Description
The Chrysler Building is the Art Deco skyscraper at 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue, in Midtown Manhattan: 319 meters of brick and steel crowned by gleaming steel arches and a needle-thin spire. In 1930 it was, for a few months, the tallest building in the world.
Its signature is the crown: seven terraced arches clad in ribbed, riveted steel that fan out like a sunburst or the spokes of a wheel, pierced by rows of triangular windows. At night the windows are framed in light, and the tip ends in a slender needle.
Further down, the building is a tribute to the car. At the corners of the 31st floor stand giant hood ornaments shaped like Mercury's winged helmet, above a frieze of hubcaps and fenders; on the 61st floor eagles lean out over the street like the gargoyles of a Gothic cathedral.
The lobby, long the only part of the building open to the public, is a showcase of Art Deco luxury: walls of African red granite, floors banded with yellow Siena travertine, soft light filtered through marble and amber onyx, and doors and storefronts in polished steel.
Overhead stretches Transport and Human Endeavor, a ceiling mural 34 meters long by Edward Trumbull, painted in ocher and gold with airplanes, glowing steel furnaces and the building itself. The elevator doors are inlaid with wood in a lotus pattern, and each cab has its own combination of woods.
Walter Chrysler, the head of the car company, paid for the tower himself, as an investment for his children. Its height was the fruit of a race: the architect William Van Alen was competing with 40 Wall Street for the title of world's tallest building, and his rival kept raising its plans.
So Van Alen had a 38-meter spire assembled in secret inside the top of the building. In October 1929 it was hoisted into place in about 90 minutes, overtaking both 40 Wall Street and the Eiffel Tower: the first structure ever built taller than 300 meters.
The record lasted 11 months, until the Empire State Building opened in 1931. Victory did not bring Van Alen much luck either: Chrysler refused to pay his fee, and the lawsuit that followed, together with the Great Depression, ended his career as an architect.
Its signature is the crown: seven terraced arches clad in ribbed, riveted steel that fan out like a sunburst or the spokes of a wheel, pierced by rows of triangular windows. At night the windows are framed in light, and the tip ends in a slender needle.
Further down, the building is a tribute to the car. At the corners of the 31st floor stand giant hood ornaments shaped like Mercury's winged helmet, above a frieze of hubcaps and fenders; on the 61st floor eagles lean out over the street like the gargoyles of a Gothic cathedral.
The lobby, long the only part of the building open to the public, is a showcase of Art Deco luxury: walls of African red granite, floors banded with yellow Siena travertine, soft light filtered through marble and amber onyx, and doors and storefronts in polished steel.
Overhead stretches Transport and Human Endeavor, a ceiling mural 34 meters long by Edward Trumbull, painted in ocher and gold with airplanes, glowing steel furnaces and the building itself. The elevator doors are inlaid with wood in a lotus pattern, and each cab has its own combination of woods.
Walter Chrysler, the head of the car company, paid for the tower himself, as an investment for his children. Its height was the fruit of a race: the architect William Van Alen was competing with 40 Wall Street for the title of world's tallest building, and his rival kept raising its plans.
So Van Alen had a 38-meter spire assembled in secret inside the top of the building. In October 1929 it was hoisted into place in about 90 minutes, overtaking both 40 Wall Street and the Eiffel Tower: the first structure ever built taller than 300 meters.
The record lasted 11 months, until the Empire State Building opened in 1931. Victory did not bring Van Alen much luck either: Chrysler refused to pay his fee, and the lawsuit that followed, together with the Great Depression, ended his career as an architect.