KILOCYCLE PALACES

Network Radio's Opulent Studio Buildings of the 1930's and 40's

By John F. Schneider W9FGH

www.theradiohistorian.org

Copyright 2023 - John F. Schneider & Associates, LLC

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(Click on photos to enlarge)

NBC NEW YORK:

 
Façade of 30 Rockefeller Center

 
30 Rock on Opening Night (from a photo postcard)

Studio 8-H, the ‘World’s Largest Radio Studio’, during a broadcast of the Cities Service program, circa 1934 (NBC postcard)

Another View of Studio 8-H

 
Radio City’s "Guild" Studio 8-G had a glass curtain that separated the performer from the audience.

 Studio 3A at  Radio City

 
Studio 3B at Radio City

 Master Control Room (colorized by the author)

 
Another view of Master Control

 A vertical cut-away floor plan, showing the studio locations at 30 Rock.

 
Floor Plans of Radio City in New York

NBC’s giant Studio A in Merchandise Mart measured 32 x 47 feet.  The green décor was accented by the large bronze grill covering the studio organ pipes.  It was the home of such famous NBC programs as ‘Fibber McGee and Molly’, ‘The First Nighter’ and the ‘Carnation Contented Hour’

A studio control room at NBC's Merchandise Mart studios in Chicago.

 
The "Library Studio" t NBC's Merchandise Mart studios in Chicago.

 Master Control at NBC Chicago (colorized by the author)

 Floor plan of NBC's Merchandise Mart studios

 NBC’s Hollywood studio building, inaugurated in 1938 (colorized from a picture postcard)”  

 This giant mural greeted visitors in the main lobby of Radio City in Hollywood.

 The master control desk was visible through a window in the main lobby.

 Jack Benny and other radio stars attend the grand opening of NBC Radio City in Hollywood.

 Floor plan of NBC's Hollywood studios.

NBC SAN FRANCISCO:

NETWORK RADIO

Radio broadcasting in the U.S. began in the 1920’s as an untried application of a still-imperfect technology.  But by the early 1930’s it had shed its experimental nature and become a big business.  The biggest impetus to its growth was the creation of the national networks.  Both NBC and CBS had become immensely popular and profitable businesses almost overnight, and their need for program production space was skyrocketing.  It was mostly impractical to modify existing structures –entirely new studio facilities were needed that met the specialized requirements of broadcasting.  And because nearly unlimited advertising money was flowing into the network coffers, no cost was spared by either network to build the best radio palaces that money could buy.  Let’s take a look at some of the lavish structures they created.

30 ROCK

The National Broadcasting Company made its inaugural broadcast from the ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York on November 15, 1926.  The following year it moved into the twelfth and thirteenth floors of a new office building at 711 Fifth Avenue.  At the time this seemed like plenty of room, but just three years later NBC had already outgrown the space.  Its six studios were not sufficient for its needs -- program production for both the Red and Blue Networks and local stations WJZ and WEAF, plus the need for ample rehearsal space.  They foresaw that shortwave broadcasting and television were on the horizon, and would have their own future needs.  By 1930, plans were already underway for an even larger and grander NBC facility.

On November 11, 1933 -- exactly ninety years ago -- NBC celebrated its seventh anniversary by opening the nation’s largest and most opulent broadcasting facility.  “Radio City” occupied the first ten stories of the 72-story central tower building at 30 Rockefeller Center.  There were no less than 27 studios on the 3rd,  4th 8th and 9th floors.  Master control was on the 5th floor; offices were on the 2nd and 5th floors; and the air conditioning and electrical systems were on the 10th floor.  Initially, the 6th and 7th floors were left vacant for future expansion, but they were filled in a 1940 expansion that brought the total up to 35 studios. 

Each studio was a room within a room – a floating chamber that was isolated from building vibrations.  The walls were treated with special acoustic materials to reduce sound reflections, and sliding hard-sided panels could change the room from a “live” to “dead” sound ambience.  The four largest studios were made to hold a live audience.  Of these Studio 8-H was the largest radio studio in the world – 132 x 78 feet with a 30-foot ceiling.  Its stage could hold a 100-piece orchestra, and there was audience seating for 1,500 persons.   8-H was the home of Arturo Toscanini’s NBC Symphony Orchestra.  Studio 8G (also called the Guild Studio) had a movable glass curtain separating the stage from the audience to keep musical programs free of audience noises.  Also on the 8th floor, there were two small “speaker’s studios” that were decorated as cozy home settings, designed to reduce the “mike fright” of nervous public speakers.  Up on the 9th floor, there were four studios arranged around a central revolving control room.  This was envisioned as being useful in the future for television. 

The numbers were staggering:  Radio City’s 9 acres of floor space contained 300 amplifiers, 175 loudspeakers, 275 synchronized clocks and 296 soundproof lead-lined doors.  1,250 miles of wire tied it all together, and a 900-ton air-conditioning system kept it at a comfortable 72 degrees with 45% humidity.  An emergency battery system provided enough capacity to run the whole facility for a week without outside power.

The monstrous master control desk, 27 feet long, required four operators to run it.  It was able to switch the 27 studios plus innumerable remote lines to 14 output channels – network line feeds to several geographical regions, the transmitters of local stations WEAF and WJZ, plus in-house monitoring.  The master control operator would preset the switching to take place at the next station break, which would then be activated by the announcers at the right time on a control panel installed in each studio.  Each office had a speaker with a selector so that the occupants could listen in to the activity of any studio.

“30 Rock” was NBC’s prime production headquarters in radio’s “Golden Age”, and was gradually converted to television production in the 1950’s.  Today it remains in constant use as NBC’s East Coast TV production center.  It has seen extensive modifications and updates through the years, as needs changed.  The giant Studio 8-H is now the well-known origination point for the comedy TV program “Saturday Night Live”.

NBC CHICAGO:

Even before building Radio City, NBC decided to open studios in Chicago in 1930.  Because of the enormous cost of broadcast lines the network leased from AT&T to feed the country, it was determined that a production center in the middle of the country would quickly pay for itself, saving over $1 million a year in line costs.  The space chosen was the top two floors of the brand-new Merchandise Mart -- the largest building in the world at the time. 

The $3 million NBC facility contained six floating studios, four of which were two stories in height. Special viewing rooms on the second floors allowed sponsors to look in on the productions.  Besides creating network programs (mainly daytime serials for the Blue Network), the programs of NBC’s Chicago stations WENR and WMAQ all came from Merchandise Mart. The giant master control room contained a long row of amplifiers that fed the program lines to forty stations in the Midwest and westward.  There was a giant national map on the wall with a light for each affiliated station, which lit up when that station was broadcasting a network program. 

In 1935, NBC expanded into an unused space in the Merchandise Mart tower, eventually having a total of eleven studios producing 175 programs each week.

The Merchandise Mart facility continued to be used for both radio and television until 1989, when NBC moved to the present-day NBC Tower.

NBC HOLLYWOOD:

In 1927, NBC opened studios in San Francisco to serve the West Coast.  At that time, there were no broadcast-quality lines across the Rocky Mountains, and so a separate staff produced programs there that were fed to stations up and down the West Coast.  Finally, in December of 1928, a trans-continental AT&T line was completed to San Francisco, and for a time programs produced in San Francisco were fed east by reversing the direction of the line. 

In response to the public’s desire to hear more of their favorite motion picture stars on the radio, NBC leased a film studio building at 5515 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood in 1935, and the production of selected programs was moved out of San Francisco.  Then, in 1936, AT&T completed a second trans-continental line, but  it terminated in Los Angeles instead of San Francisco.  Suddenly, the trickle of programs migrating to Hollywood from both New York and San Francisco became a stampede, and the Hollywood studio was instantly inadequate.  As a response, NBC purchased a five-acre site at Sunset and Vine for $200,000 and ground was broken on January 20, 1938, for a new $2 million radio studio complex.

The immense facility incorporated eight floating studios. Four of them – Studios A through D - were auditorium-sized, built as adjoining sound stages with outside entrances that could accommodate an audience of 350 each.  There was a three-story -high lobby where the public could view the large master control desk – a near duplicate of the one in New York -  behind a glass window.  A 25x40-foot curved mural depicting the art of broadcasting, “The Spirit of Radio”, hung high above the master control window.  Next to the lobby was the three-story network office building. In all, the facility was said to have nearly nine miles of corridors.

The first broadcast from the new Hollywood studios took place on October 2, 1938.  Through the 1940’s, a major part of NBC’s entertainment programming originated from these Hollywood studios, with two more sound-stage studios – Studios E and F - being added in 1945. 

In the 1950’s, studios D, E, and F were converted into television studios, but it was discovered that the radio studios were not easily adapted to television – the ceilings were too low to accommodate TV’s lighting needs.  As a result NBC gradually moved its television production to a new facility in Burbank, and the radio building was completely abandoned by 1962.  New owners that acquired the building found the taxes to be excessive, and so sadly the entire complex was demolished in 1964.  A Home Savings Bank branch was built on property in 1968.  NBC’s amazing Hollywood studios had survived for a mere 26 years.

COLUMBIA SQUARE, HOLLYWOOD:

NBC was not alone in recognizing the need for a Hollywood base of operations.  From 1927 to 1936, the Columbia Broadcasting System had been entirely a New York-based operation, with studios on several floors at 485 Madison Avenue and 49 East 52nd Street.  But CBS President William Paley saw that his West Coast operations were not competitive with its rival network, and so in 1936 he purchased 50,000-watt KNX in Los Angeles to become his Pacific Coast flagship station.  The $1.25 million price was the highest ever paid for a broadcast station until then.

Right after the KNX purchase, plans were made for the construction of a new CBS studio complex in Hollywood.  Property was acquired on Sunset Blvd., less than two blocks east of NBC’s new property.  The lot had previously been the location of the Christie Film Company, a silent movie producer.  Interestingly, both the NBC and CBS facilities were under construction at the same time, and it became a race to see who could finish first.  CBS won the race, and Columbia Square in Hollywood was dedicated on April 30, 1938, five months ahead of NBC.

Columbia Square was a stunning Art Deco facility, encompassing seven studios and a five-story office building.  The largest studio – Studio A - was a giant auditorium with theater seating for an audience of 1,050.  Two more studios seating 350 people each were added in 1939 and 1940 – Studios B and C.  The CBS programs that had previously been produced at three rented movie theaters in the area were all consolidated at Columbia Square, and the majority of CBS Radio’s entertainment programs originated there from 1938 through the late 1950’s. 

Columbia Square was also the home of some of the early CBS television shows, including the “Jack Benny Show”, the “George Burns & Gracie Allen Show” and the pilot episode for “I Love Lucy”.  KCBS-TV, KCAL-TV and KNX NewsRadio all occupied the building until the network moved out in 2006.  The building was acquired by developers in 2012 and has since been reborn as a mixed-use luxury residential/commercial complex.

NBC SAN FRANCISCO:

The last “Radio Palace” to be built by the networks was NBC’s San Francisco Radio City.  It was constructed at the corner of Taylor and O'Farrell Streets by a private developer, with NBC taking a 25-year lease on the million-dollar building.  Originally, NBC envisioned it as becoming an additional West Coast origination center for NBC, but the exodus of programs to Hollywood was more severe than had been expected, and it was nearly complete by the time it opened in 1942.  The building saw use primarily as the program origination point for NBC’s local stations, KGO and KPO (now KNBR), with only a modest number of additional network productions.

Although smaller than the other NBC network facilities, San Francisco’s Radio City was still a magnificent structure, rising five stories above street level with the first floor being a parking garage. It was a completely windowless structure except for rows of glass brick that lined the third and fourth floors.  Stainless steel accents set off the pink exterior walls.  Over the stainless marquee at the main entrance to the building was a three-story mosaic mural depicting radio’s influence on different cultures around the world.

There were seven studios in the building.  The largest, Studio A, was capable of seating an audience of up to 500.  There were also five medium-sized studios and a small speaker’s studio on the second floor.  Studio B had a full three-rank pipe organ.  Three small announcer’s booth studios were located on the third floor, along with master control and a transcription recording room.

Radio City saw some television use in the 1950’s as the first studio location for KGO-TV, but much of the building ended up being sublet as office space, and the entire radio operation consisted of a disc jockey playing records from the third-floor booths.  KGO moved out in the early 1950's, but KPO/KNBR stayed until 1967 when NBC’s lease expired.  The building subsequently became the home of KBHK Television, and then in 2020, it was converted to commercial office space, now known as the 420 Taylor Building.  The original mosaic mural still graces the main entrance -- the only indication of its radio past.

This article originally appeared in the December 2023 issue of The Spectrum Monitor

RESOURCES:

 NEW YORK, NBC:

• “Radio World”, Radio News Magazine, June, 1931
• “Radio City Will Be Marvel of Architecture”, Popular Mechanics Magazine, June 1931
• “Behind the Scenes of Radio’s Wonderland”, Radio Stars Magazine, 1932
• “NBC Occupies New Quarters”, Broadcasting Magazine, November 15, 1933, pg. 10
• “Previews of the World’s Greatest Radio Metropolis”, Radio News Magazine, December, 1933
• “Magic Palace of Radio City”, Popular Mechanics Magazine, February, 1934
• “NBC Radio City - New Palace of Marvels”, Radioland Magazine, February, 1934
• “NBC’s Studio Control System”, Communications & Broadcast Engineering, March, 1935
• “The House That Radio Built”, by O. B. Hanson, NBC publication, undated 1930’s
• “NBC Radio City 10th anniversary”, NBC Transmitter Magazine, 1943
• Airwaves of New York by Bill Jaker, Frank Sulek, Peter Kanze, McFarland & Co., 1998, pg. 10-11
• “The Architecture and Art of the NBC Network Radio Studios”, by Ronald Kramer, 2012

 CHICAGO, NBC:

• “Chicago Becoming Radio Center”, What’s On the Air Magazine, December, 1930, pg. 37
• “Midwest Headquarters of NBC Are Elaborate”, Jackson, MS, Clarion-Ledger, October 26, 1930
• “Chicago NBC Studios” by Harold Vance, RCA Broadcast News, April, 1932
• “NBC Expands in Chicago”, Broadcasting Magazine, September 15, 1935
• “Broadcasting in Chicago: 1921-1989”, by Rich Samuels, https://richsamuels.com/index1.html

 HOLLYWOOD, NBC:

• “NBC Starts Building in Hollywood”, Broadcasting Magazine, November 1,1937
• “Hollywood Radio City an Ideal Plant”, Broadcasting Magazine, November 1,1938
• “The History of NBC West Coast Studios”, by Bobby Ellerbee

 HOLLYWOOD, CBS:

• “Hollywood Premiere”, Radio Guide Magazine, April 30, 1938
• “CBS Dedicates New Hollywood Center”, Broadcasting Magazine, May 1, 1938
• “CBS Hollywood Studios”, Western Electric Pick-Ups Magazine, September, 1938
• “Developer buys Hollywood CBS Radio building for $66M” By Bob Howard, 2006, ALM Properties, Inc
• “The History of CBS Hollywood Television Studios” by Bobby Ellerbee

 SAN FRANCISCO, NBC:

• “New San Francisco Studios”, NBC Transmitter Magazine, Christmas, 1940
• “The New NBC Building”, NBC dedication booklet, 1942
• “San Francisco Radio City Opening” by F. L. Barron, Broadcast Engineer’s Journal, May, 1942
• “Celebration Planned by NBC”, Broadcasting Magazine, April 20, 1942, pg. 42
• “San Francisco’s Radio City”, Broadcast Engineers Journal May 1942
• “San Francisco’s Radio City”, Architectural Record Magazine, November, 1942
• “A Backstage Visit to NBC Radio City, San Francisco, in the 1950's” by Fred Krock, www.theradiohistorian.org

(Many of the magazines referenced here can be found at www.worldradiohistory.com)