In the early 1800s, the bucolic site that eventually became 48th to 51st Streets between Fifth and Sixth Avenues hosted the nation’s first botanical garden. Through the 19th century, the property was owned and developed by Columbia University.
By the 1920s, what had been transformed into an elite neighborhood following the Civil War was now a downtrodden collection of shabby low-rise houses, eateries, and retail shops (plus some speakeasies and brothels) made even more undesirable by the hulking steel elevated train tracks above Sixth Avenue.
So when the Metropolitan Opera began looking for a site to build a new opera house that would replace its current home at Broadway and 39th Street, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (son of John D. Rockefeller, Sr., head of Standard Oil and one of the wealthiest men in the world) envisioned these Midtown blocks to be an ideal location not only for the opera but for a gleaming new skyscraper business and entertainment district in the shadow of his own nine-story mansion on West 54th Street.
After the stock market crashed in 1929, the Metropolitan Opera dropped out of the project. Still, Rockefeller went ahead with plans for an 11-acre mini-city mix of retail, theater, and office space. He leased the land from Columbia, then brought in architects and builders. Between 1932 and 1939, Rockefeller City’s 14 original Art Deco buildings opened.
Before construction commenced, however, Rockefeller had to buy out (or wait out) the leases for 203 different lots, and then raze 208 of the old low-rise buildings, according to Daniel Okrent’s 2004 book, Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center.
Money talked in the Depression, and owners and lease holders almost always took the cash offered to them. But Rockefeller didn’t buy out everyone. Cases in point: the two 19th century walkup buildings flanking 30 Rockefeller Plaza. One of these holdouts is on the corner of Sixth and 49th Street, and the other stands at the corner of Sixth and 50th Street.
How did they survive the Rockefeller bulldozer? Let’s start with the gray holdout on the 49th Street side, with the charming late 19th century cornice.
This survivor, which the Rockefeller Center website describes as “a pebble surrounded by boulders,” dates back to the 1870s. In 1892, the little building became an Irish pub called Hurley’s, run by brothers John and Daniel Hurley and a bartender, Patrick Daly.
Hurley’s already had to deal with Prohibition in the 1920s, when they turned the “front of their pub into a flower shop, among other ventures, and the upstairs into a speakeasy accessible through an unmarked side entrance,” the Rockefeller Center website noted.
In 1930, Rockefeller began buying out leases and demolishing buildings. Turns out the Hurleys had a lease that ran until 1942 that “barred demolition,” explained Sam Roberts in his 2019 book, A History of New York in 27 Buildings: “They demanded $250,000 (about $3.7 million in today’s dollars), which the Rockefellers refused to pay. After Prohibition was repealed, the brothers reopened their bar.”
Not long after Rockefeller was forced to build his skyscrapers around the stubborn bar, Hurley’s became a watering hole that attracted media professionals working at the neighborhood’s big network and newspaper headquarters. According to Liz Trencha’s 1994 book, Fighting for Air: In the Trenches With Television News, a man identified as “Old Man Hurley” reportedly said, “I’ve seen sonofabitchin’ Rockefellers come and sonofabitchin’ Rockefellers go and no sonofabitchin’ Rockefeller’s gonna tear down my bar.”
Hurley’s closed up shop in the 1970s. The saloon reopened with the same name under new owners before going out of business for good in 1999, according to a New York Times article. Today, Magnolia Bakery occupies the ground floor space. A new pub, called Pebble Bar, has recently opened as well.
How the building on the 50th Street side of 30 Rock became a holdout is less clear. According to a 1962 Daily News article, the building was owned by a grocer named John F. Boronowsky, who simply refused to sell his three-story store. Rockefeller built around his grocery as well, which now houses a Warby Parker eyeglass store.
Today, it almost looks like Rockefeller planned to keep two walkups on either side of flagship 30 Rock. The little buildings balance out the Art Deco tower; they look like charming 19th century bookends for a mighty 20th century skyscraper. But the truth is, because of their age and prime location, they may be the most famous holdout buildings in New York City history.
[Third, fourth, and fifth images: NYPL Digital Collection; sixth image: NYC Department of Records & Information Services]
Ephemeral New York 