The building is best known for housing the headquarters and New York studios of television network NBC, as well as the Rainbow Room restaurant. The construction of Rockefeller Center occurred between 1932 and 1940 on land that John D. Rockefeller Jr. leased from Columbia University.
Raymond Hood, Rockefeller Center's lead architect, came up with the idea to negotiate with the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and its subsidiaries, National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO), to build a mass media entertainment complex on the site. By May 1930, RCA and its affiliates had made an agreement with Rockefeller Center managers. RCA would lease 1,000,000 square feet (93,000 m2) of studio space; get naming rights to the western part of the development; and develop four theaters, at a cost of $4.25 million per year. A skyscraper at 30 Rockefeller Plaza's current site was first proposed in the March 1930 version of the complex's blueprint, and the current dimensions of the tower were finalized in March 1931. The skyscraper would be named for RCA as part of the agreement.
Designs for the Radio City Music Hall and the RCA Building were submitted to the New York City Department of Buildings in August 1931, by which time the both buildings were to open in 1932. Work on the steel structure of the RCA Building started in March 1932, and the building's structural steel was up to the 64th floor by September of that year. The photograph Lunch atop a Skyscraper was taken on September 20, 1932, during the construction of the 69th floor. The structure of the RCA Building was slated to open on May 1, 1933. Its opening was delayed until mid-May because of a controversy over Man at the Crossroads, a large scale fresco mural painting by Diego Rivera that was removed from the RCA Building and replaced by the mural, titled American Progress, by Josep Maria Sert.
Man at the Crossroads (1933) was originally slated to be installed in the lobby of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the main building of the center, showing aspects of contemporary social and scientific culture. As originally installed, it was a three-paneled artwork. A central panel depicted a worker controlling machinery. The central panel was flanked by two other panels, The Frontier of Ethical Evolution and The Frontier of Material Development, which respectively represented socialism and capitalism.
The Rockefeller family approved of the mural's idea: showing the contrast of capitalism versus communism. However, after the New York World-Telegram complained about the piece, calling it "anti-capitalist propaganda", an image of Vladimir Lenin and a Soviet Russian May Day parade were secretly added in protest.
When these were discovered, Nelson Rockefeller – at the time a director of the Rockefeller Center – wanted Rivera to remove the portrait of Lenin, but Rivera was unwilling to do so. In May 1933, Rockefeller ordered the mural to be plastered-over and thereby destroyed before it was finished, resulting in protests and boycotts from other artists. Man at the Crossroads was peeled off in 1934 and replaced by the mural by Josep Maria Sert three years later.
Only black-and-white photographs exist of the original incomplete mural, taken when Rivera suspected it might be destroyed. Using the photographs, Rivera repainted the composition in Mexico under the variant title Man, Controller of the Universe. 
Detail of Man, Controller of the Universe, fresco at Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, showing Leon Trotsky, Friedrich Engels, and Karl Marx.
