Laurance Rockefeller Laurance Rockefeller Laurance Spelman Rockefeller (May 26, 1910 – July 11, 2004) was an American philanthropist, businessman, financier, and major conservationist. He was a prominent third-generation member of the Rockefeller family, being the fourth child of John Davison Rockefeller Jr. and Abigail Greene "Abby" Aldrich. His siblings were Abby, John III, Nelson, Winthrop, and David. Rockefeller was born in New York City. He graduated from Princeton University (1932) and attended Harvard Law School for two years, until he decided he did not want to be a lawyer. On August 22, 1934, in Woodstock, Vermont, Laurance married childhood friend Mary French,
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