Radio City Music Hall, "Showplace of the Nation", opens in New York City.
Radio City Music Hall is an entertainment venue at 1260 Avenue of the Americas, within Rockefeller Center, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Nicknamed "the Showplace of the Nation", it is the headquarters for the Rockettes, the precision dance company. Radio City Music Hall was designed by Edward Durell Stone and Donald Deskey in the Art Deco style.
Radio City Music Hall was built on a plot of land that was originally intended for a Metropolitan Opera House, although plans for the opera house were canceled in 1929. It opened on December 27, 1932, as part of the construction of Rockefeller Center. The 5,960-seat Music Hall was the larger of two venues built for Rockefeller Center's "Radio City" section, the other being Center Theatre. It was largely successful until the 1970s, when declining patronage nearly drove the Music Hall to bankruptcy. Radio City Music Hall was designated a New York City Landmark in May 1978, and the Music Hall was restored and allowed to remain open. The hall was extensively renovated in 1999.
One of the more notable parts of the Music Hall is its large auditorium, which was the world's largest when the Hall first opened. The Music Hall also contains a variety of art. Although Radio City Music Hall was initially intended to host stage shows, within a year of its opening it was converted into a movie palace, hosting performances in a film-and-stage-spectacle format through the 1970s, and was the site of several movie premieres. It now primarily hosts concerts, including by leading pop and rock musicians, and live stage shows such as the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. The Music Hall has also hosted televised events including the Grammy Awards, the Tony Awards, the Daytime Emmy Awards, the MTV Video Music Awards, and the NFL Draft.