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Hey, History This Week listeners.
Happy holidays to you.
It is Sally here.
Today we're bringing you an episode from the podcast The Bowery Boys, a show that explores 400 years of New York City history, from the city's indigenous Dutch and English colonial roots to the streets, subways and skyscrapers of the modern metropolis.
This episode is all about how America got its most famous Christmas tree, the towering Norway spruce that's brought into Rockefeller Center each season.
Enjoy, and we'll be back with more history this week on Monday.
Hey, it's the Bowery Boys.
Hey.
Hey.
Hi there, welcome to the Bowery Boys.
This is Greg Young, solo this week to celebrate one of America's most popular Christmas symbols the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree.
Now millions tune in to watch the tree lighting in a music-filled ceremony on NBC, and tens of thousands more will crowd around its massive branches during the holiday season, adjusting their phones just right for that perfect holiday selfie.
Of course, many more native New Yorkers, who have taken the entire thing for granted, will attempt to avoid Rockefeller Center and its Christmas tree entirely until such random moment, one cold December evening, when they'll find themselves accidentally in front of the big, beautiful tree which will melt their cold, jaded little hearts.
I must confess that this happens to me at least once a year.
The tree is centrally located on the east side of 30 Rock amid a swirl of activity.
Shopping, skating, and sightseeing with hundreds of offices looking down upon it.
It's become more than a mere holiday decoration.
The tree is a celebrity of sorts, played by a different massive tree each year, on average about 80 or 90 feet tall, or a little under a third of the height of the Statue of Liberty.
It's where Kevin McAllister was reunited with his family again, after being abandoned again in the film Home Alone 2, Lost in New York.
Oh, Kevin.
Mom, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry, too.
The first tree at this site in 1931 became a symbol of hope during troubled times.
And with the dedication of the first official Christmas tree two years later, it was considered a stroke of marketing genius.
Author Daniel Ockrent in his book Great Fortune, the Epic of Rockefeller Center calls the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree quote the single most productive publicity event ever conceived in the city of New York.
When the first tree rose from the spot in the early 1930s, it did more than just announce the arrival of a massive new architectural undertaking, the complex called Rockefeller Center.
Over the course of almost 90 years, it even changed the public celebration of Christmas itself.
You do not experience the magic of Christmas in New York without it.
On December 24th 1912, Bells from the Metropolitan Life Tower, the tallest building in the world, rang throughout the city, beckoning New Yorkers to Madison Square Park to witness a dazzling spectacle.
A 70-foot tree festooned with lights from the Edison Company, the first of its kind, a community Christmas tree.
Hooray, our town's got a Christmas tree, proclaimed the New York Sun.
Quote Little old New York, which likes to pose as just about as blasé as they make them, is going to have a brand new sensation today.
It is going to fill itself one big family around its own Christmas tree.
With the minaret-like tower of Madison Square Garden behind it.
This tree of light was such a novelty that almost 25000 people showed up that night to witness and enjoy an evening's long slate of choral entertainment.
The tree was a high-profile attempt by progressive reformers to bring Christmas festivities to those who could not afford to buy a tree from the local market.
In particular, adornments like electrical lights were at this time still for those of greater means.
But the tree could also be enjoyed by those who did not celebrate Christmas.
The city's large Jewish population, for instance, or those who were alone in the city without families.
If there was an attempt by some Christian-minded reformers to conform viewers to their religious views and the tree itself was certainly not bereft of Christian symbolism then that attempt failed.
This first community Christmas tree from 1912 brought the once purely religious celebration one step closer to the secular mainstream.
Eleven years later, in 1923, the first national Christmas tree would be installed outside the White House in Washington DC.
Christmas as an American pastime was slowly being invented.
The Christmas tree had come a long way from its roots in 16th century Germany.
And the early 20th century American version of Christmas itself would have certainly confused any time-traveling wise men.
In 1924, the year after the first national Christmas tree in DC, Macy's department store organized its very first Thanksgiving Day parade, a three-hour-long fantasia of fairytale tableau, wild animals and quote clowns in profusion.
At the parade's end sat Santa Claus, who was ushered through Manhattan down to Herald Square and into Macy's department store to oversee the frenzy of Christmas shopping.
Macy's and the other major department stores, like Wanamaker's and Lord & Taylor's, had made Christmas an annual public spectacle thanks to their ornate holiday windows.
A high concentration of stores and theaters made Herald Square the de facto center of the holiday season.
Although in 1924 one department store, Saks Fifth Avenue, relocated further up Fifth Avenue between East 49th and 50th streets, right next door to St
Patrick's Cathedral.
Newspaper ads sometimes joined these two buildings in illustration as though they were the same place.
On a snowy afternoon, churchgoers could exit the cathedral, cross the street and enjoy Sax's generous Christmas window displays, brushing by a Salvation Army Santa and his big red kettle raising money for those in need.
Christmas had already been robustly commercialized by October of 1929, when the Wall Street stock market crash upended the American financial system, leading to the 1930s and the Great Depression.
Thousands were now out of work in the city.
Those without homes would find shelters in various shanty towns throughout the city nicknamed Hoovervilles.
In 1930, construction began on the Empire State Building.
When it opened the following year, in 1931, there were hardly any businesses who wanted to move into its empty offices.
But in terms of gainful employment, there was hope in 1931 and that hope was situated across Fifth Avenue from Saks Department Store and St
Patrick's Cathedral.
Hope in the form of a big, ugly pit.
Columbia University owned a massive parcel of land in the area of today's midtown Manhattan, east of 6th Avenue, ripe for new development by the Jazz Age.
It was referred to as the Upper Estate, although Columbia had in fact moved far north of it by the 1920s.
The university had enriched itself selling off bits of the upper estate to New York's wealthiest families who built lavish estates along Fifth Avenue and its side streets.
But now the rich lived in upper Manhattan and in other districts.
The upper estate was ready for a new chapter.
The initial plan in 1928 might have drawn the richest New Yorkers back to the area via the construction of a new metropolitan opera house, one befitting the status of the modern elite.
In steps, the son of one of the richest men in the world, John D Rockefeller Jr, whose oil magnate father is still considered to this day to be the wealthiest person in modern history.
The Rockefellers already owned several lots near the upper estate, and now JD intended to lease the entire property from Columbia.
Rockefeller didn't care so much about the opera, necessarily.
He wanted to develop a new business center arranged around a startling collection of art deco skyscrapers a city within a city.
The Metropolitan Opera would become the centerpiece of this new glittering district called Metropolitan Square.
The 1929 rearranged everything.
The Metropolitan Opera was out.
Taking their place.
At the center of this development was David Sarnoff and his Radio Corporation of America, RCA.
The construction of Rockefeller Center and the rise of its Christmas tree right after this.
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It might be trite to call radio the Internet of its day, but it's the closest analogy for understanding its impact on American life.
Now, in 1920, the first radio station began its first commercial broadcasts.
But just 10 years later, by 1930, 60% of all Americans owned a radio.
It just went that fast.
This new collaboration between Rockefeller and Sarnoff then felt vital and futuristic, even in the midst of a growing economic depression.
From the Brooklyn Times Union, June 17th, 1930.
A radio city designed to be the center of the theatrical and musical life of the nation.
The largest single development ever attempted at one time in this city is the latest project by the Rockefellers made public today.
After an arduous and sometimes contentious process of acquiring various properties around here, with a few homeowners holding out until the bitter end, the construction of Radio City began on July 22 1931.
Within a few months, a massive excavation opened up here at 49th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues.
And yet this big old hole in Manhattan represented something of a rarity an active construction project during a fraught and difficult economic moment.
Almost two thirds of New York's construction workers at this time were out of work.
FDR's New Deal programs would not arrive to bail out the city and America in general until 1933.
Rockefeller however, was making financial choices that seemed generally unaffected by the crisis of the moment.
From one New York newspaper on December 16th 1931.
Quote they're saying that the only depression Rockefeller has ever had is that big hole he dug to put Radio City in unquote.
He was putting people to work when even the city of New York was laying people off.
According to Daniel Ockrent, quote, unquote.
On December 24 1931, employees at the Radio City Excavation managed to haul a 20-foot Christmas tree down into the pit, erecting it in the mud and adorning its branches with strings of cranberries, paper garlands and tin cans.
This would appear to be the least impressive tree to ever stand on this site, but nobody seemed to mind.
In the only existing photograph we have of this important moment, workers are lined up by the tree collecting their pay.
And so in a certain way, this really is the most fabulous tree that was ever placed here.
By this point, there were community Christmas trees throughout the city, even one standing at City Hall.
And few really took note of this modest decoration on a construction site.
In fact, it was a Christmas party thrown by J.D.
Rockefeller Sr. in Florida, which received more notice.
A party featuring a toy goose that actually laid golden eggs.
Quote, the 93-year-old multimillionaire was the center of the party activities.
It was a noisy, confused, and gay affair.
Two months later, in February of 1932, the Radio City project officially changed its name to Rockefeller Center.
But the Radio City moniker would be preserved on one of the first buildings to open that very year Radio City Music Hall.
At almost 6,000 seats, it was the largest theater in the world.
It opened on December 27th 1932 in a colossally long and arduous night of entertainment which lasted well past two o'clock in the morning.
However, among the dozens of performers that night were a line of dancing women known as the Roxiettes, named for the impresario of Radio City himself, Samuel Roxy Rothafell.
When Rothafell moved on to other projects, the ladies stayed behind and then were renamed the Rockettes.
There was no public Christmas tree that year because a half-completed skyscraper now stood on that particular spot.
The jewel in the crown of Rockefeller Center opened in May of 1933, the RCA building, or 30 Rock.
Now, its opening was not without controversy.
The Mexican artist Diego Rivera had been commissioned to paint a fresco in the building's lobby.
The resulting artwork, called Man at a Crossroads, was deemed too controversial, filled with communist imagery, including a figure of Vladimir Lenin, and was immediately covered up.
The Rockefellers, for their part, wanted to move on from this messy affair.
And fortunately, in their employ they had a crackerjack head publicist for Rockefeller Center, a man named Merle Crowell.
Among Crowell's many innovative ideas, Crowell brought back the Christmas tree.
With the plaza taking shape, the tree might have seemed a natural idea.
The Channel Gardens, which is that long promenade that links the plaza to Fifth Avenue, would feature manicured flora year round.
The two buildings on either side of that promenade, the British Empire Building and La Maison Francaise, featured sumptuous rooftop gardens, as did other structures within Rockefeller Center.
Crowell may have also known about the history of the site itself.
At the start of the 19th century, a public botanical garden once sat here, maintained by Dr David Hasek.
The Christmas tree stands on the spot where a collection of different and exotic plant specimens were once maintained.
To this day, you can find a plaque honoring Hasek's short-lived achievements here in the Channel Gardens.
Most likely, Crowell wanted to generate a press event that put the focus back on the RCA building and Rockefeller Center in general.
Crowell didn't just bring the tree back.
He created the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting ceremony.
And although that first official tree at 50 feet tall was relatively modest, its lighting ceremony was broadcast on NBC radio.
Nobody could see the lights over the radio, of course, but a magical tradition was born.
Practically speaking, the first real Christmas tree lighting occurred the following year, in 1934, in that it was heavily, heavily publicized.
The tree was properly enormous, 70 feet tall from Babylon, New York, and the lighting was accompanied, for the first time ever, by musical entertainment.
In this case by the Gloria Trumpeters Radio City Hall organist, Richard Liebert and Eugene Frey, baritone soloist of the Mendelssohn Glee Club.
So yeah, we're a long way from Kelly Clarkson here, but we're getting there.
The lining that year was fine, but the real sparkle was in the sunken plaza below the tree, the newly installed golden eight-ton statue of Prometheus by American sculptor Paul Manship.
With Prometheus below and the sweeping profile of the RCA building behind it, the tree made a ravishing sight, and they were only getting started.
1935 brought an 80-foot Norway spruce to the plaza.
Trying to outdo that.
I suppose from 1936 to 37 Rockefeller Center hosted a pair of Christmas trees.
But you might be forgiven if you were distracted by something else. because now below prometheus sat a skating rink which opened on christmas day of 1936. quote it's a delightful spot day or night reports the brooklyn daily eagle and skaters may hop into the english grill the restaurant francais without removing their skates a writer for a rochester newspaper was slightly amused by the rink's placement next to a gilded reclining prometheus Quote, The management, we understand, are hanging a sign on Prometheus warning the slightly swacked, i.e. drunk.
Those who try to imitate the statue do so at their own risk.
In 1941, organizers tried to push the envelope a little bit further by throwing live animals moss provided by the Bronx Zoo.
The deer might have provided necessary distraction for children, but their parents would have been worried about something else.
Just days before, the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor and the United States was now engaged in war.
Every aspect of life changed in New York during World War II, and its hallowed holiday traditions conformed to a new reality of restraint, conservation and even fear.
The city that never sleeps had to tamp down on its eternal glow.
Just as the Rockefeller Christmas tree was being lit, Mayor Fiorella LaGuardia and thousands of newly christened air wardens prepared for a total blackout of the city.
That first year, New Yorkers carried on warily.
From the Daily News, December 18th.
Air raids or no air raids, Father Knickerbocker will have his Christmas tree as usual this year.
By the 1942 Christmas season, every aspect of life in New York had been touched by war preparedness.
Three Christmas trees were chosen by Rockefeller Center, live, not chopped down trees.
These considerably smaller trees were each adorned in unlighted plastic globes in separate colors red, white and blue.
Lighting on the other city's trees was extinguished a little after 6 pm each night, in conformity of army regulations.
As the Daily News noted quote, there was no rationing of Christmas cheer, despite the restrictions on food and fuel.
The tree would remain unlit throughout the duration of the war.
Yet for every one of these years, as they had done every year previous, employees of Rockefeller Center gathered to sing Christmas carols.
From the New York Times 1944 quote In red and purple robes they marched down the concourse and took their places on a tree decked platform at the base of the Prometheus Fountain.
Above their heads towers the center's 65-foot living Christmas tree, its 600 giant snowflakes catching the light from office windows.
After the war, the lights came back in a very big way.
After the break, the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree goes from an event of local interest to one which fascinated both the nation and the world.
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For the 1949 Christmas season, the caretakers of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree decided to go fantastically over the top.
Just a few years earlier, New Yorkers were served up a plainly adorned tree with no electric lights, a reminder of the war in Europe and a nod to energy preservation.
But the war was over now.
It was time to get delightfully gaudy.
Perhaps knowing the mild temperatures that awaited that season, the Rockefeller Center holiday designers decided to spray paint the gigantic 75-foot tree in hundreds of gallons of whimsical camouflage paint.
It was then engulfed in 7500 electric lights in pastel colors pink blue yellow, green and orange described as quote plucked from a sky in fairyland.
This Easter-like hue bouncing off the silver-painted branches reflected out from behind dozens of glass ornaments, leading up to a brilliant white star on top which, according to the New York Times quote, seemed to send glints of fire almost to the top of the 77th floor of the RCA building.
In back of the tree,
As if that didn't grab your attention, the promenade leading up to the tree and the skating rink were adorned with a most dizzying decoration.
Rapidly whirling plastic snowflakes, 576 of them, each as big as a dinner plate, illuminated for hypnotic effect.
Is it any surprise at all that this insane display would later create, on December 19th 1949, quote one of the worst Fifth Avenue traffic jams in recent years?
Cars were pinned bumper to bumper from 72nd Street to 41st Street along Fifth Avenue, making cross traffic an impossibility and imprisoning automobiles on side streets.
The end of the war brought new prosperity to New York City and brought flamboyance back to Rockefeller Center.
There were even trees emblazoned in blacklight with globes of fluorescent colors, allowing them to glow like a T-shirt at a heavy metal concert.
But more than economic prosperity had come to the United States.
A technological revolution had also arrived that was about to change the world, and the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree was at its front door.
Thank you very, very much.
Hello, everybody, and welcome once more to our show.
All right, Jack?
Thank you.
Kate Smith was one of many popular radio variety stars of the day who transferred into the new medium of television.
Like many shows on the National Broadcasting Company NBC, the Kate Smith Hour broadcast from the RCA building starting in 1950.
While technology did not yet lend itself to sophisticated location shoots, the network could broadcast from its own backyard.
And in this case, that backyard was the plaza of Rockefeller Center.
The Kate Smith Show became the first to broadcast the lighting of the Christmas tree, first in 1951 and again the following year.
But it was another program that first introduced the tree lighting to a very key core demographic children.
That show was Howdy Doody.
Oh, well, Howdy Doody, boys and girls!
Oh, boy, Dad, we have a lot of excitement at our house last Christmas Eve.
Boy, everybody was getting ready for the visit of Santa Claus.
And Buffalo Bob was trimming the Christmas tree.
And he was just hanging on the last decoration.
Strings of fresh budded popcorn.
And Clarabelle the Clown, he was helping trim the tree, too.
Howdy Doody was filmed at Studio 3A in a tentpole of NBC's broadcast offerings.
He was the SpongeBob of his day.
Howdy Doody was one of the most technologically inventive shows of the early television era.
Pretty remarkable considering the chaotic first days of live television.
It would eventually be one of the first television shows ever broadcast in color.
And it was here in 1952 that Rockefeller Center's Christmas tree lighting ceremony would first reach a national audience of children.
But as the Rockefeller Center tree began to develop more of a national profile, in effect becoming the nation's Christmas tree, even eclipsing the national Christmas tree in Washington DC, the selection of the tree remained a regional affair.
In New York.
Another tradition that ushers in the Christmas season the raising of Rockefeller Center's Christmas tree.
This year, it's a 70-foot spruce with 40-foot branches, a gift from Podunk, Massachusetts.
The forest giant from the hinterlands will blaze with thousands of illuminated globes and firefly lights, warming the heart of Manhattan with its symbolic message of Christmas.
Trees have come from all over the place.
Long Island estates, farms and forests in upstate New York, 19 different trees from New Jersey.
Then you had Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, believe it or not.
And of course, a great number from all the states of New England.
In 1966 there was even a tree from Ottawa Canada, shipped across land 550 miles over the Thousand Island Bridge and into New York State.
The tree lighting ceremony that year featured a bevy of Canadian stars, Olympic figure skaters and the Little Singers of Mount Royal, a boys' choir from Montreal.
And being 1966 in New York, the Canadians were greeted by a near toxic level of city smog.
The selection of the tree each year is akin to the best in show finals at the Westminster Dog Show.
I mean, how do you choose?
Aren't they all good dogs?
The ultimate decision is left to the head gardener at Rockefeller Center.
For 26 years, that job was held by David P. Merbach.
Mr Murbach died in 2012 and his New York Times obit is a celebration of his work during the holidays.
Quote Mr Murbach went about finding a tree the way a casting director would look for an actor for a particular role in a play.
Murbach said, you want personality.
There's density, a height and a width that we need.
But some trees have a way of holding their branches.
I don't know what else to call it but character.
He rented helicopters to scout trees from above.
One year, he zipped off to see a tree whose worried owners were afraid it would fall on their house.
He liked what he saw, and soon the tree was on its way to Manhattan.
Now, most trees today are gleefully donated, but that was not always the case.
Carl Miller was in charge of selecting the trees in the 1970s and 80s.
Nancy Armstrong's 2008 book on the history of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree documents a few of Miller's headaches.
Quote the search for the perfect Christmas tree can be arduous, and once a tree is found, there is no guarantee that its owners will hand it over willingly.
More often than not, Miller had to cajole a tree's owner and devotees into donating it, unquote.
These weren't always random trees, but trees that were sometimes vital to a community.
After all, a 70 80-foot tree has a way of foot.
Balsam fir was selected from new canaan, connecticut.
From the new york times quote rockefeller center came and bought gene wolf's tree.
Today a small crowd of neighbors watched as the crane lifted the corseted tree off its slump and onto a truck bed.
Today it was the neighborhood's tree, the one that 18 year old gregory wolf once built a tree fort in, The one that 17-year-old Lisa Wolf used to climb into her second-story bedroom window whenever she forgot her key.
And the one that Ruth and Peter often watched a young neighbor plant in the fall of 1928 or 29.
I guess I'm sentimental about it now that it's not here anymore, Mrs. Wolf said.
In 1984, a tree outside of a home in Rockland County was selected for the annual tree until the homeowner's nine-year-old daughter threw a fit saying that it was her tree, and the parents had to turn down the offer.
Five years later though, the girl had moved on to other obsessions, and the tree was at last taken to Rockefeller Center.
The trees are transported at night.
Quite the unusual sight as it crosses over the George Washington or the Queensborough bridges.
Sometimes it gets here on a barge.
In 1998, that tree from Ohio, well, it was flown in on a transport plane.
They're so large that installation and decoration requires scaffolding and takes several days of work to prepare the tree, its branches bent and matted from its journey for its big televised appearance.
The tree is, of course, joined by other types of holiday decorations around the surrounding plaza, the most notable being the set of 12 wire angels designed by Valerie Clearabout, making their first appearance in the Channel Gardens in 1969.
The Christmas tree lighting has attempted to keep a uniform and timeless presentation throughout the years, when the rest of the city was changing in less telegenic ways.
In 1973, the tree had 25% fewer lights than usual due to an energy shortage.
In fact, all of Fifth Avenue dimmed its celebration that year.
The late 1970s was an odd time for daredevils, from George Wellig, the human fly, to Philippe Petit, the acrobat who crossed the World Trade Center towers on a tightrope.
And in this daredevil spirit, there were even a few incidents of people climbing to the top of the Christmas tree.
All of them were arrested.
Mostly, the tree lining became a solid and unwavering tradition for thousands of New York families, bundling up the kids and getting down to the plaza by the afternoon to get a good spot.
In 1981.
David Dunlap wrote in The Times quote But in certain spots of the city something shimmered, if only briefly.
Outside the International Building at Rockefeller Center, a small crowd watched a fire eater performing under the statue of Atlas, to the accompaniment of the bells of St
Patrick.
Horse-drawn carriages formed a line in front of the Rockefeller Center promenade on Fifth Avenue, and beyond them was a ragtag barricade of food vendors.
Behind them, in the Channel Gardens, families grouped and regrouped, moving around in bundled clusters, trying to get pictures taken with the enormous Christmas tree as backdrop, while avoiding intrusion in someone else's frames.
If nothing ever changed around the Christmas tree, you could not say the same thing about Rockefeller Center, which went through several significant changes, including some new additions along 6th Avenue in the 1970s.
Now back in the 1920s, at the start of our story here, General Electric and RCA they had been the same company.
Now, in the 1980s, GE actually reabsorbed RCA back then in a corporate merger, and the rca building, the centerpiece of rockefeller center, was renamed the ge building.
Today it's actually known as the comcast building.
Thanks to yet another corporate acquisition, christmas at rockefeller center was almost without its radio city music hall.
The venue had suffered major debt by 1978 and was slated to be closed and demolished.
But diehard lovers of the music hall and even the Rockettes themselves rallied for community support of this iconic Art Deco theater.
With impressive haste, within weeks, the music hall was declared a New York City landmark.
It was renovated and reopened by the 1980s.
Today, the hall, which is operated through Madison Square Garden Entertainment, presents a huge number of live shows, from stand-up comedians to Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett.
But nothing quite as treasured, of course, as the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Ceremony.
Now, while the Rockettes were kicking it over here down the block at the Christmas tree, things were about to get more glitzy.
Now, before the 1990s, the tree lighting actually took place right in those couple hours after getting dark, you know like when it gets dark at 4 pm.
So it was like a late afternoon, early evening affair.
Well, in 1994 NBC moved the Today Show to a new ground-level home here at Rockefeller Center with a backdrop overlooking the plaza.
This revitalized the show's ratings, so NBC decided to next glamorize the Christmas tree lighting.
In 1997, moving it to a primetime TV slot and giving the show a truly national audience.
That 1997 show featured hosts Al Roker and Matt Lauer and a musical lineup including Harry Connick Jr, Kenny G and the cast of the hit Broadway musical Rent.
Of course, as most New Yorkers know, most of the musical numbers that you see on the televised lighting, most of those numbers are prerecorded.
A fun time to actually visit Rockefeller Center is actually in mid-November, when you can sometimes stumble into a show like say, Mariah Carey performing a few Christmas tunes down at the skating rink.
With a national televised profile, the tree could be used to reflect the mood of the country.
By 1999, over 400,000 people had died of AIDS in the United States.
So that year for World AIDS Day, after the Christmas lights were turned on, they were turned off again in a moment of silence for those who had died and the struggle that was continuing for those around the world who were living with HIV and AIDS.
In the weeks after September 11 2001, many wondered if it was appropriate to even put up a normal Christmas tree.
The lighting ceremony was a solemn affair, with a switch turning on 80000 red, white and blue lights upon an 81-foot tall Christmas tree.
The lights were flipped on by First Lady Laura Bush and New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Today, of course, Christmas in New York is a real mood, and Rockefeller Center is just one component of that.
Fifth and Sixth Avenues are decked out in increasingly festive holiday decor, from the outdoor Christmas market in Bryant Park to the furious light show projected above the holiday windows at Saks.
And the season is no longer just for Christian symbols.
In 1973, a 32-foot tall menorah was first placed on the southwest corner of Central Park.
And over near Prospect Park.
An equally large and impressive menorah represents Brooklyn's Jewish community.
And, of course, let's not forget those lavish privately funded displays on dozens of homes in neighborhoods such as Diker Heights.
And, of course, when the holidays are over, when it's all over sometime in January, the lights will retreat back into their boxes for another year and Rockefeller Center will return to its usual level of hustle and bustle.
But that old Christmas tree won't be left on the curb like so many others.
Since 2007, the tree has been reduced to lumber and used to build homes for Habitat for Humanity.
This means theoretically right now.
There is a home out there, built from old Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lumber with a lawn or a backyard of young trees that may one day make that epic journey to Midtown Manhattan.
I'd like to give a very big shout out to a seven inch tall northern solid owl named Rocky, who last year hitched a ride on the 75 foot tall spruce tree that had been chosen to be the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree that year.
For like a full day, she was the only thing that anyone could talk about here in New York.
You know, lockdown and all.
Thankfully, the owl was rescued and she was treated by the Ravensbeard Wildlife Center.
And a few days later, released back into the wild.
By the way, Ravensbeard is selling tree ornaments as a fundraiser for the Wildlife Center that are in the shape of Rocky.
So if you'd like to nestle one of these under your tree, you have plenty of time.
Please visit their website, ravensbeard.org.
And, of course, visit our website, Bowery Boys History dot com, where you don't have any ornaments of my face or anything.
But we do have nice photographs, historical photographs and images of the Christmas trees past and generally some vintage images of Christmas in New York.
This episode was re-edited and remastered by Kieran Gannon.
So thank you all very much for listening.
Have a great New York week, whether you live here or not.
