The Skyscraper Museum is devoted to the study of high-rise building, past, present, and future. The Museum explores tall buildings as objects of design, products of technology, sites of construction, investments in real estate, and places of work and residence. This site will look better in a browser that supports web standards, but it is accessible to any browser or Internet device.
TRIBUTE TO A MIRACULOUS MEGA-PROJECT
Thursday, May 8
6:30 PM
NYPL Donnell Library Auditorium
20 West 53rd Street between 5th & 6th Avenues
The Skyscraper Museum presents a cavalcade of New York scholars and story-tellers to
celebrate the 75th anniversary of the opening of Rockefeller Center and its 70-story signature
tower, the RCA Building/30 Rockefeller Plaza. Now considered the very heart of midtown and
beloved as a public space of architectural quality and urbanity, Rockefeller Center had a
complex and controversial early history. The enormous three-block, eleven-acre, fifteen-building
complex was a gigantic gamble that defied the New York model of high-rise development on single
sites. As a mega-project, Rockefeller Center is a surprising success.
How did it happen? Why does it work? Is it a model for 21st-century urbanism or an artifact of
an era of over-sized ambition that New Yorkers now reject? A panel of experts-eminent architects,
authors, and academics-explore a program of historical reflection, critical evaluation, and sheer
celebration of a unique New York landmark:
DANIEL OKRENT
Author, Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center
HILARY BALLON
Architectural historian and curator, "Robert Moses and the Modern City"
ALEX GARVIN
Principal, Alex Garvin & Associates
WILLIAM PEDERSEN
Architect and Partner, Kohn Pedersen Fox
JAMES SANDERS
Architect, author, and co-writer with Ric Burns, "New York: A Documentary"
CAROL WILLIS
Director, The Skyscraper Museum
Admission:
FREE for Museum and Corporate Members
Click here to learn about our membership program
$5 for Students/Seniors
$10 for Adults.
Please use the form to register:
E-mail programs[at]skyscraper.org or call (212) 945 6324 for more information.
With support from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency.
