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April 7, 1932. "New York city views. Radio City from the Goelet Building." The beginnings of the RCA Building ("30 Rock"), with the almost-completed RKO Building as backdrop, amid the Midtown Manhattan construction project, known early on as Radio City, that would become Rockefeller Center. 5x7 inch acetate negative by Gottscho-Schleisner. View full size.
Radio City Music Hall fronts 6th Avenue, between W 50th and W 51st Streets. To the right of Radio City in the 1932 photo is the five-year-old, 25-story Park Central Hotel. It was and is located at 870 7th Ave, between W 55th and W 56th Streets. It's had its share of history. The Park Central has housed such figures as Jackie Gleason, Mae West, and Eleanor Roosevelt, who kept a suite there from 1950 to 1953. In 1928, Jewish gangster and well-dressed prototype of the modern don, Arnold Rothstein, was shot and fatally wounded in one of the suites. Mobster Albert Anastasia was assassinated in the hotel's barber shop on October 25, 1957. In 1933 silent-film actor Roscoe (Fatty) Arbuckle died of a heart attack in his sleep in his suite here. The hotel was also the venue for the National Football League Draft from 1980 to 1985.
No chance of seeing the Park Central from the Goelet Building today.
in its own right, the c.1930 Goelet Building was built adjacent to, and concurrently with the Center (and by some accounts intended to complement it architecturally).
How well it succeeded in fulfilling that intention is, I guess, open to interpretation, but I believe most would find it a handsome building.
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