A curving stairway will connect this storefront space to the concourse below and mezzanine above. To isolate visitor traffic from the office tenants at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, a separate ground-floor entrance will be created on 50th Street. The architect is Michael Gabellini of Gabellini Associates. Seeing the revenue potential in restoring the observation roof and packaging it with other Rockefeller Center attractions like the skating rink, the NBC Studios and Radio City Music Hall, Tishman Speyer started planning Top of the Rock in the summer of 2001. "I get that request every few hours," said Daniela Galli, the concierge for Rockefeller Center, who works at the main information desk in the lobby of 30 Rock, formerly the RCA Building, now the G.E. In any case, it is fondly enough remembered or eagerly enough imagined that visitors to Rockefeller Center have never stopped asking after it. Its lower elevation also gave visitors the appealing sense of being suspended among the pinnacles of the skyline, rather than above them. Never as heavily trafficked as the Empire State observatory, the Rockefeller Center rooftop felt more like a sanctuary than a tourist attraction. "It will be a great place to view the Empire State Building," she said. Ruth, the director of public relations for the building, welcomed the prospect of a reopened observation roof at Rockefeller Center. The Empire State Building observation deck, 200 feet higher and $1 cheaper, drew about 3.5 million visitors last year. Tishman Speyer expects that the revamped observation roof - now styled Top of the Rock - will draw two million visitors a year, or 20 times as many as it did in 1986 when it was closed to accommodate an expansion of the Rainbow Room. Even during the snowstorm on Tuesday, there was a majesty to this place, lost in a howling whiteness through which Midtown's familiar spires and plateaus were recognizable only as ghostly gray shadows. Near the northern horizon, the Tappan Zee Bridge can be glimpsed at a turn in the Hudson River. Charles de Gaulle surveyed New York from this spot, asking a French-speaking "Centerette" guide to point out Harlem, Central Park, Fifth Avenue and Coney Island.Ĭoney Island is still visible, marked on the southern horizon by the T-shaped profile of the Parachute Jump. In July 1944, on a triumphal visit as the tide of World War II was changing, Gen. Escalators will take them higher yet, to outdoor terraces on the 69th floor, shielded from the wind by new eight-and-a-half-foot-high glass barriers.īut the 70th-floor summit, 850 feet above the street, will still be completely open to the elements, commanding a 360-degree perspective interrupted only by an 18-foot sphere at the west end that houses weather-watching radar apparatus.įrom this spot in May 1936, New Yorkers witnessed the arrival of the dirigible Hindenburg after its 60-hour voyage from Germany, at the outset of regular trans-Atlantic service that would end a year later with the Hindenburg's destruction. Then visitors will board elevators with glass ceilings and watch the ascent along illuminated shafts to the 67th floor, where they will find indoor observation areas. Their few minutes of waiting can be spent viewing exhibits that trace the history and construction of the center, including documentary films, photographs and an original wooden model on which 30 Rock stands more than eight feet tall. Visitors will know in advance what time they will be admitted. "We want tourists to experience Rockefeller Center in an extraordinary way from the moment they arrive." "We don't want this experience to be just about the view," said Rob Speyer, a senior managing director of Tishman Speyer Properties, co-owners of Rockefeller Center with the Crown family of Chicago. Having closed as New York City's third highest observatory in May 1986, it will return as the second highest, through a circumstance that could not have been imagined then.Īnd it will return with a few extra features. The observation roof atop 30 Rockefeller Plaza is going to reopen after a $75 million revamping. (Try $14.) Those giant letters on the parapet now read "GE" instead of "RCA." And few New Yorkers will be able to look at the double void on the downtown horizon - just above the Grace Building, slightly to the right of Empire State - without remembering keenly what is not there.īut when the blanket of Central Park reddens this fall, there will be a familiar vantage from which to take it in. The $3.50 admission charge is a thing of the past. Deck chairs will no longer await visitors as if this were a front porch in the sky.
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