The lights are dimming on this year’s Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree.
The 11-ton Norway Spruce is getting its last hours of gilded glory before crews bring it down to be milled and repurposed Saturday night into Sunday.
Anyone looking to catch one final peak at the holiday spectacle should visit before Saturday night. After that, the tree goes dark — officially bringing an end to the holidays in New York City.
This year’s tree came from Massachusetts — the first tree to come from that state since 1959.
What happens to the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree after it comes down?
The tree goes from providing Christmas joy to providing housing.
When the tree is taken down, it is laid in Rockefeller Plaza to be cut up and taken to a yard in New Jersey. There it is milled into two-by-four and two-by six beams and branded with a Rockefeller Center stamp.
Tishman Speyer, the firm that owns and operates Rockefeller Center, then donates the lumber to Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit organization that helps to build and improve homes across the country.