated between New York City and Hollywood, has been held since 2004 in Los Angeles, as have the Daytime Emmys, off and on, since 2006.)
In 2017, the Music Hall's dance troupe faced some controversy when it was announced they would perform at the inauguration of Donald Trump as President of the United States. The announcement prompted calls on social media for boycotts of the Rockettes and the Music Hall.
Design
Exterior
The music hall is located on the east side of Sixth Avenue between 50th and 51st Street. Located in a niche under the neighboring 1270 Avenue of the Americas, the Music Hall is housed under the building's first setback on the seventh floor. Its exterior is notable for a long marquee sign that wraps around the corner of 6th Avenue and 50th Street, as well as narrower, seven-story-high signs on the north and south ends of the marquee's Sixth Avenue side; both signs display the hall's name in neon letters. The hall's exterior also has visual features signifying the building's purpose. Above the entrance, Hildreth Meiere created six small bronze plaques of musicians playing different instruments, as well as three larger metal and enamel plaques signifying dance, drama, and song; these plaques denote the theater's theme. At one point, a tennis court was located on the theater's rooftop garden.
Interior
Inside is a "majestic" grand foyer, the large and lavishly decorated main auditorium, and a series of stairs and elevators that lead to levels of mezzanines. Designed by Edward Durell Stone, the interior of the theater with its austere Art Deco lines represented a break with the traditional ornate rococo ornament associated with movie palaces at the time. The radiating arches of the proscenium united the large auditorium, allowing a sense of intimacy as well as grandeur.
The interior decor was created by designer Donald Deskey. Deskey's geometric Art Deco designs incorporate glass, aluminum, chrome, and leather in the ornament for the theater's wall coverings, carpet, light fixtures, and furniture. Circular light fixtures are set into the ceiling of the ticket lobby, while the grand lobby contains two long, tubular chandeliers created by Edward F. Caldwell & Co.. He commissioned textile designers Marguerita Mergentime and Ruth Reeves to create carpet designs and designs for the fabrics covering the walls. Reeves's original carpet design contained colorful musical motifs and was replaced in 1999, while Mergentime produced geometric designs of nature and musicians for the walls and carpets, which still exist. Deskey also created his own carpet design consisting of "singing head" depictions, which still exists. Rene Chambellan produced six "playful" bronze plaques of vaudeville characters, which are located in the lobby just above the entrances to the theater. Chambellan commissioned several similar plaques on the auditorium doors' exteriors, which depict the types of performances in the Music Hall. He even designed the elevator doors with reliefs of musicians in an atypical representation, though the circular roundels inside the cabs themselves were designed by Edward Trumbull.
Auditorium
The auditorium itself is very large and striking. Architectural critic Douglas Haskell describes it thus: "The focus is the great proscenium arch, over 60 feet [18Â m] high and 100 feet [30Â m] feet wide, a huge semi-circular void. From that the energy disperses, like a firmament the arched structure rises outward and forward. The 'ceiling', uniting sides and top in its one great curve, proceeds by successive broad bands, like the bands of northern lights." In the hall's early years, the Federal Writer's Project noted that "nearly everything about the Music Hall is tremendous", with the hall hosting the world's largest orchestra; most expansive theater screen; heaviest proscenium arch used in a theater; and "finest precision dancers", the Rockettes. It has around 5,960 seats for spectators, and additional seating can be placed on the pit elevator during events that do not require that space bringing the seating capacity to over 6,000.
The auditorium's ceiling is ringed with telescoping bands, the "northern lights" Haskell described, and each of the bands' edges containing a 2-foot (0.61Â m) overlap with each other. In Joseph Urban's original plans, the ceiling was to be coffered, but after the cancellation of the Opera House, designers proposed many different designs for the proposed Music Hall's ceiling. The current design was put forth by Raymond Hood, who incidentally derived his band-system idea from a book that Urban had written. The walls are covered by intricate fabric silhouette patterns of performers and horses, which were created by Reeves.
The Great Stage, designed by Peter B. Clark, measures 66.5 by 144Â ft (20.3 by 43.9Â m), and resembles a setting sun. Roxy reportedly envisioned the sunset design of the stage while traveling home from Europe on an ocean liner. There is a complicated system of indirect cove lighting at the front of the stage, facing toward the audience. When the Music Hall was first opened, it was equipped with all of the newest lighting innovations at the time, including lights that changed colors automatically and adjusted their own brightness based on different lighting levels in the theater.
Offstage
The offstage area of the Music Hall contains many rooms that allow all productions to be prepared on-site. The offstage rooms include a carpenter's studio, a scene shop, sewing rooms, dressing rooms for 600 people, a green room for performers' guests, and a dormitory.
Its system of elevators was so advanced that the U.S. Navy incorporated identical hydraulics in constructing World War II aircraft carriers; according to Radio City lore, during the war, government agents guarded the basement to assure the Navy's technological advantage. This elevator system was also designed by Peter Clark, and was built by Otis Elevators.
Art
The public areas of the Music Hall feature the work of many Depression-era artists. The large mural in the grand foyer is entitled "Quest for the Fountain of Eternal Youth" and was painted by Ezra Winter. The murals on the wall of the grand lounge, which depict five eras of differing theater scenes, are collectively known as the "Phantasmagoria of the Theater" by Louis Bouche. Three female nudes cast in aluminum were commissioned for the music hall, but Roxy thought that they were inappropriate for a family venue. Although the Rockefellers loved the sculptures, the only one that was displayed on opening night was "Goose Girl" by Robert Laurent, which is located on the first mezzanine and depicts a nude aluminum girl beside a slender aluminum goose. Since opening night the other two sculptures have been put on display at the Music Hall. "Eve" by Gwen Lux is displayed in the southwest corner of the grand foyer, and "Spirit of the Dance" by William Zorach is visible from the grand lounge.
Each of the public restrooms have adjoining lounges that display various works of art. The third-floor women's restroom contains the Panther Mural by Henry Billings, which is accompanied by Deskey's abstract wall coverings in the women's lounge. The women's lounge on the second mezzanine houses Yasuo Kuniyoshi's oil painting of "larger-than-life botanical designs" along the entire wall, which had originally been commissioned by Georgia O'Keeffe before she suffered a nervous breakdown and left the mural incomplete. Deskey created a wall covering for the men's lounge on the second mezzanine, containing masculine icons and nicotine motifs. He also designed the first-mezzanine women's lounge, a room full of mirrors with a blue-and-white carpet and frosted low-intensity lights. Witold Gordon painted a map with caricatures and stereotypical motifs in the men's lounge on the same floor, as well as a "History of Cosmetics Mural" in the women's lounge on ground level. Stuart Davis created an untitled mural of masculine stereotypical pastimes in the ground-floor men's lounge, which was transported to the Museum of Modern Art in 1975 and loaned back to the Music Hall in 1999. Finally, Edward Buk Ulreich created a "Wild West Mural" on the third-mezzanine men's lounge.
Usage
Concerts
American new wave band Devo performed at Radio City Music Hall on October 31, 1981 during their New Traditionalists tour. According to an interview with band member Gerald Casale, at the beginning of the show, the crowd could see nothing but the venue's empty stage with the backing track of the "NuTra Theme" playing. Then, the full "Aztec temple with treadmills" stage "rose out of the basement like an aircraft carrier".
Christmas show
The Radio City Christmas Spectacular is an annual Christmas stage musical produced by MSG Entertainment, which operates the Music Hall. A New York Christmas tradition since 1933, it features the women's precision dance team known as The Rockettes. Additional companies of Rockettes also tour every holiday season, bringing the show to theaters around the country. In addition, the program features appearances of Santa Claus.
Cirque du Soleil: Zarkana
The Radio City Music Hall also hosted the Cirque du Soleil show "Zarkana". It stopped playing on September 2, 2012 in order to prepare for the 2012 Christmas Spectacular.
Television
In November 1988, the theater played host to two weeks of Wheel of Fortune, which was taking its first road trip. Saturday Night Live announcer Don Pardo announced during the two weeks. The Mighty Wurlitzer organ (see above) was used to play the show's theme song, "Changing Keys", throughout each episode, except at the end. It played host to the show again in November 2003 for the nighttime show's 4,000th episode, and again in November 2007 for the nighttime show's 25th anniversary.
In March 1994, the Lyons Group (parent company of Barney & Friends at the time), taped a live stage show, called Barney Live in New York City at the theater. It was released on home video in August of the same year, and was aired on various PBS stations throughout the country during 1994's Summer and Holiday pledge drives. It was the largest Barney & Friends stage show of its time.
In October 2001, the concert Come Together: A Night for John Lennon's Words and Music was simulcast live from the theater on The WB and TNT.
The theater was also the site for Jeopardy!'s 4,000th episode as well as for its Million Dollar Masters invitational tournament in May 2002. It was used again in November 2006 for a 2-week Celebrity Jeopardy! event.
America's Got Talent
In 2013-2015, the NBC summer reality television talent show America's Got Talent broadcast the lives rounds of its competition from the stage of the Music Hall. It was announced that the move to Radio City Music Hall was because of Howard Stern, who wanted the live shows to take place in New York City.
Sports
The first sports event at Radio City Music Hall was a boxing card headlined by Roy Jones Jr. and David Telesco that took place on January 15, 2000.
The WNBA's New York Liberty played six home games while their regular home, Madison Square Garden, prepared to host the 2004 Republican National Convention. The Liberty played their first game in front of 5,945 fans against the Detroit Shock in July 2004. Courtside seats were stage left and stage right along the baseline and the Rockettes performed at half-time. These games marked the first time Radio City had hosted a professional sporting event since the Roy Jones Jr. boxing match held in 2000. Radio City Music Hall was the site of the NFL Draft between 2006 and 2014.
On April 13, 2013 Nonito Donaire faced Guillermo Rigondeaux in a boxing card held at Radio City Music Hall.
Gallery
References
Notes
Sources
Further reading
External links
- Official website
- Radio City Music Hall at Cinema Treasures
- Radio City Music Hall collection of the papers of James Stewart Morcom and John William Keck, 1926-1994, held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
- Radio City Music Hall collection of the designs of James Stewart Morcom and John William Keck, 1933-1979, held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts