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(Tuesday, December 27, 1932, doors opened at 7:30 p.m. and the program began at 8:15 p.m. EST) — Radio City Music Hall, an entertainment venue and theater at 1260 Avenue of the Americas, within Rockefeller Center, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, opened tonight with a lavish stage show featuring numbers including Ray Bolger, Doc Rockwell, Martha Graham, The Mirthquakers, and Patricia Bowman.

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Designed by Edward Durell Stone and Donald Deskey in the Art Deco style, Radio City’s four-tiered auditorium was the world’s largest when it opened. The theater also contains a variety of art.

Although Radio City Music Hall was initially intended to host stage shows, within a year of its opening it was converted into a movie palace, hosting performances in a film-and-stage-spectacle format through the 1970s, and was the site of several movie premieres.

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It now primarily hosts concerts, including by leading pop and rock musicians, and live stage shows such as the Christmas Spectacular Starring the Radio City Rockettes.

The Music Hall has also hosted televised events including the Grammy Awards, the Tony Awards, the Daytime Emmy Awards, the MTV Video Music Awards, the NFL Draft, as well as graduation ceremonies for NYU and Barnard College.