LEGO Rockefeller Center, Instructions Manual, Page: 9 / 60

The Music Hall was planned by a consortium of
three architectural fi rms, who employed Edward
Durell Stone to design the exterior. At the urging of
Junior’s wife Abby, the interior design was assigned to
Donald Deskey, an exponent of the European Modernist
style and innovator of a new American design aesthetic.
Deskey, who believed the place could be enhanced by
sculpture and murals, commissioned various arists to
create elaborate works for the theater. The Music Hall seats
6,000 people and after an initial slow start became the
single biggest tourist destination in the city. Its interior was
declared a New York City landmark in 1978. Painstakingly
restored in 1999, the Music Hall interior is one of the world’s
greatest examples of Art Deco design.
The Center Theatre, seating 3,500 people, was
located at the Southeast corner of Sixth Avenue and
49th Street. Originally designed as a movie palace in
1932, it later achieved fame as a showcase for live musical
ice-skating spectacles. It was demolished in 1954, the
only building in the original Rockefeller Center complex
to have been torn down. The Center Theatre was
originally called the RKO Roxy Theatre and opened on
December 29, 1932. It was intended as a smaller sister
to the 6,000-seat Radio City Music Hall one block away,
which at fi rst did not show fi lms. A successful lawsuit
in 1933 by the owners of the original Roxy Theatre on
Seventh Ave., claiming ownership of the “Roxy” name,
caused the new theater to be re-named the RKO Plaza.
After its demolition, the Center Theatre was
replaced by a 19-story offi ce building.
Radio City Music Hall at 50th Street and Avenue of the Americas.
(Image: Rockefeller Center)
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