Rockefeller Center Rockefeller Center Rockefeller Center is a large complex consisting of 19 commercial buildings covering between 48th and 51st Streets, facing Fifth Avenue, in New York City. Commissioned by the Rockefeller family, it is located in the center of Midtown Manhattan. The 14 original Art Deco buildings span the area between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, split by a large sunken square and a private street called Rockefeller Plaza. Five International Style buildings, built later, are located on the west side of Sixth Avenue and at the north end of Rockefeller Plaza. In 1928, the site's then-owner, Columbia University, leased the land
Rockefeller University from 1978 to 1990. Paul Nurse, who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2001, was president from 2003 to 2010. (Before Nurse's tenure, Thomas Sakmar was acting-president from 2002.) In all, 36 Nobel Prize recipients have been associated with the University. In the mid-1970s, the University attracted a few prominent academicians in the humanities, such as Saul Kripke. Rockefeller Sr, urged by Rockefeller Jr, his only son, who was enthusiastic about the Institute, visited the University once. Rockefeller Jr's youngest son David would visit with his father. David Rockefeller joined the board of trustees in 1940, was