Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center

Rating:
Summary: A Great Book
Review: GREAT FORTUNE is even better than its best reviews suggest. Its understanding of society and social history, of architecture and architectural history, its authority of research and elegance of style--its sheer fun!--make GREAT FORTUNE that rarity among modern books: a work one can read and read again. Okrent's portrait of the great Raymond Hood is alone worth the price of the book.

Rating:
Summary: Where's The Center of New York?
Review: I did not know. I'm from Chicago, and it has the Loop, which for my generation was clearly the center of the city. I visited New York for the first time about five years ago. A close friend decided to meet me there for a look around; he was born there.

So I figured we'd spend time in Times Square, maybe see Central Park. I was amazed at how large Manhattan Island was; it was like a dozen "Loop" districts strung end to end.

He took me to Rockefeller Center and I noticed how his mood changed. It was the center of New York, I saw - maybe even more than Times Square. It was a public gathering place of significance, a place where recreation, retail and work combined in a great harmony.

Why did a private person build New York's single most impressive and significant public space? Especially since, as an investment, it was dubious at best.

This book finally settles the question. Like many great ventures, it caromed off the padded banks of New York cultural politics. It started as an opera house, of all things, and then became everything BUT an opera house.

Personalities, money, power and above all, how to get things done. This is a great and unexpectedly funny book.

Rating:
Summary: Remarkable detail
Review: The story of Rockefeller Center is truly epic and in one way a history of New York in the twentieth century. A true behind the scenes look at the story of a complex and a city. The one drawback was the entire bankruptcy of the center was reduced to one paragraph in the Epilogue. It alone is worthy of a book.

Rating:
Summary: Moviestars
Review: When reading this book, it's quite easy to picture yourself a Hollywood movie, which fits the Rockefeller Center for the project is indeed a movie star in the New York City skyline. Okrent gives a dramatic and richly written insight in the way the Rockefeller Center came in to being, but to me he focuses a tad too much on the characters involved. Not the project itself is being treated like a movie star, but especially the great number of people involved, even if only indirectly. If you wouldn't know any better, you'd think Okrent must have been close personal friends to all characters. This is how one of the many characters is being introduced: "But of all people...no one was more important...then a slight, sandy haired former financial clerk from Westfield, New Jersey, who loved to dress in light blue, wore a thin, exquisitely trimmed moustache, lived in an apartment on Riverside Drive with his mother and sister, and was rarely happier than when he could stand in the wings of the Music Hall's vast stage and shout 'Shake it up for daddy, girls'".

The story is a good All American read, but if you are looking for more insight into the development and construction process and less drama, you'd probably prefer Karl Sabbagh's 'Skyscraper: The Making of a Building' or Jerry Adler's 'High-Rise: ...'.