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... Editor's note: On December 17, after this story was published, the Landmarks Preservation Commission voted to allow the NBC neon to be replaced with LED replicas.[emphasis theirs]

The first frames in the trailer for Saturday Night, Jason Reitman's film about the beginnings of SNL, show the side entrance to 30 Rockefeller Center, its red glowing letters spelling out NBC STUDIOS, as they have since 1935. It reminds us that we're in Radio City, as the whole Rockefeller Center complex was known in its early decades, headquarters of the Radio Corporation of America. This place is an American monument, the source of RCA's pioneering broadcast systems, the radio networks that in their early days were called NBC Red and NBC Blue, the ones that knitted together American thought as never before. A little later, in the TV age, these studios beamed out Toscanini and Today and Tonight. The entrance carries not just a literal neon sign but a symbolic one: power, news, late nights, modernity, the future, all beckoning.

And today, Tishman Speyer is applying to the Landmarks Preservation Commission to scrap it, replacing the glowing neon with cheaper, lower-maintenance, lower-energy LEDs.
It's not the only neon in town that's at risk. Great mid-century signage is going dark all over New York, especially in Manhattan. A generation or two ago, Times Square was full of glowing glassworks in every color; now there are barely any to be seen. ...

@#1 ... bright lights ...

The bright lights of the NYC area are amazing. So bright.

Back in the day, when I was a college student across the river from NYC in Hoboken, NJ, I could read a book as I sat on the roof of my Fraternity House on a moonless night at midnight.

That is how bright the skies are around NYC at night.

Much to the dismay of astronomers.

@#4

Thank-you for that link.

@#11 ... it really surprises me to learn that you were a frat boy. ...

It was an Engineering college, so things were different.

For example, I was there during the Vietnam War. The campus protests against the war were quite peaceful, indeed, with friends sitting on the grass in the common areas and having debates.

Looking back, it was odd compared to what I saw occurring on other campuses.

But to add to that, my years in the Fraternity taught me so much. I was treasurer for a term. I had to pay the House mortgage each month, put out and collect monthly bills for the room rent of those living in the House (so that I could pay the mortgage each month), do battle with the school's treasury department about money they should have forwarded but did not, etc., etc. The things that most do not associate with Fraternity living. :)

@#8 ... the glass blowing/bending and combining gasses with coatings to get colors is high art.
Great stuff. ...

100% agreement.