I.M. Pei once said, or is reputed to have said, that the Promenade of Rockefeller Center is the most perfect public plaza in the world. One may disagree with Mr. Pei while not discounting the manifold charms of one of the most familiar yet most special public places in New York.

At this time of year, the plazas of Rockefeller Center choke with the throngs come to see America’s most famous Christmas tree. While I personally prefer to avoid those throngs, I assure you that they do not consist entirely of tourists or suburbanites who have come to see the “Christmas Spectacular” at Radio City Music Hall. As many New Yorkers as out-oftowners come to view the tree, which remains a paragon of tastefulness in contrast to the vapid vulgarity at the Music Hall. Rockefeller Center’s special magic is to be found in the way it, perhaps alone of all places in the city, is a place where tourists, suburbanites, and city dwellers mingle and feel at home.

If I’d been around in the 1930s, I probably would have opposed the construction of Rockefeller Center. How often are such mega-projects preferable to the row-house streets the mega-projects obliterate? Of course, the “Rockefeller Center Extension” on the west side of the Avenue of the Americas doesn’t count in this equation. But on Fifth Avenue, and stretching west along the Promenade, it’s hard to imagine how a big development carved from the city’s grid could more perfectly have provided New York with something it had lacked: a center.

The vista looking west along the Promenade to the two-block northsouth street called Rockefeller Plaza is a supremely artistic composition. It is special because the city generally lacks perspectives of this sort. It is also special because skyscrapers are disposed along axial pathways in a way unexampled in city building.

The axial pathway of the Promenade leads to three things. Foremost is the RCA Building, which is the only skyscraper in the world so situated, and which is therefore one of the most thrilling skyscrapers anywhere. Another is the skating rink, which was an afterthought. And the third is the sculpture of golden Prometheus, by Paul Manship. I know some people who profess to hate this sculpture – Manship himself did not really like it – but even they must concede that it is a powerful piece of place-making.

Indeed, “Prometheus” seems to me the only imaginable thing in its setting. Does that make it a great work of art? I don’t know. But it is just the right grace note to negotiate the transition from the sunken plaza (with its skating rink) to the soaring verticality of the RCA Building – or, for that matter, the soaring verticality of the Christmas tree. In itself, “Prometheus” does not inspire me. In its context, it is a crucial part of the city’s most exciting architectural ensemble.

fmorrone@nysun.com