Everything about the conception and creation of Rockefeller Center was outsized and wildly improbable. Launched in the teeth of the Depression, the most ambitious construction project since the Pyramids was the unintended result of a philanthropic gesture gone awry. But when it was finished, John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s accidental adventure redefined the very nature of an American city. In this hugely appealing book, Daniel Okrent weaves together the themes of money, politics, art, architecture, business, and society to tell the story of the majestic suite of buildings that came to dominate the heart of midtown Manhattan and with it, for a time, the heart of the world. Richly detailed, frequently surprising, and consistently entertaining, Great Fortune brings this compelling saga to vivid life.

At the center of Daniel Okrent's riveting story are four remarkable individuals: John D. Rockefeller Jr., the timid son of the world's richest man, whose greatest accomplishment was a venture he never intended; his son Nelson, who before the age of twenty-five demonstrated his talent, his charm, and his ruthless ambition, shoving aside his older brother and an all-star roster of professionals to take control of this enormous enterprise; the rude, vain, and dazzlingly creative real estate genius John R. Todd, who could make an architect whimper in pain; and Raymond Hood, a scamp, a provocateur, a drinker -- and the greatest skyscraper designer America has ever known.

The supporting cast is just as compelling, an improbable Who's Who of a glamorous age. Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt III complains about the noise of jackhammers (and fears the coming revolution) while Benito Mussolini negotiates a lease. Arturo Toscanini becomes one of the most famous men in America a few floors away from a nondescript office given over to the most effective military intelligence operation in modern history. Lewis Mumford attacks the Center as an urban disaster ("mediocrity seen through a magnifying glass") while Georgia O'Keeffe, charged with creating a mural for one of the walls, is brutalized by her husband, Alfred Stieglitz. The famous story of another painting -- the fresco commissioned from the Mexican Communist Diego Rivera and later destroyed -- takes on new meaning through several startling details never before revealed, the product of Okrent's groundbreaking research.

Gamblers and bootleggers, painters and promoters, downtown bankers and uptown lawyers, tycoons and dancing girls (the surprising and often hilarious story of the Rockettes and Radio City Music Hall could make a book on its own) -- they are all characters in an epic tale that is nothing less than a time traveler's thrilling journey to New York between the wars. Great Fortune is a landmark book about an American landmark.

Finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in History.

Categories:

• History
  • United States