The building was announced in October 1929 (on the same day that Severance's 40 Wall Street, was, prematurely as it turned out, declared the winner over the rivalling Chrysler Building in an Evening Telegram article) and was followed through despite the descending Depression.

The 46-storey building has a rectangle base of white stone, from which the simple triple setbacks of mid-facade rise, with white stonework emphasizing each setback. Each section of the facade has spandrels of mid-tone brown stone -- as opposed to the light brown limestone of the vertical striping -- with differing decor.

The tower rises uninterrupted to the flat top at 160 m, the top floors having small openings and nichés of almost ornamental nature.

The 43-storey building was dubbed the "shadowless skyscraper" due to its sleek form rising to the heights, enhanced by black terra cotta spandrels on its glazed white brick facade. The top of the tower houses a unique three-storey penthouse, originally the executive offices of Philip Morris International. There are such lavish facilities as a private elevator and a greenhouse available to the executives.

The lower portion of the building is clad in black marble with extensive decorative engravings.

The lobby has a decor of rose-colored marble from a French quarry. The ceiling is decorated with inlaid stars and a triple star-shaped crystal chandelier hangs from amidst.

The building's ground floor banking spaces have polished, creamy marble decor, and have housed the headquarters branch of the Merchants Bank of New York since the 1995 restoration. In the restoration the tellers were moved from the blocked window walls to the opposite side of the room, making the banking space brighter and more spacious.

The selling of the 26,100 m² building by RFR is in October 2002 in doldrums; with 19 percent vacancy and an additional fee of $19 million for the land to cover, the asking price $70 million is not likely to be met.

Designed by the renowned hotel architects (Sherry Netherland, Pierre) Schultze & Weaver, the 47-storey new hotel cost $42 million and was the largest in the world at the time of its completion. Crowning the luxurious and monumental hotel (2,200 rooms occupying a whole city block), the twin Waldorf Towers rise to 190.5 m, high above the 20 floors of the main hotel building.

The private apartments of the Waldorf Towers, which has its own entrance on 50th Street, has seen many famous tenants from the Duke of Windsor and Douglas MacArthur to "Lucky" Luciano. The presidential suite at the 35th floor has been the traditional staying place of the President of the United States while in New York City.

Building's base is of granite facing, and the upper facade is clad in brick and limestone. The towers are topped with stylized bronze-clad cupolas.

There are a number of lobbies running through the building, decorated with murals, and the Park Avenue lobby has the floor mosaic The Wheel of Life by Louis Rigal. The 3 m high clock in the central lobby originated from the 1893 Chicago World Fair and was subsequently bought by the Astor Family for the old hotel. The clock's eight-faced base is decorated with portraits of American presidents and Queen Victoria and the quarterly chime sound is copied from the London Westminster Cathedral's clock tower.

The 53-meter long Starlight Roof was in its heyday in the 1930s and 1940s a high-society meeting place, from which also regular radio broadcasts were sent. The room occupies the Park Avenue side setback and has floor-to-ceiling windows extending along the whole wall, as well as an outdoor terrace. The 6 m high ceiling of the room is covered with a grille and -- giving the room its name -- originally had a retractable roof.

The large hotel ballroom, the place for prominent galas and promotional parties, is four storeys high and several smaller ballrooms are adjoined to it. In all, the hotel's ballrooms could accomodate 6,000 people.

Built above the railway tracks leading to Grand Central Terminal, the hotel had also its own underground railroad siding and an elevator for direct entrance from private railway cars.

In 1999 the hotel underwent a $60 million renovation, restoring also the original lobby decor. Two years later, the Starlight Roof underwent a renovation, although the retractable roof of the original was not restored.

The name of the bank (founded in 1851) was derived from the author and diplomat Washington Irving as a means of gaining the new bank a stature of prestige. The bank moved to its new headquarters from the Woolworth Building further up the Broadway.

The building occupies a prominent plot at the corner of Broadway and Wall Street, next to the New York Stock Exchange, collecting of which cost a massive $10.25 million -- and on which Washington Irving earlier happened to have his lawyer's offices. The 1 Wall Street (Barnett, Haynes & Barnett, 1907), with its 18 floors, was the most notable structure on the plot to be demolished.

The 50-storey building rises unsetback for 20 storeys, whereupon the slim tower rises from setbacks to the flat top with the water tank at 195 m, somewhat similarly to the City Bank Farmers Trust Building's, a few blocks to the east. The white limestone facade has a sculptural treatment of inward-faceted window shafts on its east and west elevations.

The bank's role as an upper crust financial institution is especially reflected on its interior decoration. The entrance portals have a unique incised decor, but the 11 m high banking hall, drawing its inspiration from the Stockholm City Hall in Sweden, appropriately also called the Red Room, tops even that. Decorated by mosaicist Hildreth Meiere with glowing mosaics from Germany, covering 850 m² in all, it has the largest installation of mosaics carried out in modern times, helped by warehouse preassembly of the pieces. The mosaics on the walls shift gradually from red to the gold of the ceilings both with intricate golden veinlike patterns. The columns are of red marble and the floor is paved with red terrazzo. A similarly decorative entrance lobby has been since stripped of its decor, though. The elevator lobby has a ceiling mural by Kimon Nicolaides with the long-winded name "The Only Reason for Wealth is the Attainment of Beauty".

The top houses a three-storey high observation lounge with mosaic decor and colourful shells from the Philippines, identifiable from the outside by the single tall faceted windows on each facade. The private rooms at the top are a sumptuous corporate retreat.

In 1965, an addition by Smith, Smith, Haines, Lundberg & Waehler was built south of the original premises, in a roughly similar vertical style, albeit with more straightforward detailling.

In 1988 the Bank of New York took over the Irving Trust Co. and at the same time gained also the 1 Wall Street, although the bank changed its headquarters from the 48 Wall Street to 1 Wall only as late as in 1998.

The building was designated a landmark in March 2001, although the sumptuous spaces on the first floor had to be exempted from the designation due to their private use.

As first announced in October 1929, with the demolition on the site already underway, the building was to originally have a pyramidal top topping a notably taller, 71-storey tower of 282 meters, but eventually the realities of Depression forced changes to the plans: the original top floor arrangement was altered and the builders had to be content with an actual height of 226 m. (On the other hand, had the original plans been followed, by the time the building was completed in 1931, even its planned height would most definitely have been already surpassed.)

The strongly chamfered, 54-storey shaft of the building doubles the form of the 15-storey base, although the latter is also slightly trapezoidal, following the shape of the plot. The building is clad in white Alabama limestone, with the mid-portions of elevations formed by brickwork that has long since lost its original white colour.

Exterior decor includes sculptured themes as well as engraved details of historic or merely decorative nature.

The bronze doors are decorated with images of transport vehicles and the domed lobby has gold-toned travertine floor and a wealth of marble, mosaics and paintings. Sculptor David Evans created ideological and decorative items of bronze and nickel for the lobby. The main banking hall was reached from the lobby, with its red marble columns, through a grand staircase.

The building was originally connected across Exchange Place to the 55 Wall Street with a covered -- and later removed -- walkbridge.

The building houses 67,000 m² of space and is now part of the Witkoff Group's roster, but as of late 2003, Metro Loft Management is eying the building for purchase and subsequent residential conversion.

The building was originally called the AT&T Long Distance Building, and its 105,500 m² space housed the technical offices and equipment for company's transatlantic communications. When the Midtown headquarters building was sold to Sony in 1992, AT&T moved its head offices here.

The massive brick-clad "pyramid" facade has stripe motifs to enhance verticality, and the Church Street side of the facade is oblique in direction of the street.

In the entrance lobby, one wall is covered with a tiled map of the world and the ceiling has allegorical mosaic decor.

In 2000 the Rudin Organization bought the building for $100 million and undertook $140 million worth of renovation work. In 2004, the building, now known as the Global Connectivity Center, is facing auction block in the face of buyer interest.

The 48-storey building is clad in limestone and has spandrels of brown brick in the mid-facade striping. The building rises to the height of 171 m.

This 289.5-metre, Gothic-like, spire-topped skyscraper was the tallest building in the Downtown area until the completion of the World Trade Center. It also was to be the last skyscraper to be built in Financial District in the pre-WW II years. It took until 1960 that another tall skyscraper rose to the area, in the form of the Chase Manhattan Bank.

The Cities Service Company was a trust responsible for New York City's gas supply, as well as owning electric companies and street railways, and the building was designed to accordingly exude a sense of power. Limestone models (image) of the 67-storey building are carved on the central columns of both main entrances and the doors (image) are adorned with the agency's emblem, a triangle.

Above the granite-clad base, the brick tone of the tower lightens as it rises, until it sets back to a white-coloured top, like a snow cap on a mountain. The "mountain" had an open-air platform with an enclosed glass observatory above, offering undoubtedly the best views of Downtown before being closed from public.

At one time called the 60 Wall Tower due to a fifteenth-floor connecting bridge to a building at 60 Wall St., the name was discarded along with the 60 Wall wing and the bridge when the Cities Service Co. vacated the building.

Originally equipped with double-decker elevators -- ie. ones that serve two floors at the time -- in order to provide sufficient vertical service for the narrow tower, these were nevertheless removed due to their unpopularity. The Citicorp Center, however, adopted the idea in the 1970s, to maximize the core usage as well as an energy-conscious choice.

Today the 80,400 m² building is owned by the American International Group, an insurance company. The observatory at the top is still used, albeit only as an executive oasis during lunch hours...

The 31-storey, vertically striped limestone facade of the building faces Sixth Avenue with a single series of stepped set-backs on the lower facade.

The most notable, and undoubtedly well-known, feature of the facade is the entrance to neighbouring Radio City Music Hall (image by M. Immonen), the largest indoor theatre in the world, completed at the same time with the RKO Building. The interior design by Donald Deskey was the definitive expression of Art Deco in interiors. The interiors of the Hall are now a preserved landmark, complete with the original furniture and decor.

The building, the namesake building for the RKO film company (and where the first, private screening of Welles's Citizen Kane took place...), was later renamed simply by its street address as the 1270 Avenue of the Americas.

After sixteen months of work, this building became at 259 m the tallest in Rockefeller Center. The owner company moved into this simplified slab from its decor-topped Lexington Avenue tower and housed its National Broadcast Company and operations here.

Clad in white Indiana limestone, the 70-storey building's jagged form follows the zoning regulations imposed on high-rise buildings. Each setback also corresponds to a reduction in the amount of elevators, and thus in the total size of elevator shafts.

The construction of this building was made possible, from the legal point-of-view, by the combination of all of the land in Rockefeller Center into one zoning lot, so that there was enough "air" space around the building.

The "economy" of the 195,200 m² building impressed even the hardened businessmen who rented the office space to various tenants: no rentable area was off the maximum (profitable) distance from the windows; it was also Hood's aim to provide every workroom with direct natural lightning. The building housed at the time of its completion the largest floor area of any commercial building hitherto.

The 65th floor houses the stylish Rainbow Room restaurant with generous views over Midtown. For decades the terraced open-air observatory was open to the public, until the expansion of the restaurant and its adjoining Rainbow Grill bar lounge necessitated the closing of the rooftop facility in 1986.

After almost a twenty-year wait, the observatory will be reopened in 2005. The new facility by Gabellini Associates will feature "Top of the Rock", a 67th floor indoor observatory and two outdoor levels at 69th and 70th floor -- the latter offering all-round panoramic views -- as well as a new three-level entrance and exhibition space on 50th street.

The Art Deco decoration of the building follows the heroic and mythical themes, combined with praise of modernity and visualized in form of classical figures at work or gods and goddesses of specific virtues. The Rockefellers, in fact, employed the mind of consultant philosopher Hartley Burr Alexander who defined the ideological theme for the Center. In the niché above the entrance is Lee Lawrie's relief Genius. The lobby artwork was originally to be commissioned from such heavyweights as Matisse and Picasso, but eventually Jos� Maria Sert made the murals American Progress and Time, whereas Diego Rivera's mural incorporating Lenin as "the leader of the worker's movement" was too much, leading to its removal...

At the foot of the building is the sunken plaza, originally planned as an entrance to the center's subway station. As the construction of the subway station was delayed, the plaza was lined with below-grade luxury shops. In 1936, to divert attention from the commercial failures of the retailers, the plaza was first turned into a public roller rink and subsequently into a more upper class wintertime ice skating rink and a summertime café. Paul Manship's gilded bronze sculpture Prometheus lies above the fountain pool of the plaza. Every Christmas an illuminated giant spruce is erected on Rockefeller Plaza above the statue -- the first one was a 1931 construction workers' tree, a more down-to-earth decorated one too.

The flat roof between the main tower and the wing facing Sixth Avenue (the GE Building West) (image) houses a roof-top garden.

The building changed hands in 1986, when General Electric incorporated RCA, along with its subsidiary NBC. Ten years later, when the Center was bought by a group led by Goldman Sachs and Jerry Speyer, the condominium interest of the building was sold to NBC for $440 million.

This 156 m tall building is basically a scaled-down version of the RCA Building, with 41 storeys and similar multiple setbacks as its neighbour. The exterior of the building follows the uniform vertically striped, limestone-clad appearance of the rest of the original Center buildings.

In order to attract foreign investors and traders to the Center, Rockefeller conceived the idea of providing European nations with their "own" buildings there. All in all, the four outwardly similar low buildings facing Fifth Avenue were designated for that use.

The British Empire Building and Palais de France (or Le Maison Francaise), flanking the "Channel Gardens", were the first ones. After Italy and Germany also showed interest, the protruding lower wings of the International Building were also planned for similar use as Palazzo D'Italia (626 Fifth Ave.) and Deutsches Haus (636 Fifth Ave.), respectively. However, due to the breaking out of war in Europe the German constituent was cancelled and named International Building North instead.

Bronze sculptures The Italian Immigrant and Italia by Giacomo Manzu (Palazzo D'Italia) and bas-relief Youth Leading Industry by Attilia Piccirilli (north wing) adorn the wing entrances on the Fifth Avenue side.

Recessed between these wings stands Lee Lawrie's sculpture Atlas (1937), whose heroic appearance would have surely suited the planned fascist government tenants' official artistic style...

Design work was started in 1933 and, after Cass Gilbert's (Woolworth Building) death the next year, supervised by his son until its completion in 1936.

The six-storey base of the building is reminiscent of a Classical temple with its pilastered facades and colonnaded entrance, and rising from this is the sturdy 32-storey tower, topped by a pyramidal roof clad in gilded terra-cotta and a lantern.

The limestone-clad mass of the building lines Rockefeller Plaza at right angles with the nearby RCA Building, the tallest building in the Center.

The building is at the present called the 1 Rockefeller Plaza, and its original name has passed, along with the Time-Life publishing company, to the 1271 Sixth Avenue in the Center Extension.

Although built several years after the "original" Center was completed in 1940, the exterior follows the standard pattern of vertical limestone of the other Center buildings south of 51st Street.

The 32-storey building employs the simple slab form, with 10-storey wings on the east and west sides, and closes the view along Rockefeller Plaza to the north, unifying the surroundings even in that direction.

At the time of its completion, the building was the tallest completely air-conditioned building in New York City, and the first such in Rockefeller Center.

The high-ceiling entrance lobby has marble decor and glass-walls facing Rockefeller Plaza. The building was completed with the Schraff's, the most accommodating restaurant in the city with its over 1,200 seats, next to the lobby.

After Time-Life moved to the new Time-Life Building in the Rockefeller Center Extension, the building has been owned and occupied by the Time Warner publishing company.

The 25-storey building is fitted to the trapezoidal plot by stepping the mass along the diagonal line of Broadway. The limestone facing is broken in Rockefeller Center-style by the darker stripes of windows and spandrels.

The building houses 39,100 m² of space within and has one of the "cinematically" famous tops: the initials of the building owner and a large digital light screen displaying the air temperature. As of April 2006, the owner, Vornado Realty Trust, is selling both space and naming rights of the building -- with appropriate top signage -- to potential clients.

Clad entirely in limestone, the building's main mass forms a 27-storey tower rising set-back from the plot line, taking it behind the building line of the neighbouring St. Thomas's Church.

The northern portion of the Fifth Avenue frontage is taken by a 9-storey wing occupying the plot line and originally bordering a plaza in front of the tower.