Rockefeller Center Expands

Landlord 69-year-old John D. Rocke feller Jr. added $2 1/2 million of properties to his Manhattan real-estate holdings last week. Among his new tenants adjoining handsome Rockefeller Center were three bars (one a milk bar), two five-chair bar bershops, a used-jewelry shop, a corse-tiere, a secondhand bookstore. Seller; Beatrice Bend Berle, wife of Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Augustus Berle Jr. (Mrs. Berle is now a practicing physician in Washington, D.C.) This was the biggest Manhattan realty transaction in seven years. But it had special significance: the latest Rockefeller acquisitions (at three Sixth Avenue corners--two at 48th Street, one at sist Street) could mean the expansion of $100 million Rockefeller Center along dilapidated upper Sixth Avenue.

Sixth Avenue merchants rekindled their prewar dreams that started when the old rattletrap elevated railway was torn down, and plans were drawn for a broad treelined boulevard, to be called the "Avenue of the Americas," designed to outswank swanky Fifth Avenue.

Improvements must wait until after the war, but by obtaining these parcels the Rockefeller interests consolidated the western flanks of Rockefeller Center.

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