The Chrysler Building stands in the business center of Manhattan at the intersection of 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue, just one block from the famous Grand Central Station, built on the initiative of railroad king Cornelius Vanderbilt, who was one of the “princes of the city”. The station opened in 1913.
- Site: Chrysler Building
- Location: New York, USA
- Design: William Van Alen
- Height: 319 meters.
- Materials: steel, glass, brick and chrome
- Year of construction: 1930
- Style: Art Deco
- Considered the world’s tallest skyscraper for only 12 months, it was surpassed in 1931.
The conical hulk of the Chrysler Building dominates the downtown Manhattan skyline, topped by a gleaming spire decorated in an extravagant style inspired by the aesthetics of automotive design.
The Chrysler skyscraper has loomed in the sky above Manhattan since 1930, an example of Art Deco style with gleaming arches and beams, a celebration of the machine age, and a most fitting beacon for “the city that never sleeps.” By day, the thin steel top of the skyscraper shines in the sun; by night, bright lanterns provide amazing illumination in the center of the bustling metropolis called New York City.
The building was created and realized during the skyscraper craze that reached its peak between the two world wars. The stock market was booming, so architects, developers and wealthy sponsors all rushed together in a frantic race upwards in an effort to pierce the sky.
Among them was Walter Chrysler, founder and head of the newly formed Chrysler Motors Corporation. Chrysler madly wanted to build such a huge and luxurious building that would be a true symbol of his empire. He bought a plot of land on the corner of 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue, a stone’s throw from Grand Central Station, and told architect William Van Alen what he wanted: “Let this building be taller than the Eiffel Tower.”
The conical bulk of the skyscraper rests on a three-story base that covers an entire block; the middle main part of the skyscraper rises in steps, narrowing as it gains height. The central section of the skyscraper is formed by numerous floors, overhanging eagle-headed cornices that gradually rise to a glittering spire.
Its symbolism is obvious the crown of the city, the shining sun of progress, images inspired by the aesthetics of automobile design, and futuristic ideas typical of 1940s New York with airships soaring above the rest of Manhattan’s skyscrapers Chrysler was the first of the three giants built in New York between 1920 and 1930, thanks to a favorable coincidence that, paradoxically, manifested itself precisely during a time of economic crisis.
Until the Emlair State Building was built in 1931, Chrysler held the title of “tallest building in the world”, taking it from the Eiffel Tower and transferring this symbol of progress from the Old World to the New. The three giants will always hold a place of honor among Manhattan’s major landmarks, as well as among the world’s tallest and most artistically amazing skyscrapers.
Chrysler’s canonical architecture, expressed in elegant, rigorously delineated images, has always allowed it to take the top spot among buildings renowned for their “feminine” beauty. It was also seen as an “object” built according to the (new for the time) principles of “macro-design”, when an architectural structure rises to the level of a planetary symbol, as evidenced by its constant appearance as one of the symbols of the United States in advertising projects, as well as in films dedicated to New York and the United States.
A monument to the machine age
Van Alen proposed a simple Art Deco design. The project was approved, but the architect was faced with the challenge of how to build the tallest building in the world.
Craig Severance, a former partner and by then already Van Alen’s opponent, was one step ahead. He had already started building a huge bank tower at 40 Wall Street, and it was to be the tallest in the world. Rival architects were constantly adding to the designs and trying to outdo each other even at the design stage.
But when the tower on Wall Street with a height of 282.5 meters was already completed, van Alen made a decisive crushing blow: he secretly built inside his skyscraper 56-meter spire and shocked the press and the public – the spire was raised directly through a hole in the roof and installed on top.
Thus, the 77-storey Chrysler Building reached a height of 319 meters and finally became the tallest skyscraper in the world. Van Alen’s creation was later recognized as one of the major achievements of Art Deco architecture.
The creative competition for the design of Chicago’s Tribune Building, in which representatives of the European cultural avant-garde (such as Walter Gropius and Adolf Loos) participated, clearly showed that new systems of imagery other than modernism were being sought in the United States.
It also pointed to new ways of developing American skyscraper architecture: exclusively vertical orientation of walls; emphasizing geometric elements, decoration, spires designed in classical or Gothic style with a romantic overlay; borrowing stylistic elements inherent in bourgeois eclecticism and images of non-European architecture such as Babylonian ziggurats, monumental structures of neoclassicism, and incorporation into the surrounding historical and architectural landscapes (revised on a “superhuman” level).
Architectural features of the Chrysler Building:
The interior of the Chrysler Building is decorated with the same elegance as the facade. The ceiling is decorated with an image of the building itself, while the rest of the interior is mostly painted with images of the latest vehicles.
The frame of the skyscraper was assembled from steel horizontal and vertical structures.
The exhibition hall, located on the first floor and renovated in 1978, and the luxurious doors of the hall, richly decorated with standing marble and granite elements, testify to the care with which even the smallest details of the building were developed to make it the best in the world.
As a monument to the golden age of automobile manufacturing, the Chrysler Building has a unique style embodied in design elements that resemble various parts of the automobile – radiators, wheels, body parts.
William Von Allen secretly assembled the spire, but installed it only after the Manhattan Bank Building was completed. It appeared over the top of the skyscraper like a miraculous vision, marking another victory in the “war of the skyscrapers”
At the top of the skyscraper is decorated with arches and beams, these are common motifs in the Art Deco style, they reflect the optimism of the time.
The most famous and most important part of the Chrysler Building is its spire, made in the aesthetics of automotive design, it symbolizes the shining sun of progress that rose with it over New York City.
And only in the post-war period did the international style find its final forms in the skyscrapers of the new generation – “glass prisms of the modern city”.
The rules governing civil engineering have changed to protect city streets from high-rise buildings propping them up on all sides. Therefore, it became necessary to encourage the construction of buildings whose upper levels would overhang the streets, allowing them to rise to any height above the building site. Thus began the trend to increase the actual building area in order to have enough space for the center section.
Thus a new type of skyscraper emerged, entering the competition to hold the world height record. The structure of steel horizontal and vertical load-bearing elements with an integrated central core (where elevators were installed) successfully resisted horizontal air flows, which freed the facade from performing static functions.
New technologies were also introduced in lifting systems, ventilation systems, central heating, soundproofing, garbage collection and disposal, and others. When choosing materials, great importance was given to their durability as well as their appearance. For example, spires were assembled from strong and shiny stainless steel.
According to some opinions, the Chrysler Building was the epitome of skyscrapers of this type, but a third urban giant soon appears, the Rockefeller Center, extremely distinguished by its varied structures with interior and exterior sections, together forming a mixed-use structure more open to the city.
The number of skyscrapers of this type has increased in recent years. The utopian and futuristic ideas that followed the changes in building regulations are vividly reflected in Hugh Ferris’s famous views of the ideal city, as well as in comic books and movies. A notable similarity can be found in the huge palace (the top of which resembled the Statue of Liberty) from Fritz Lang’s movie Metropolis (1927), which took two years to prepare and shoot. Metropolis consisted of two parts: an underground city for workers and an “air” city of tall and majestic buildings entangled in a network of multi-level automobile and pedestrian roads and viaducts.
The rise in unemployment that followed the financial crash of 1929 continued for decades as the number of automobiles produced fell to a record low. The automobile industry was the foundation of the American economy, reaching its highest growth rate in the first decade of the twentieth century. Henry Ford built the people’s automobile, the Model T. Amidst the economic downturn, Walter Chrysler builds a skyscraper that bears his company’s name. As soon as the economic crisis begins to affect the income of all automobile companies, Chrysler (who founded his automobile company in 1926) decides to erect a monument to the golden age of automobile manufacturing. His decision was embodied in a structure whose design elements resembled various parts of the automobile – radiators, wheels, decorative body parts.
Construction of the Empire State Building began in 1929. This skyscraper held the world height record for more than thirty years, until the World Trade Center was built on David Rockefeller’s initiative.
The tactical ploy resorted to by William Van Alen, Chrysler’s architect, was prompted by the “skyscraper war” that was being waged in New York City in those years. On the top floors of the building he secretly assembled the famous spire, which in an unprecedentedly short time was put in its place only after the Bank of Manhattan building was completed, the project of which belonged to his rival architect Craig Severance.
Another manifestation of the “war of skyscrapers” was some kind of curse that followed the great architects: so, the financial scandals that broke out over the company van Allen, covered his name with disgrace, from which he never recovered. However, this did not prevent him from taking part in a high society masquerade ball, at which he appeared in the costume of the Chrysler Building with a spire on his head.
Together with other famous New York architects, dressed in suits of their own design, he was captured in a group photo. Chrysler’s headquarters never moved into this building; it only owned the showroom on the first floor. The building underwent a renovation in 1978, at which time a welcoming and luxurious showroom was built on its first floor, decorated with steel, marble and granite elements collected from around the world.
Art Deco stands for streamlined and geometric shapes, stylized ornaments and shiny details, the modern sophistication of the machine and industrial era. Chrysler’s famous steel crown strikes us with its geometry, arches and triangles that gradually converge to a sharp, gleaming spire. It was one of the first buildings to use steel so extensively for exterior finishes. Its walls, clad in white glazed brick with dark trim, combine traditional verticals and modern horizontal lines. The facade is decorated in such a way that the obsession with ornamentation characteristic of the Art Deco style and the overall “theme” of the building is noticeable: a frieze with wheels, several abstract cars, winged radiator caps, and huge gargoyles in the shape of an eagle’s head, the same as on the hoods of Chryslers.
These unusual newfangled gargoyles of steel peer from the corners of the building; they are perhaps its strangest decoration.
Inside the skyscraper, everything is also unusual and bright. When you pass through the three-story-high black granite entrance, it seems that you suddenly find yourself in a coal mine. The interior is darkened, reminiscent of a dungeon and contrasts very strongly with the facade.
The walls are lined with patterned dark red Moroccan marble, and the onyx panels near the lamps cast a subdued light. The doors of the skyscraper’s 32 elevators are decorated with exotic wood, and paintings on the high ceilings depict airplanes, the car assembly process and the building itself.
The spirit of competition
Chrysler produced a brochure at the time that proudly states that the building has “everything for convenience cleanliness, comfort and even inspiration that money can think of, create and buy for man.” But just a year after the Chrysler Building was built, the tallest building was another skyscraper, the Empire State Building.
In 1995, the chrome spire, called the Nirosta, was restored and glistened even brighter and became highly visible at night, as the Empire State Building lit up the night sky with colorful illuminations on the upper floors.
