Abstract

Architecture

The article presents information about the architecture of the New York Hilton Hotel at Rockefeller Center, New York City, New York, a hotel whose location is something of an exaggeration, since it stands on Sixth Avenue between 53rd and 54th Streets, a small walk from the Rockefeller ice skating rink. The new building, from what can be scan from the street and from neighboring buildings, is a gigantic, pleasantly gaudy slab of hotel rooms that slices up into the sky from a substantial, windowless base. This wide base evidently contains the public rooms, banquet facilities, lobbies, ballrooms, etc, and the contrast of its simple bulk with the beehive above is not only logically convincing, but also quite graceful. Its massing has, at any rate, a straightforward, diagrammatic feeling, and that seldom happens in hotels, or in other Manhattan, New York buildings.