‘Tis the season to spruce up Midtown.
The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree arrived in Manhattan late Friday, completing its roughly 200-mile journey from upstate New York and signaling the start of the holiday season.
The 80-foot-tall Norway spruce was spotted being hauled down East 42nd Street around 10:15 p.m. before it was dropped off outside Rockefeller Plaza ahead of Saturday’s annual tree welcoming festivities.
The massive spruce was cut down Thursday from the front yard of a home in the town of Vestal, New York.
It will soon be adorned with 50,000 LED bulbs that stretch 5 miles long and with a star made from 3 million Swarovski crystals.
The carefully selected tree will be officially lit at the iconic lighting ceremony hosted by singer Kelly Clarkson on Wednesday, Nov. 29.
This year’s tree selection was an incredibly fateful one, said Rockefeller Center head gardener Erik Pauze, who has the most wonderful job of the year as its picker.
“I found the tree in Vestal, New York, when I was on my way to look at another tree, not too far away. I had driven to the other tree and took a slow road back, and saw this one,” he told the Center Magazine last month.
“I went back this spring and decided to knock . . . The McGinley family told me that not too long before I knocked on the door, someone told them, ‘That looks like a Rockefeller Center Christmas tree.’”