The Christmas Tree at Rockefeller Center Started With Workers Who Had Almost Nothing

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It was December 1931, and the Great Depression had drained the city of its easy optimism. Construction workers at the Rockefeller Center site were among the few New Yorkers with steady jobs — collecting wages of around a dollar a day. On payday, before heading home, they did something nobody planned and nobody expected would last.

They decorated a small Christmas tree.

The Workers Who Started It All

The tree was small — maybe 20 feet tall. Workers trimmed it with tin cans, cranberry garlands, and whatever scraps they could find around the site. Some accounts mention strings of lights powered by the construction site’s own generators.

It stood in the open pit where the skating rink would eventually be built. No ceremony, no press, no speeches. Just workers in dusty clothes standing around a decorated tree in the cold.

Nobody thought they were starting a tradition. They were just trying to make the place feel human.

The Complex They Were Building

John D. Rockefeller Jr. broke ground on his Midtown complex in 1930 — 14 buildings across 22 acres that had been slums and brownstones. At peak construction, the project employed over 40,000 workers. It was one of the largest privately funded building projects in American history.

Rockefeller wasn’t just building offices. He was redesigning what Midtown would feel like. The central plaza was designed to be open, walkable, built to draw people in from the street. He commissioned murals, fountains, and public art on a scale the city had rarely seen — though not all of it survived his second thoughts. One famous commission ended in the middle of the night with a hammer.

The workers building the plaza seemed to understand its purpose before it was finished. The plaza wasn’t ready, but they already knew what it was for.

From Tin Cans to 50,000 Lights

The first official tree lighting took place in 1933, when Rockefeller Center opened to the public. A 50-foot Norway spruce stood in the plaza with 700 lights. It was impressive by Depression-era standards.

By the 1950s the tree reached 65 feet and carried 7,500 lights. By the 1990s the ceremony was televised nationally. Today the tree stands around 75 feet tall and is strung with approximately 50,000 LED lights across five miles of wire.

The small gathering those workers organized in 1931 now draws 80,000 people to Midtown and millions more watching from home.

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A Different Tree Every Single Year

Most visitors assume the tree is artificial. It isn’t. A real Norway spruce is selected every year — typically from Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, or upstate New York. The process begins years in advance, with scouts searching the region for trees with the right height, density, and shape.

Homeowners sometimes contact Rockefeller Center themselves when a tree in their yard starts to outgrow its space. The chosen tree is transported to Manhattan on a flatbed truck, often drawing crowds along the route just for the spectacle of it.

It arrives looking rough from the journey. Workers spend about a week positioning it, wiring every branch, and trimming the shape. Then the lights go on — and it becomes the image everyone already carries in their head.

What Happens to the Tree Afterward

In mid-January, when the season ends, the tree comes down. The wood is milled into lumber and donated to Habitat for Humanity, which builds homes from it. The boughs and branches are chipped into mulch and used on trails at national parks.

A tree that started in a construction site ends up as part of someone’s house. That cycle would probably make sense to the workers who put up the first one.

Standing in the Plaza Today

The plaza is different by day — quieter, less chaotic, and on a winter morning before the tour groups arrive, genuinely peaceful. You can stand much closer to the tree than you’d expect. Look up and you see what those workers saw in 1931: a decorated tree in an open square in a city holding itself together.

The Top of the Rock observation deck, on the 70th floor of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, offers one of the best views in the city — looking south toward the Empire State Building with nothing blocking the sightline. It’s the kind of view that makes the scale of Manhattan finally click. If you’re planning three days in New York for the first time, this is one stop worth building the day around.

And if you’re wondering when to come — December in New York is cold and crowded and completely worth it. The city does winter better than anywhere.

Nobody remembers the names of the workers who put up that first tree. Their wages were a dollar a day. Their decorations were tin cans.

But every December, when the lights go on over that plaza and 80,000 people look up together, New York is doing exactly what those workers did during the hardest year of their lives.

Reaching for something beautiful.

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Plan Your New York Trip

Rockefeller Center is one of the great free things to explore in New York at any time of year. Our 3-day New York itinerary covers how to fit the Top of the Rock, the plaza, and the rest of Midtown into a first visit without rushing.