Atlas

Atlas occupies some prime real estate at 630 Fifth Avenue and has become a pop culture icon in his own right.

In Ancient Greek mythology, the titan Atlas serves a divine punishment of eternally carrying the weight of the world in his hands.  The figure of Atlas in the sculpture is 15 feet tall while the entire statue is 45 feet tall.  It weighs 14,000 pounds and is the largest sculpture at Rockefeller Center. Atlas preserves his legendary strength and powerful physique, but he holds an abstract, spherical representation of the cosmos rather than a traditional globe. 

Designed by architect, Lee Lawrie and created by sculptor, Rene Paul Chambellan.  It was installed in 1937 and is located within the International Building's courtyard across Fifth Avenue from St. Patrick's Cathedral.  Atlas was cast at the Roman Bronze Works, a subsidiary of the General Bronze Corporation in the borough of Queens.  The Roman Bronze Works had long been a sub-contractor to the Louis C. Tiffany Studios.

Lee Oscar Lawrie

(1877-1963)

Lee Lawrie was an American architectural sculptor and an important figure in the American sculpture scene preceding WWII.  Over his long career of more than 300 commissions Lawrie's style evolved through Modern Gothic to Beaux-Arts, Classicism and finally, into Moderne or Art Deco. 

Atlas is depicted carrying the celestial vault* on his shoulders.  The north-sourth axis of the sphere on his shoulders points towards the North Star's position relative to New York City.  The statue stands on one muscular leg atop a small stone pedestal whose corner faces Fifth Avenue.  Laid across Atlas' muscled schoulders is a wide, curved beam that displays a frieze of the traditional symbols for Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter (hidden behind Atlas' thick neck), Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.  Adjacent to Earth (over Atlas' right forearm) is a small crescent symbolizing the Moon.  Affixed to one of the sphere's rings are symbols for twelve constellations through which the Sun passes during the year. 

The sculpture of Atlas and his spheres was somehow conceived and designed without any reference to planet Pluto which was discovered and named in 1930.  In this respect, the sculpture must have seemed embarrassingly outdated at its dedication in 1937.  In recent years, a movement to demote little Pluto from planet status has been gaining strength.  The reasons are that Pluto shares many important physical properties with a newly discovered class of comets in orbit beyond Neptune.  Atlas, it turns out, had scientific integrity, all along.

Lawrie's work is associated with some of the United States' most doted buildings of the first half of the twentieth century  His stylistic approach evolved with building styles that ranged from Beaux-Arts to neo-Gothic to Art Deco.  Many of his architectural sculptures were completed for buildings such as the chapel at West Point; the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.; the Nebraska State Capitol; the Los Angeles Public Library; Cornell Law School in Ithaca, New York and Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago.  Since 1928, Rockefeller Memorial Chapel as been the architectural and ceremonial center of the University of Chicago campus in Hyde Park. 

Rockefeller Chapel

He completed numerous pieces in D.C. including the bronze doors of the John Adams Building of the Library of Congress, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception south entrance portal and the interior sculpture of George Washington at the National Cathedral. 

Lawrie's Atlas was featured on the cover of The New Yorker magazine December 20 and December 27, 2010.

*A Celesial Vault is the phenomenon where we perceive the sky as a closely fitted vault covering us from horizon to horizon rather than a limitless void extending into space.