During Robert Moses’ program of urban renewal in the early 1960s, a consortium of New Yorker led by John D. Rockefeller III started ”Lincoln Square Renewal Project” to transform the place into New York’s new cultural centre. Thus, Lincoln Center was born. On May 14, 1959, with Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr. watching on, President Dwight D. Eisenhower thrust a shovel into the ground on the Upper West Side of Manhattan to signal the start of construction. The occasion was lavishly commemorated. Leonard Bernstein was the master of ceremonies; the New York Philharmonic (which Rockefeller lured away from its old venues at the Carnegie Hall) and Juilliard Chorus performed the national anthem. The baritone Leonard Warren sang the prologue to Leoncavallo’s “Pagliacci.” The mezzo-soprano Risë Stevens sang the “Habanera” from Bizet’s “Carmen.”
Jesus Harold Christ! You do not “groundbreak” any-damn-thing, you break ground for new construction. Stop making verbs out of thin air just because you read and hear other people doing it.