A native New Yorker, Leo Friedlander studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Brussels and Paris and was awarded the Prix de Rome in 1913. Radio is a companion piece to his Television, both themed after NBC, the building’s main tenant. The larger figure represents transmission, who sends the song of the figures on the east (broadcasting) to those on the west (acoustics). Mother Earth and her child represent the audience receiving the sounds of the radio. Size, mass, texture and repetition all work together here to lend strength to the architecture and interest to the carvings.