Nelson Rockefeller as administrator of Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, New York. Rockefeller was a Republican who was often considered to be liberal, progressive, or moderate. In an agreement that was termed the Treaty of Fifth Avenue, Rockefeller persuaded then-Vice President Richard Nixon to alter the Republican Party platform just before the 1960 Republican Convention. In his time, liberals in the Republican Party were called "Rockefeller Republicans". As Governor of New York from 1959 to 1973, Rockefeller's achievements included the expansion of the State University of New York, efforts to protect the environment, the construction of the Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller Empire State
Rockefeller Center assistant, Lucienne Bloch.) 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. In its earliest years, Rockefeller Center received largely negative and pessimistic reviews from architectural critics. The most cynical opinion came from renowned architectural scholar Lewis Mumford, who so hated the "weakly conceived, reckless, romantic chaos" of the March 1931 plans for Rockefeller Center