The Rockettes are great, but have you seen the bathrooms?

By Mallory Helmes | Published December 21, 2021

The spotlight was a solution, casting its light on the question of clothing that demanded to be on display. The carefully cultivated details of the lightly heeled shoes and intentional hat only seemed to compliment the picture-perfect backdrop saying hey we work well together.

The backdrop responded with its aluminum gold leaf patterned walls and raw aquamarine details casting a complimentary glow back onto the curated clothing. When the spotlight expired the applause came in a white noise of murmurs with one clear voice that said, “These look so good!”

On Saturday, Nov. 20 at 2 p.m., Kean University students filed onto two separate busses to depart for New York City’s Radio City Music Hall to see the sights, the sounds, the Rockettes, and the bathrooms?

Yes, you read that correctly. The bathrooms. The infamous Rockettes weren’t quite captivating enough to capture the attention of Maria Irvin, a junior studying Communication Media and Film and Vice President of Kean TV, or at least they weren’t for the first thirty minutes.

The dings that kept going off weren’t from the jingle bells on Santa’s sled, but instead were the text messages that Irvin kept receiving from her friends wondering where she was.

“Yeah I ended up missing the first half an hour of the performance to take pictures in the bathroom with my friend,” Irvin covered her face with her hands, “It’s definitely not my proudest moment, but if you saw those bathrooms you would be dying to take a picture in them too. It was like they were made for an Instagram feed!”

Radio City Music Hall was constructed in 1932, before the days of worrying about Instagram feeds, but the bathrooms have definitely gotten the attention and picture-worthy notoriety of more than just Irvin. 

According to the New York Times article “Radio City, Home of the Best … Restroom?” written by Libby Nelson, in 2009 the Radio City Music Hall bathrooms were nominated for America’s best bathrooms, a competition created by Cintas Corporation, a company that among other things provides bathroom supplies.

The contest started back in 2001 when Cintas sent out a survey that found that clean restrooms were a strong predictor of whether customers would return back to a place or not. They wanted to promote their findings in a fun way which birthed America’s best bathrooms competition.

Now you might be wondering what could possibly be the criteria for receiving the honor of being dubbed America’s best bathroom? According to the competition’s stipulations, it’s cleanliness and memorability, that’s it!

Although the title of America’s best bathroom went to The Shoji Tabuchi Theater in Branson, Missouri back in 2009, there is no denying that the bathrooms of Radio City Music Hall possess a gravitational pull of beauty.

According to The New York Preservation Archive Project (NYPAP), history’s database in December of 1997 the Hall closed for two years for renovation to restore and modernize the inside of the building.

“The renovation was led by architect Hugh Hardy of Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates, and involved the installation of 6.5 miles of new gold, blue, and red neon for the block-long marquee of the music hall, covering the ceilings with 720,000 sheets of aluminum and gold leaf, and installing 5,901 new plush salmon-pink seats. In addition, the restoration team either replicated, cleaned, or repaired artwork, appointments, lighting fixtures, wall fabrics, carpets, and furniture throughout the entire building,” according to the NYPAP.

Inside the men’s bathrooms, you can find a Cubist mural owned by the Museum of Modern Art while the women were gifted with a 14-scene mural on the history of cosmetics along the walls.

According to the Cintas website, Radio City Music Hall’s bathrooms also feature “classic tile work, art deco furnishings, and unique materials, including cork-covered walls.”

Irvin too noted not only the beauty of the bathrooms but found the telephone booth located outside of the bathroom on the third floor to be of particular intrigue.

“It was weird seeing a telephone booth in a bathroom but it was also really cool. My and my friend definitely did not hesitate taking pictures there as well posing as if we were on the phone talking to somebody,” said Irvin.

Radio City Music Hall is definitely a venue that has not only captured the hearts of many during the holiday season but has provided a bathroom with an aesthetic and ambiance that is every twenty-first-century person’s dream.  “If you have access to a camera, which everyone does nowadays, there is no way that you are walking out of that bathroom without snapping a few pictures first. It’s literally impossible,” Irvin said.  “The Rockettes might only be around for the holidays, but that bathroom lasts all year round.”

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