One day in New York - back on track and through the heart of the city

To glance at people celebrating Easter click here - One day in New York - along Fifth Avenue 

We left the crowded Fifth Ave and all these celebrating people and walked around the block. We planned to discover new places and intended to stay on tracks (however bent these tracks were)... We walked deeper into the heart of Manhattan... The area where the tall skyscrapers are neighboring old five-seven story buildings. Many of these buildings were highly decorated and we also found a lot of Art Deco time landmarks. 

 

We moved slowly, constantly turning our heads 360 degrees and tried not to miss a bit ;)

 

We made a few more turns and finally entered the Rockefeller Plaza. We stopped there and looked at the GE Building - a very nice Art Deco style building. It was completed in 1933 as part of the Rockefeller Center. It was the first building constructed with the elevators grouped in the central core. During construction, photographer Charles Clyde Ebbets took the famous photograph Lunch atop a Skyscraper on the 69th floor (see the image in WiKi)... There is quite a story behind this picture, but who cares, right? :-)

The plaza in front of this building served many purposes in the past and on this sunny day it was a big skating rink. Everyone who wanted could skate there. It was a pity we didn't have time to do it too ;)

 

Take a look, how this plaza looked like in this nice warn April day:

But this building is famous not only for its skating rink, an observation deck and roof garden. Here are also some very nice murals in the lobby. During building construction, John D. Rockefeller and his son, John D. Rockefeller Jr., decided to have murals on the walls of the lobby, they wanted that the artworks there should have a unifying theme, New Frontiers, encompassing aspects of a modern society: science, labor, education, travel, communication, humanitarianism, finance and spirituality. By 1933 the committee was making lists of the most talented names to consider. Initially artists like Picasso and Matisse were candidates. But they were unavailable and would have been too expensive even for the Rockefeller family. Diego Rivera was also brought on board, but his work was removed and destroyed when he refused to alter a panel glorifying Lenin. Finally, Spanish-Catalan friend of Salvador Dali, Joseph Maria Sert was chosen for this job. Sert created “American Progress,” one of several murals he contributed. By the way, you can find his murals also in the Hotel de Ville in Paris, the Cathedral of Vic in Catalonia, the League of Nations in Geneva and, in New York, at the Waldorf-Astoria.

We went through the lobby and stopped at Avenue of the Americas looking on the other facade of the GE Building. We looked at the mosaics and reliefs on the walls and turned to the Radio City Music Hall, another great Art Deco style building and at the time it was promoted as the largest and most opulent theater in the world. What a pity we didn't have time to look inside, to see reach and nice Art Deco decorated interiors. But maybe next time we'll check it out.

Later we left Avenue of the Americas and returned back to Fifth Ave to see two great Gothic Revival style churches: Saint Thomas Church and Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church. They were amazing and we couldn't make ourselves leave this place for a while. But we had to, because there were too many tempting places in front of us :-)

We walked a couple of blocks and understood that we were tired and hungry. We needed to sit somewhere and have some rest. We found a nice atrium we could enter and hide from the wind. That was the public entrance and gathering place of IBM’s New York City headquarters. We liked this place a lot and had some fun there before we continued to explore Manhattan...

 

All the time walking there we had this weird feeling that we are in the movie or just dreaming. This familiar city looked so real and unreal at the same time... 

To take a break from the city and look at the Central Park click here - One day in New York - walking in Central Park or off the rails again ;)

Pictures were taken on April 20, 2014.