Radio City Music Hall is an entertainment venue at 1260 Avenue of the Americas, within Rockefeller Center, in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Nicknamed the Showplace of the Nation, it is the headquarters for the Rockettes, the precision dance company. Radio City Music Hall was designed by Edward Durell Stone and Donald Deskey in the Art Deco style.
Radio City Music Hall was built on a plot of land that was originally intended for a Metropolitan Opera House, although plans for the opera house were canceled in 1929. It opened on December 27, 1932, as part of the construction of Rockefeller Center. The 5,960-seat Music Hall was the larger of two venues built for Rockefeller Center's "Radio City" section, the other being Center Theatre. It was largely successful until the 1970s, when declining patronage nearly drove the Music Hall to bankruptcy. Radio City Music Hall was designated a New York City Landmark in May 1978, and the Music Hall was restored and allowed to remain open. The hall was extensively renovated in 1999.
One of the more notable parts of the Music Hall is its large auditorium, which was the world's largest when the Hall first opened. The Music Hall also contains a variety of art. Although Radio City Music Hall was initially intended to host stage shows, it hosted performances in a film-and-stage-spectacle format through the 1970s, and was the site of several movie premieres. It now primarily hosts concerts, including by leading pop and rock musicians, and live stage shows such as the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. The Music Hall has also hosted televised events including the Grammy Awards, the Tony Awards, the Daytime Emmy Awards, the MTV Video Music Awards, and the NFL Draft.
Decline[]
Through the 1960s, the Music Hall was successful regardless of the status of the city's economic, business, and entertainment sectors as a whole. It remained open even as other theaters such as the Paramount and the Roxy closed. Even so, officials had intended to close down Radio City Music Hall in 1962, in what would become one of several such unheeded announcements. By 1964, the Radio City Music Hall was projected to have 5.7 million annual visitors, who paid ticket prices of between 99 cents and $2.75 (equivalent to between $6 and $18 in 2019). The hall had evolved to show fewer adult-oriented films, instead choosing to show films for general audiences. However, the Music Hall's operating costs were almost twice as high as those of smaller performance venues. In addition, with the loosening of regulations on explicit content, the Music Hall's audience was mostly relegated to families.
Radio City Music Hall was closed entirely for five days in early 1965 for its first-ever full cleaning, which included changing the curtains and painting the ceiling. Repairs were also performed on the hall's organs during the nighttime.
By the early 1970s, the proliferation of subtitled foreign movies had reduced attendance at the Music Hall. Changes in film distribution made it difficult for Radio City Music Hall to secure exclusive bookings of many films, and the Music Hall preferred to show only family-friendly movies, which further limited their film choices as the decade wore on. Popular films, such as Chinatown, Blazing Saddles, and The Godfather Part II, failed the Music Hall's screening criteria. By 1972, the Music Hall had fired the performers' unions as well as six of the thirty-six Rockettes. A painting by Stuart Davis was donated to the Museum of Modern Art to reduce Radio City Music Hall's tax burden. In 1977, annual attendance reached an all-time low of 1.5 million, a 70% decrease from the 5 million visitors reported in 1968.
Bankruptcy and threat of closure[]
By January 1978, the Music Hall was in debt, and officials stated 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 on April 12. Plans for alternate uses for the structure included converting the theater into tennis courts, a shopping mall, an aquarium, a hotel, a theme park, or the American Stock Exchange. Upon hearing the announcement, Rosemary Novellino, Dance Captain of the Radio City Music Hall Ballet Company, formed the Showpeople's Committee to Save Radio City Music Hall. The Committee consisted of an alliance between performers, the media, and political allies including New York lieutenant governor Mary Anne Krupsak. The public also made hundreds of calls to Rockefeller Center, and The New York Times described that the callers "jammed the switchboards" there. The Rockettes also protested outside New York City Hall.
Following the closure announcement, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) designated the interior as a city landmark on March 29. This designation was contested, and Rockefeller Center Inc. unsuccessfully filed a lawsuit to try to reverse the landmark designation. 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. One month later, on May 12, Radio City Music Hall was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Plans for a 20-story mixed-use tower above the Radio City Music Hall were announced in April 1978, with rents from the proposed tower providing the necessary funds to keep the hall open. 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. The office building was ultimately not built, and Rockefeller Center Inc. instead decided to restore Radio City Music Hall to its original condition. The renovation of the Music Hall started in April 1979. In 1980, the hall reopened to the public. Regular film showings at Radio City ended, and live shows were cut back to holiday showings only. Around this time, the Music Hall started creating its own music concerts. Prior to the reopening, the Music Hall was rented to music concerts, but had never hosted a concert that it created.