Soaring Skycrapers Classic

Scan the Manhattan skyline, and the Chrysler Building is easy to spot.

Gleaming stainless steel, crimped onto a radiant of seven, Art Deco-styled curved rows, form a dome crowned by a 27-ton spire piercing upwards.

The building was conceived during the late 1920’s, a time for living life large and breaking traditions and taboos. Following the horrors of war, a recession and the start of Prohibition, by the mid 20’s both money and illegal liquor flowed, the Art Deco style roared from Europe to the States and short bobbed hair was the rage of women whose wholesome American beauty was celebrated by impresario Florenz Ziegfield at his theatre, the New Amsterdam, at Broadway and 42nd street.

Across town at 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue a former amusement park developer set his sights on creating the world’s largest building and hired architect William Van Alen. Although his previous projects had been restaurants and shops, none over a few stories high, the architect took up the challenge.

The sleek styling of the Art Deco movement, with its Egyptian emphasis due to the recent discovery of King Tut’s tomb, fueled Van Alen’s imagination. The project grew in scope and design when auto magnate Walter Chrysler bought out the developer. Keeping much of the original design, Chrysler asked for additional stories and architectural details to proclaim the machine age and especially Chrysler automotive products like the Plymouth.

As the building broke ground crowds of spectators gathered at the site, marveling at the deafening noise from steam shovels (precursors to back hoes) and jackhammers. Admiration accelerated as the building continued upward at an astonishing four floors per week.

The Chrysler building’s brick setbacks allowed masons to incorporate scenes of the automobile age. Along ridges, gray and white bricks were fashioned into wheels of a car topped with hubcaps of steel. At corners of a façade steel ornaments looking like winged radiator caps, pineapples and eagles, majestically projected from a setback.

Superiority in the skyscraper wars escalated when the Bank of Manhattan’s 40 Wall St's design was altered to add flagpole and exceed the Chrysler Building by only two feet.

Veiled in secrecy, Van Alen designed and built the spire in an interior fire shaft. Installation was completed in only 90 minutes. On October 23, 1929 the Chrysler Building finally ruled the global skyline

However the news was never heralded. The next day Black Tuesday occurred, and the onset of the Great Depression began. Soon the Empire State Building took the title as world’s tallest.

The Chrysler Building survived. Unlike other skyscrapers she is open for commerce not tourism. There are no tours or observation deck. But still as a major tour de force to American Art Deco design she can be appreciated.

Pop into the lobby. Buffed marble floors and shafts of muted neon bounce illumination against the grained red Moroccan marble walls. Trim work of amber onyx and blue marble accent period pieces like one of the earliest digital clocks. Craning upward a 110’ x 79’ mural, by Edward Turnball, called "Energy, Result, Workmanship and Transportation," features a tribute to Progress and the workers who achieved it.

Many consider the building’s 32 elevators as the lobby’s crowning achievement. None have the same pattern but each possesses a mastery of inlaid wood, like satinwood, and intricate design

In the 1980’s Van Alen’s original plans for lighting the dome were discovered and implemented.

To truly appreciate her lines view her at night from the observatories at the Empire State Building or Rockefeller Center’s Top of the Rock.

She sparkles in grand style.

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