The complex is noted for the large quantities of art present in almost all of its buildings, its expansive underground concourse, its ice-skating rink, and its annual lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree.

[29] After the opera plans were canceled on December 6, 1929,[21][30][31] Rockefeller quickly negotiated with Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and its subsidiaries, National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO), to build a mass media entertainment complex on the site.

[47][48][45] The International Complex, announced in 1931, replaced an earlier plan for an oval retail building;[49][50][51] its name was derived by the British, French, and Italian tenants who eventually occupied it.

[97] A building for Associated Press on the northern block's empty lot,[98] which had been reserved for the Metropolitan Opera house,[99] was topped out by June 1938[100] and occupied by December of that year.

[101][4] The presence of Associated Press and Time Inc. expanded Rockefeller Center's scope from strictly a radio-communications complex to a hub of both radio and print media.

[119] Architectural historian Carol Herselle Krinsky describes the center as "the only large private permanent construction project planned and executed between the start of the Depression and the end of the Second World War".

[95][123] Seven of the complex's eight travel agencies had to move elsewhere because of the war, and William Rhodes Davis, a tenant who shipped oil to Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, was denied a lease renewal in 1941.

[124] After the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Rockefeller Center Inc. terminated all lease agreements with German, Italian, and Japanese tenants because their respective countries comprised the Axis powers, whom the United States were fighting against.

[143] Another problem befell Rockefeller Center's key tenants, NBC and RCA, who were approached by other developers with the promise of more leasable space, a commodity that was scarce in the fully leased complex.

[246] The 3,700-seat Center Theatre had a short massing (general shape) in place due to height restrictions at the time, which prohibited construction above theater auditoriums.

[276] It is a six-story standalone building with a limestone facade with a sixth-story setback, as well as a partial 1+1⁄2-story penthouse on the west half of the seventh story and a garden on the east side of the seventh-story roof.

[294] Unlike other buildings in the complex, 600 Fifth Avenue's ground level only contained one public entrance to maximize the ground-floor retail space,[295] which was originally leased by Swiss interests[296] and Pan Am Airlines.

[273] The plaza's main entrance is through the Channel Gardens, a 60-foot-wide (18 m), 200-foot-long (61 m) planted pedestrian esplanade running westward from Fifth Avenue between the British Empire Building and La Maison Francaise.

[335] In addition, Rockefeller Plaza is supported by a multi-level steel skeleton underneath, which houses the underground mall, storage rooms, and the complex's shipping and loading center.

Meanwhile, the pair of four-lane roadways was supposed to be located underneath the pedestrian mall, with delivery ramps leading to a 320-by-180-foot (98 by 55 m) central loading area 34 feet (10 m) below ground.

[213][367] The original bronze ornaments and lighting were replaced, air-conditioning was installed, two passageways were demolished, and both ground-level and underground retail spaces were refurbished as part of the renovation.

[375][377] Sculptor Lee Lawrie contributed the largest number of individual pieces – twelve, including the Atlas statue facing Fifth Avenue and the conspicuous friezes of Wisdom above the main entrance to 30 Rockefeller Plaza.

[385][386] Other artists included Carl Milles, Margaret Bourke-White, and Dean Cornwell, who executed the mural The History of Transportation in the lobby of the Eastern Airlines building (today 10 Rockefeller Plaza).

)[407] Rivera's fresco in the center was replaced with a larger mural by the Catalan artist Josep Maria Sert, titled American Progress, depicting a vast allegorical scene of men constructing modern America.

Containing figures of Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, it wraps around the west wall of 30 Rockefeller Plaza's Grand Lobby.

The most cynical opinion came from architectural scholar Lewis Mumford, who so hated the "weakly conceived, reckless, romantic chaos" of the March 1931 plans for Rockefeller Center that he reportedly went into exile in upstate New York.

Mumford's view of the complex was only marginally less negative when he revisited the issue in December 1933: he said that it could be "large, exciting, [and] romantic" at night, but that "a mountain or ash heap of the same size would do the trick almost as well, if the lights were cleverly arranged".

[333] The urban planner Le Corbusier had a more optimistic view of the complex, expressing that Rockefeller Center was "rational, logically conceived, biologically normal, [and] harmonious".

[410][413] He wrote that although Rockefeller Center would inevitably be disorganized in its earliest years, it would eventually adhere to a certain "order",[414][415] and he also praised the complex for being a paragon of "noble" and "efficient" construction.

[416][417] The writer Frederick Lewis Allen took a more moderate viewpoint, saying that negative critics had "hoped for too much" precisely because Rockefeller Center had been planned during an economically prosperous time, but was constructed during the Depression.

[418][416] Even though Allen thought that the art was mediocre and the opportunities for a less lively complex were wasted, he stated that Rockefeller Center had an aura of "festivity" around it, unlike most other office buildings in America.

[422] Even Mumford praised the complex, lamenting in 1947 that the new headquarters of the United Nations on First Avenue had no "human scale" or "transition from the intimate to the monumental", whereas Rockefeller Center's buildings "produce an aesthetic effect out of all proportion to their size".

[333] In 1969, the art historian Vincent Scully wrote, "Rockefeller Center is one of the few surviving public spaces that look as if they were designed and used by people who knew what stable wealth was and were not ashamed to enjoy it.

[428] In 1976, New York Times architectural critic Paul Goldberger wrote, "What makes Rockefeller Center work is that it is at once a formal Beaux‐Arts‐influenced complex of dignified towers and a lively, utterly contemporary amalgam of shops, plazas and street life.

"[429] The American Institute of Architects' 2007 survey List of America's Favorite Architecture ranked the Rockefeller Center complex among the top 150 buildings in the United States.