May 17, 1930…Construction Begins On Rockefeller Center

Of the 21 buildings on 15 acres in midtown New York, that make up Rockefeller Center, none are more famous than Radio City Music Hall, and the home of NBC…30 Rockefeller Plaza.

In the construction photo, we see in the center, the excavated footprint of 30 Rock. Notice, it is bracketed on the 6th Avenue side by two small buildings, which are still there today. The building on the right is now a 9 West store, but the building on the left was much more important…that was NBC Studio 1H, better know as Hurley’s Bar.

The bar had been here since 1892, and had always done well, even during prohibition when a florist shop was used to disguise the bar and it’s new back door.

In 1930, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. had begun aggressively buying up acres and acres of midtown property, right in the middle of Fifth Avenue’s most exclusive district, for a seemingly implausible project: Rockefeller Center. One by one he purchased buildings from Fifth to Sixth Avenue between 48th and 51st Streets. In the stranglehold of the Great Depression, few property owners could resist the offer to convert real estate to cash.

But among the few were John F. Maxwell, grandson of John F. Boronowsky who owned the three story building (right in photo) at the north end of the block from Hurley’s and, of course, the feisty Irishmen themselves. In June 1931 Maxwell sent word to Rockefeller that he would not sell “at any price.”

Construction began on the gargantuan Art Deco complex on May 17, 1930. The block of 49th to 50th Streets, Sixth Avenue to 5th Avenue was demolished, leaving only the two brick Victorian buildings standing on opposite corners of a devastated landscape.

The RCA Building—70 stories tall—rose around Hurley’s, diminishing the bar building only in height. But nothing in New York City is permanent and in 1979, Hurley’s was sold. Journalist William Safire spoke for New Yorkers in an article mourning the loss. The mahogany bar was removed to a Third Avenue restaurant and, as Nancy Arum wrote in her letter to New York Magazine that year “a pretend old-fashioned bar now stands where the real old-fashioned bar once was.”

The pretend old-fashioned bar took the name Hurley’s and, most likely, tourists never noticed the change. But proximity, tradition, or habit still brought the Rockefeller Center workers and celebrities into the bar until September 2, 1999. That night owner Adrien Barbey served the last glass of beer in the bar that had stood at Sixth Avenue and 49th Street for 102 years.

Hurley’s Bar was just a half a block away from NBC’s studio entrance, making it the nearest watering hole for everyone from stars to stage hands. It became the favorite for radio, television, newspaper, and sports celebrities as well as tourists and midtown workers.

Liz Trotta noted “You never knew who would be standing next to your lifting elbow at Hurley’s. Jason Robards, Jonathan Winters, jazz musicians from the local clubs, “Tonight” show stars, starlets, football players, the lot.”

The night Jack Paar walked off the “Tonight” show, he went straight to Hurley’s and the asked that the phone on the bar…a direct line to NBC, be taken off the hook.

Johnny Carson helped make the Hurley name nationally familiar while he did his show live from Rockefeller Center. It was the bar in all of his Ed McMahon drinking jokes. David Letterman did several on-air visits to the bar. NBC technicians haunted the place so regularly that among themselves it was known as Studio 1H.

Thanks to “Tonight” show lead cameraman, Kurt Decker, I have experienced a sense of the old Hurley’s, at a very similar bar called Playwrights, and have bent an elbow with him at the new Hurley’s too. In honor of today’s 86th Anniversary of Rockefeller Center…Cheers! -Bobby Ellerbee

There is much more here, and on the photos. http://alokv.tripod.com/plan_port/rc519.html

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