Rough Trade Grows Footprint in NYC With Underground Expansion in Rockefeller Center

After operating a store on the Sixth Avenue side of Rockefeller Center for a little over four years, Rough Trade is now opening a second location in the complex, the retail chain announced Thursday (Jan. 23).

While the smaller existing store at street level will now be known as Rough Trade Above, and will expand its focus on new vinyl, the new location will cover 4,000 square feet and feature “a large selection of artist/band merch, audio hardware” including turntables and Bluetooth speakers, large sections of new and used CDs and vinyl records, plus movies, collectibles and more.

Since it will be housed in the below street-level retail concourse that connects the world-famous Rockefeller Center to the B/D/F/M subway station, the new store will be known as Rough Trade Below. Just like the Sixth Avenue location, which sees heavy foot traffic walking past the store, located between 49th and 50th Streets in Manhattan, the concourse has a steady crowd flow from the subway. What’s more, the retail concourse, also known as Under 30 Rock, draws office workers from the surrounding office buildings. Altogether, the Rockefeller Center complex — which is home to the annual televised Christmas tree lightening that draws heavy foot traffic during the year-end holidays — enjoys 35 million visitors a year, according to Rough Trade.

Rough Trade hasn’t yet disclosed a grand opening date for the new store but says it will open sometime this spring, with the company likely targeting an opening before Record Store Day in April. 

“We’re extremely excited to be opening Rough Trade Below this spring, helping us further cater to the tremendous demand from music lovers across the five boroughs and beyond,” Rough Trade co-owner Stephen Godfroy said in a statement. “Creating a focus of counterculture in midtown Manhattan has thankfully proved to be a wildly successful move, and we look forward to creating an even stronger creative community as the year progresses.”

One way Rough Trade expects to do that is by bringing back its famed in-store performances, thanks to the new location’s larger footprint. While the smaller 6th Avenue store has hosted acoustic sets — Green Day, for one — and in-store signings, the new store will be able to handle a larger capacity crowd for performances and intends to bring in household names alongside below-the-radar bands across all genres, the company says. Other artists who have held events at the 6th Avenue store include Coldplay, Charlie XCX and De La Soul, among others.

“It’s clear that the ethos of Rough Trade—to narrow the gap between artist and audience—has struck a tremendous chord, here in New York,” Godfroy added. “Creating an even larger mecca for the music lover is an exciting prospect, especially for our intimate live events, where the world’s most exciting artists perform in-store for the admission of purchasing their new album.”

In-store performances were an exciting element of the original New York Rough Trade store, which opened in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood in 2013 and closed in 2021. That store, housed in a 10,000-square foot space, was split about evenly between retail space and the club, with the latter hosting live concerts but also doubling as an in-store performance space, albeit one in another room separated from the retail section by a wall.

The new store will have a performance space directly within the store next to CD and vinyl racks on castor wheels, which when moved aside will allow for greater occupancy. According to Godfroy —who responded to an e-mail—the setup will accommodate more “intimacy and magic” at in-stores and “make performances all the more unique, memorable and special, for both artists and fans.”

The goal, Godfroy adds, is to “replicate the successful model of our U.K. flagship, Rough Trade East,” in London.

Since moving to Rockefeller Center, Rough Trade has continued to curate live public events, including its annual iNDIEPLAZA music festival and a quarterly concert series in the complex’s Rainbow Room. The Rough Trade presence has helped Rockefeller Center’s management company, Tishman Speyer, revitalize the complex, allowing it to remain “a dynamic destination” for New Yorkers and visitors, according to EB Kelly, Tishman Speyer’s senior MD and head of Rockefeller Center.

“We are thrilled to have Rough Trade expanding into a second location on campus, and join our Under 30 Rock collection of shops,” Kelly continued. “In just three years, the store has become one of Manhattan’s cultural touchstones and a pillar of Rockefeller Center’s dynamic transformation. New Yorkers have shown us how much they love the experience of the current store on Sixth Avenue, and the new space in our lively Under 30 Rock community will allow even more people to enjoy the musical taste of this legendary shop.”

The new Rockefeller Center location expands Rough Trade’s retail footprint to ten stores — seven in the U.K (of which four are in London, along with outlets in Bristol, Nottingham and Liverpool); one in Berlin; and now two in New York.