Design
Radio City has 5,931 seats for spectators, and additional seating can be placed on the pit elevator during events that do not require that space bringing the seating capacity to over 6,000; it became the largest movie theater in the world at the time of its opening.
Designed by Edward Durell Stone, the interior of the theater with its austere Art Deco lines represented a break with the traditional ornate rococo ornament associated with movie palaces at the time. The radiating arches of the proscenium united the large auditorium, allowing a sense of intimacy as well as grandeur. The interior decor was created by designer Donald Deskey. Deskey's geometric Art Deco designs incorporate glass, aluminum, chrome, and leather in the ornament for the theater's wall coverings, carpet, light fixtures, and furniture. His work borrowed heavily from the European Modern aesthetic style, of which he was the foremost exponent in the United States.
The Great Stage, designed by Peter Clark, measures 66.5 by 144 ft (20.3 by 44 m), and resembles a setting sun. Its system of elevators was so advanced that the U.S. Navy incorporated identical hydraulics in constructing World War II aircraft carriers; according to Radio City lore, during the war, government agents guarded the basement to assure the Navy's technological advantage. This elevator system was also designed by Peter Clark, and was built by Otis Elevators.
Read more about this topic: Radio City Music Hall
Famous quotes containing the word design:
“Humility is often only the putting on of a submissiveness by which men hope to bring other people to submit to them; it is a more calculated sort of pride, which debases itself with a design of being exalted; and though this vice transform itself into a thousand several shapes, yet the disguise is never more effectual nor more capable of deceiving the world than when concealed under a form of humility.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life ... for fear that I should get some of his good done to me,—some of its virus mingled with my blood.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“You can make as good a design out of an American turkey as a Japanese out of his native stork.”
—For the State of Illinois, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)