John Rockefeller Prentice John Rockefeller Prentice John Rockefeller Prentice (December 17, 1902 – June 13, 1972) was born to Chicago lawyer Ezra Parmalee Prentice and Alta Rockefeller Prentice in New York. Prentice's maternal grandfather is the Standard Oil tycoon, John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937). While attending Yale University, Prentice became a member of the Skull and Bones society and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He graduated in 1928. During his years at Yale, Prentice had accumulated debts and consequently was cut off from his parents. He worked in Boston for a wholesale hardware firm for four years to make enough money to return
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