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Rockefeller Center

A black and white photograph taken at night from a high vantage point diagonally across from Rockefeller Center. The main central skyscraper (the RCA Building) is surrounded by the lower buildings of the project. The buildings are illuminated by floodlights from the exterior and a random assortment of the windows glow with light from the interior. The windows of other city buildings twinkle in the background and disappear into a gray haze. In the lower left foreground are the darkly silhouetted spires of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.

Samuel Gottscho
Rockefeller Center and RCA Building from 515 Madison Ave, 1933
Gottscho-Schleisner Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.

Hood’s slender, superbly elegant RCA Building presented the synopsis of his career: he used the gray limestone cladding of the Chicago Tribune, the symmetrical site planning of his Providence Civic Centre and École projects, the readable structure of McGraw-Hill, and the strong verticalism and staggered setbacks of the Daily News.

Raymond Hood’s skyscrapers and unexecuted visions arose just as the gospel of modern architecture began to spread from central Europe, bringing with it a defined and limited formal vocabulary and a strong sense of moral superiority.

Hood, in contrast, stood for a joyful, irreverent, undogmatic modernity that embraced ornament, color and light, variety and contrast, and occasional historical references, while being structurally sound, useful, and attentive to the needs of his clients.