Sources
Introduction
Prologue
Chapter 01
Chapter 02
Chapter 03
Chapter 04
Chapter 05
Chapter 06
Chapter 07
Chapter 08
Chapter 09
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88

 
TAZARA ... a journey by rail through world-history © KJS / 2009

Rockefeller Center 1933 Top Of The Rock

CHAPTER 18  



— tazara — tazara — tazara ...

... Dashing yarn! What a three-piece-suit! Ah, if I only would have a chance to take measurement! Mr. Moon would be reconciled.

Girls, they are in the process to drive away our American ROLE MODEL!

Monsieur Roquefeuille as a role model? This one belongs to a species of men who rather have an erotic relation with money than with women …

… Correction: h a s h a d a relation! Don’t forget this always! We are aboard a ghost-train! And this Rockefeller here had, if I’m not mistaken, at least six children …

… by the daughter of an influential senator …

... Ah! — Once money marries policy! ...

— tazara — tazara — tazara ...

I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty ...

„... my words! My conviction ... Written as a dedication to the Rockefeller-Centre in New York, my most important enterprise, a colossal complex of buildings in the city’s heart. Despite economic depression at that time, I let it rise during the Thirtieth of last century.
Originally, the Metropolitan Opera was supposed to get a new home, but after the crash of the Stock Exchange in 1929, the opera gave up.
We steered for a new path in the history of modern architecture; and we realized a complete new concept for town planning …
I did not want to build just one skyscraper — I wanted a whole group of buildings as centre of a town.
And do you know what we used to line the whole centre with? White limestone! We got it from a quarry in Indiana … and the speciality is: this limestone contains fossils of animals which lived in the seas … some three hundred million years ago!”

… and which did not end up in Rockefeller-oil!

LET ROLL THE TEXT, PLEASE:


Crude oil originates from organisms, which did not rot in waters, which lacked oxygen. They formed a kind of mud which was then changed by bacteria and enzymes into substances found in today’s crude oil.

Total utilization of fossils!
The Rockefeller-Centre made an annual profit of hundred million dollars, from rents alone … until 1989 when the whole complex was bought by Japanese, a subsidiary of MITSUBISHI!


„A national shame, if I may say so! … 1933, the citizens of New York had received from me a place, which allowed them to celebrate their great city with a panoramic view from two hundred fifty-nine metres above the sidewalks …
My observation-deck replicated the upper-deck of an ocean-liner. At that time, the seventieth floor featured deck-chairs, swanlike lamp-posts, ventilation-shafts like those on ships.”

Stay cool, Mr. Rockefeller! After almost twenty years, the observation-platform of the General Electric Building, the highest one in your complex, was opened again under the name TOP OF THE ROCK on 1st November 2005.
MITSUBISHI had the grip on your heart-piece for only ten years. Tishman Speyer — you certainly know them — bought from the Japanese the whole original Art-Déco-ensemble. This company has its roots in a family-business founded in 1898; and it owns today a portfolio of more than seven million square-metres in the biggest metropolis of the U.S.A., of Europe and Latin America, total value: twenty billion U.S.-Dollars!
And this will give you joy as well:


The Rockefeller Plaza Complex sees every day some two hundred and fifty thousand visitors. If they wish to go to the TOP OF THE ROCK, they enter the complex through the shops in the 50th Street, between fifth and 6th Avenue. They proceed on stairs or on escalators to the „Mezzanine”-exhibition hall. While waiting for the lifts, they are treated to a multimedia-show on plasma-screens showing the history of the Rockefeller-Centre.
Then they enter the Sky Shuttle Lifts, which work like time- and light capsules. Through transparent roofs, they watch their rapid ascent — you could say, they experience a vertical train-trip.
Four projectors throw sequences of historical pictures, from the Thirties until today, on those roofs, sapphire-blue lightning marks the end of each period. The visitors reach with these lifts the Grand Viewing Room on the sixty-seventh floor; and from there they can enjoy in the distance the famous objects of interest: the Chrysler Building, the Statue of Liberty, the whole Central Park and everything from Hudson River to East River.

Only one object at the tip of Manhattan does not belong anymore to the panorama view — sorry to say, Mr. Rockefeller — although you never came to know it: the twin towers of the World Trade Centre … The two „Swearing Fingers of Capital” — chopped off!

„Nonsense! The most important room for global cartel-capitalism has never been in that World Trade Centre, it is still located in the Rockefeller-Centre.”

What room, Dag?

„It’s really not only o n e room … the whole fifty-fifth and the fifty-sixth floor of this complex is called, according to Rockefeller-speak: ROOM 5600.”

More important than all of the rooms in your glass-palace at the East River, Dag?

„In my glass-palace? ... It never was mine! ...”

This glass-palace, Mr. Rockefeller, wasn’t it already your second trial to provide a home for sort of a world-government?

„Well, shortly after the First World War, I offered in Switzerland a place at Lake Geneva were the newly formed League of Nation, also called Geneva League, would have its residence. As you will know, this League was supposed to further international cooperation, to negotiate in conflicts, and to monitor realization of peace treaties.
I am not sure whether it can be called a world government; it has been rather a predecessor of the United Nations as led by you, Mr. Hammarskjöld ...”

And it was an Art-Déco building — like the one, you realized with the Rockefeller-Centre in New York, later on?

„It was an expression of the feeling of that time, certainly!”

And the idea for a worldwide cosmopolitan federation, as it was to be established in that building at Lake Geneva, was it an expression of the feeling of that time as well?


German version available on DVD!
Audio presentation by the pointsman, animation & video-clips!
Acces RBO's web-shop by clicking on the radio!
 
Continue TAZARA-Index
Correct the Pointsman

web page hit counter

web page hit counter