SIGHTSEERS
Magnificent Midtown Manhattan
by Randy Karr

Magnificent Midtown Manhattan is the place visitors come to see New York City's best-known cultural and commercial icons. With scores of Broadway theater productions and art museums to see, even the most resolute visitor will be challenged by an overabundance of choices.

The "city that never sleeps," offers chic shops and trendy restaurants, plus must-see tourist stops like St. Patrick's Cathedral, Radio City Music Hall, Times Square, Rockefeller Center and the United Nations.

With so much to do, your New York days will be busy days. That being the case, you "will want to wake up in the city that never sleeps, and make a brand new start of it. It's up to you."

These Midtown attractions made my list of "Gotta See" Sites in Manhattan.

• #1. Times Square
  Once called Long Acre Square, and sometimes "The Crossroads of the World," Times Square took its name from a well-known newspaper still located here - The New York Times. On New Year's Eve, nearly a million people pack Times Square to watch a Waterford Crystal ball descend at the stroke of midnight. During the ensuing 364-days after this 90-second spectacle, 30 million others will arrive and be awed by the cacophony of color and mesmerized by the flashy, super-sized, illuminated billboards that make Times Square look like daytime, when it's really midnight. It is not by chance that 60 massive TV screens make the square look like a collage of TV advertisements. Credit this to city zoning laws that require multiple illuminated signs on Times Square buildings.
  
  
  
  
• #2. Trump Tower
  People scoffed at this sleek, Fifth Avenue, high-rise skyscraper, clad in dark reflective glass. At the time of its completion, it was the tallest, concrete-framed skyscraper in the city. Trump Tower is well-known as the setting for the reality show, The Apprentice. It is also the site of the dreaded "boardroom," where aspiring apprentices are dispatched when "The Donald" points toward a trembling trainee and utters the show's two best known words - You're Fired! Intended for an exclusive clientele, Trump Tower boasts one of the world's most expensive street-level, retail locations and a lavish shopping area accessible to those of more modest means and to those looking for a public restroom on glitzy Fifth Avenue. The Donald, Melania and their new baby live in the tower's triplex penthouse.
  
  
  
  
• #3 Grand Central Station
  Thanks to shipping magnate "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt's generosity, Grand Central Station is one of America's most impressive interior spaces. The floor of Grand Central's main concourse consists of a half-acre of Tennessee marble. Arching windows allow light to filter in and brighten an interior accented with oak leaf and acorn patterns. This pattern choice pays homage to Vanderbilt's motto, "Mighty oaks from little acorns grow." The vaulted ceiling features a mural with 2,500 twinkling electric stars that depict major constellations, as they would appear from Manhattan on an autumn night. Vanderbilt gasps when he noticed the constellations were portrayed backwards and that Orion held a club in his right hand, instead of his left. When he asked the artist about it, the artist said he assumed Vanderbilt wanted the stars to be seen from "God's eye view." The blunder, which was never corrected, now gives visitors a "God's eye view" of New York's nighttime sky. Thanks to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who opposed plans to demolish Grand Central or to build a skyscraper above Grand Central, the station retains its integrity.
  
  
  
  
• #4 Radio City Music Hall
  Radio City Music Hall opened as a vaudeville house and then was sold to the Rockefellers. It is best known today for its precision chorus line, the Rockettes. Radio City Music Hall, which has one of the largest stages in the world, is the largest indoor theater in the world. Restored to its art deco elegance, the 6000-seat movie palace's interior has been designated a protected landmark. The renovation, which was completed in 2000, restored the "Showplace of the Nation" to its original condition as when it opened in 1932, in the Rockefeller Center.
  
  
  
  
• #5 Rockefeller Center
  In 1929, People derided John D. Rockefeller when he unveiled plans to build a "city within a city," known as Rockefeller Center. Rockefeller Center includes 19 skyscrapers, including this one at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Once the RCA Building, now renamed the GE Building, it is where Saturday Night Live and the NBC Evening News is produced. During the holiday season, a giant Christmas tree stands here, towering above Rockefeller Center's famous sunken ice-skating rink and the statue of Prometheus. Across the street from the GE Building are the street-level NBC studios where the Today Show is produced and where exuberant, placard-waving fans wait to see Katie, Matt and Al.
  
  

For the latest and greatest on what to see and do in the Big Apple, go to www.nycvisit.com, New York City's official tourism Web site.

© 2006 Randy Karr