By the late 20th and early 21st centuries, it primarily hosted concerts, including by leading pop and rock musicians, and live stage shows such as the Radio City Christmas Spectacular.

According to architect Henry Hofmeister, a single level of steeply raked stadium seating would likely have been used in a larger auditorium, quoting a theatrical proverb: "A house divided against the performer cannot stand.

[56] In November 1932, Russell Markert's précision dance troupe the Roxyettes (later to be known as the Rockettes) left the Roxy Theatre and announced that they would be moving to Radio City.

[57][58] Radio City Music Hall opened to the public on December 27, 1932, with a lavish stage show featuring numbers including Ray Bolger, Ronnie Mansfield, Doc Rockwell, Martha Graham, The Mirthquakers, The Tuskegee Choir and Patricia Bowman.

[66] The film historian Terry Ramsaye wrote that "if the seating capacity of the Radio City Music Hall is precisely 6,200, then just exactly 6,199 persons must have been aware at the initial performance that they were eye witnesses to [...] the unveiling of the world's best 'bust'".

[85] Van Schmus subsequently hired Serge Sudeikin, Albert Johnson, and Boris Aronson as the theater's art directors, under senior producer Leon Leonidoff.

[115] Radio City closed temporarily in 1963 due to fears of a power failure, and the first full-day closure in its history took place on November 26, 1963, following the assassination of John F.

[126][127][128] As a result, popular films such as Chinatown, Blazing Saddles, and The Godfather Part II failed Radio City's screening criteria.

The theater's management donated a painting by Stuart Davis to the Museum of Modern Art to reduce Radio City Music Hall's tax burden.

[112] Radio City's managers attempted to draw patrons by using the stage for rock concerts, pop festivals, and telecasts of boxing matches.

[137][144][146] Rockefeller Center president Alton Marshall announced that, due to a projected loss of $3.5 million for the upcoming year, Radio City Music Hall would close on April 12.

[129][143][146] One proposal included converting the theater into tennis courts, a shopping mall, an aquarium, a hotel, a theme park, or the American Stock Exchange.

[155] In April, just a few days before the planned closing date, the Urban Development Corporation (UDC) voted to create a nonprofit subsidiary to lease Radio City.

[163] Davis Brody Associates had designed a 31-story office and hotel building that was to be cantilevered over the theater, with an entrance carved out of Radio City's Sixth Avenue lobby.

[171] The parent company, Radio City Music Hall Productions (a subsidiary of Rockefeller Center Inc.), started creating or co-creating films and Broadway shows such as Legs and Brighton Beach Memoirs.

[172] The Rockefeller family and Columbia University acknowledged that the buildings were already symbolically landmarks, but their spokesman John E. Zuccotti recommended that only the block between 49th and 50th Streets be protected.

[191] Cuomo subsequently announced Radio City would reopen that June, without capacity limits or mask restrictions, but only to patrons who had received a COVID-19 vaccine.

[192][193] Development firm Tishman Speyer submitted proposals to the LPC to construct a 24,000-square-foot (2,200 m2) rooftop terrace on Radio City Music Hall, as well as a pedestrian bridge to 1270 Avenue of the Americas.

[207][208][209] Designed by Edward Durell Stone,[44] the theater had Art Deco decoration, whose sharp lines represented a break with the traditional ornate rococo ornament associated with movie palaces at the time.

[45] Deskey's geometric Art Deco designs incorporate glass, aluminum, chrome, bakelite, and leather;[100][210] these materials are used in the theater's wall coverings, carpet, light fixtures, and furniture.

[219] The advance sales lobby, accessible from 50th Street just east of Sixth Avenue, contains a single ticket booth on the eastern wall.

[222] Chambellan commissioned several plaques on the auditorium doors' exteriors, which resemble the vaudeville representations in the lobby and depict the types of performances that have taken place at Radio City.

[223] A 1932 New York Times article described the reasons for such varied designs: "Since the auditoriums, men's lobbies, smoking rooms and women's lounges are used for a few hours only, decorative schemes are appropriate in them that would be too dramatic for a home.

[235] The public areas of Radio City feature the work of many Depression-era artists, who were commissioned by Deskey as part of his general design scheme.

[236] The large 2,400-square-foot (220 m2) mural in the grand foyer, "Quest for the Fountain of Eternal Youth", was painted by Ezra Winter and depicts a fable from a Native American tribe in Oregon.

[203][246] The women's lounge on the second mezzanine houses Yasuo Kuniyoshi's oil painting of "larger-than-life botanical designs" along the entire wall,[203][247] which had originally been commissioned by Georgia O'Keeffe before she suffered a nervous breakdown and left the mural incomplete.

[264] In the 1980s, Liberace grossed $2.5 million from 14 performances with a combined audience of 82,000, setting a box-office record for Radio City Music Hall at the time.

[268] The Irish dance show Riverdance made its North American debut at Radio City in March 1996, breaking box-office records.

[282] AGT would broadcast its live rounds from Radio City Music Hall until Stern's departure in 2016, after which the show moved to the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

[283] The first sports event at Radio City Music Hall was a boxing card headlined by Roy Jones Jr. and David Telesco that took place on January 15, 2000.