Before he became the chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, he was its executive vice president for planning and development. In 1955, the Chase National Bank had merged with the Bank of the Manhattan Company. The enormous new bank required an enormous new headquarters — 60 stories tall.

Under zoning rules, to construct such a tower without setbacks Chase needed to set it in an especially large plaza. This it proposed to create by combining parcels on the north and south sides of Cedar Street in Lower Manhattan. That meant eliminating a stretch of public way more than 400 feet long from a part of town where every inch of street and sidewalk is precious.

No problem for David Rockefeller.

“The key to getting the plan approved was to have the support of Robert Moses,” he wrote in “Memoirs.”

“I went to see Moses, who, among many other official positions, was the chairman of the City Planning Commission,” Mr. Rockefeller wrote. “Much to my relief, Bob proved to be an easy sale. He believed that a dramatic gesture was needed to save Wall Street, and he liked the concept of opening up more space and letting a little more light into the gloomy downtown streets. Once we had his O.K., other needed approvals came easily.”

Never mind those messy, querulous public hearings. Never mind the objections that other planning commissioners might have brought to the table. It was just David and Bob, longtime acquaintances, having an agreeable little chat about that pesky annoyance called a public way. When their visit was through, so was Cedar Street.

The result, in this case, was terrific. The modernist Chase tower, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, was completed in 1961. Its dazzling facade of aluminum and glass dramatically disrupted the romantic but somnolent downtown skyline. The building was generally regarded as a landmark long before it was officially designated one in 2008.

Now named in Mr. Rockefeller’s honor, the two-and-a-half-acre plaza is unquestionably an ornament, with Isamu Noguchi’s “Sunken Garden” and Jean Dubuffet’s “Group of Four Trees,” another David Rockefeller benefaction. The plaza “established a welcome break from the narrow, twisting streets,” the Landmarks Preservation Commission said in its designation report.