Funded Scholarship
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2025
Publication Title
Architectural Theory Review
Abstract
Rockefeller Center has long been described as a city in miniature. The project’s aspirations to completeness have been discussed in a variety of terms, but most critics and historians focus on the contrast between the project’s cohesive visual language and the more varied urban landscape surrounding it. This preoccupation has led to blind spots in received understanding of this well-known project. This article focuses on little-known infrastructural and housing projects—some built, others not—that carry the Center’s history from the heart of Manhattan to the margins of the metropolis. To ensure financial viability, these projects mostly sought to pull wealthy, white commuters into the Center’s orbit, but they also reveal competing visions of urban and regional change among the Center’s architects and managers. Rockefeller Center provides a unique vantage point from which to consider the ways architecture exceeds the formal and visual preoccupations of most architects and architectural historians.
Recommended Citation
Watson, J. M. (2025). The Tyranny of Rockefeller Center: Architecture and Infrastructure in Greater New York. Architectural Theory Review, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/13264826.2025.2459940
