30 Rockefeller Plaza / Top of the Rock

Overview

30 Rockefeller Plaza is a skyscraper that forms the centerpiece of Rockefeller Center in Midtown Manhattan. Completed in 1933, the 66-story, 850 ft (260 m) building was designed in the Art Deco style by Raymond Hood, Rockefeller Center's lead architect. 30 Rockefeller Center was formerly known as the RCA Building from its opening to 1988 and as the GE Building from 1988 to 2015. It was renamed the Comcast Building in 2015, following the transfer of ownership to new corporate owner Comcast. The building's name is sometimes shortened to 30 Rock, a nickname that inspired an NBC sitcom of the same name.

The tallest structure in Rockefeller Center, the building is the 28th tallest in New York City and the 60th tallest in the United States. 30 Rockefeller Plaza houses the headquarters and New York studios of television network NBC; the Rainbow Room restaurant; and an observation deck called Top of the Rock. 30 Rockefeller Plaza also contains numerous artworks commissioned as part of the building's construction.

Form and facade

1250 Avenue of the Americas, formerly also known as the RCA Building West, serves as the western annex of 30 Rockefeller Plaza. The building is accessed mainly from Sixth Avenue. It is made of the same material as the original RCA Building, with a similar design.

Features

The eastern tower contains the Rainbow Room restaurant on the 65th floor, while the Rockefeller family office occupied the tower's 54th through 56th floors until 2014. The tower also serves as the headquarters of NBC, and houses NBC Studios, NBC News, MSNBC, and network flagship station WNBC. From 1937 onward, the top of the tower also contained 24-foot-tall (7.3 m) neon letters spelling "RCA", though these were later replaced by "GE" letters, and in 2014, replaced again with the new united Comcast/NBC logo, now rendered with longer-lasting LED lighting.

Rainbow Room

The 65th floor of the building is an event room and restaurant named the Rainbow Room, previously run by the Cipriani family. Opened in 1934, it was the first restaurant to be located in a high-rise building and remained the highest elevated restaurant in the United States for decades.

After a years-long restoration process it reopened to the public on October 5, 2014, with new owner-operator Tishman Speyer and chef Jonathan Wright at the helm. The renovation includes the landmarked dance floor and a new cocktail lounge called SixtyFive.

NBC Studios

The Comcast Building is well known for housing the headquarters of NBC, the New York facilities of NBC Studios, and NBCUniversal Cable.

The building's studios include Studio 8H, the home of Saturday Night Live. Studio 8H was once the largest radio studio in the world, originally home to the NBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Arturo Toscanini. It was converted into a television studio in 1950. The Tonight Show was also taped at the building in Studio 6B from the early Jack Paar years until 1972, when the show moved to Burbank, California. In 2014, The Tonight Show returned to Studio 6B with its latest incarnation, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Tonight's companion program, Late Night (branded Late Night with Seth Meyers as of 2020), shot in studio 8G, has been produced from the building since it began in 1982. The relocation of Tonight to New York in 2014 brought the two shows under one roof for the first time.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "30 Rockefeller Plaza", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0