Chrysler Building
Facts
- Groundbreaking was on September 19,1928, and opening ceremonies were on May
28, 1930.
- Decorated with Egyptian motifs and a ceiling fresco by Edward Trumbull entitled
"Transport and Human Endeavor" that depicts buildings, airplanes,
and scenes from the Chrysler assembly line.
- A particularly beautiful example of the Art Deco style, the lobby of Chrysler
Building is clad in different marbles, onyx and amber.
- A private lounge called "Cloud Club" and an observation area were
located at the top of the building.
- This aluminum trim culminates in a beautiful, tapered stainless steel crown
that supports the famous spire.
- Metal hubcaps, gargoyles in the form of radiator caps, car fenders and hood
ornaments decorate shaft and setbacks of the white and black brick skyscraper.
- One of the first large buildings to use metal extensively on the exterior,
the building's ornament makes reference to the automobile.
- Considered by many tall building fans to be the world's quintessential skyscraper
design.
- Mr. Chrysler accused architect Van Alen of taking bribes from subcontractors,
and refused to pay his fee.
- What started as an unambitious plan for a small speculative office building
became one of New York's most admired landmarks.
- Overtook the completed Eiffel Tower as the world's tallest man-made structure
when it was completed.
- Tallest building in the world from 1930 - 1931; surpassed by the completed
Empire State Building. (It is still the tallest brick building in the world.).
- Chrysler asked the architect for a world's tallest building. To beat competitors
who were trying the same feat, William van Alen designed a 56 meter (185 ft)
spire which was secretly delivered to the site in sections, assembled inside
the elevator shaft, and raised to the top in 90 minutes.
- The lowest building occupation rate was 17% during the recession in the early
1970's.
- Even though Chrysler lost control of the building in the fifties, the landmark
still maintains its original name.
- The original lighting scheme, designed at the time of the building's construction,
was discovered and installed only in the 1980's.
from emoris.com
THE CHRYSLER BUILDING (405 Lexington Avenue)
[William Van Alen]
was built in 1928-1930 for the Walter P. Chrysler car manufacturing company.
William H. Reynolds, a former NY State Senator, leased the western blockfront facing Lexington Avenue in 1911 and converted the existing buildings to a unified office building. During 1927-1928, Van Alen made a succession of designs for Reynolds, first on a 40-storey hotel and, as it finally emerged, a domed 67-storey office building, the tallest in the world. Reynolds, however, had no means to construct the building and subsequently managed to sell the assembled plot to Chrysler in 1928.
As the nearby Lincoln and Chanin Buildings neared completion, Walter P. Chrysler bought the land lease and teamed up with Van Alen for the design and construction of an office skyscraper. Van Alen was, essentially, given a blank cheque to come up with a design to fit the car magnate's ambition.
With the demolition work complete by October 1928, the foundations were begun six months later, with the frame completed another six months from that. However, here was to be a final surprise.
Architect Van Alen and H. Craig Severance, the architect of the Bank of Manhattan's building at 40 Wall Street, had been former partners but were now ardent rivals -- both wanted to build the tallest building in the world. Only after Severance had finished the structural work on his building by a winning margin of less than one meter, Van Alen revealed his winning card on October 23, 1929, just one day before the stock market made its first plunge. To hide the last design revision to a needle-like top, the pieces for the 27-ton vertex were hoisted to the 65th floor, assembled inside the spire and, with the help of a derrick, raised that day in just one and a half hours to add another 37.5 m to the building's height, exceeding the Eiffel Tower, the tallest in the world for over forty years.
With its spire at 319 meters, this was the tallest building in the world for less than a year until the rapidly ascending Empire State Building caught up. Inside the observatory deck of the building, Walter Chrysler's first handmade set of tools from his days as a travelling locomotive mechanic was encased in glass. Despite a story about the tools being removed when the Empire State Building exceeded Chrysler's height was false, Chrysler nevertheless quickly distanced himself from his pet project.
The building was officially opened on May 27, 1930 and Van Alen was already in trouble. He was accused of taking bribes from contractors and, worst of all, Chrysler refused to pay his full, percentage-based, fee. Van Alen hadn't made it any easier for himself by not making any written contract with Chrysler for the design commission -- only after a lengthy court battle he managed to obtain sufficient compensation. Although Van Alen would later reach immortality with his creation, he had lost his good reputation as an architect and never worked on a notable commission again. Moreover, for the time being, the building was being scorned by the architecture critics, who saw it merely as an oversized advertisement for Chrysler with little architectural merit.
The building is clad in white brick and dark gray brickwork is used as horizontal decoration to enhance the window rows. The eccentric crescent-shaped steps of the spire (spire scaffolding) are made of stainless steel (or rather, similar Nirosta chrome-nickel steel) as a stylized sunburst motif, and underneath it steel gargoyles, depicting American eagles (image), stare over the city. Sculptures modelled after Chrysler automobile radiator caps (image) decorate the lower setbacks, along with ornaments of car wheels.
The three storeys high, upwards tapering entrance lobby has a triangular form, with entrances from three sides, Lexington Avenue, 42nd and 43rd Streets. The lobby is lavishly decorated with Red Moroccan marble walls, sienna-coloured travertine floor and onyx, blue marble and steel in Art Deco compositions. The ceiling mural, the largest in the world at its completion, was painted by Edward Trumbull and praises the modern-day technical progress -- and of course the building itself and its builders at work. The lobby was refurbished in 1978 by JCS Design Assocs. and Joseph Pell Lombardi.
A street-level showroom for the Chrysler line of automobiles was redesigned in 1936 by Reinhard & Hofmeister.
All of the building's 32 elevators are lined in a different pattern of wooden panelling; eight varieties of wood from all over the world were used in the elevator decor (image).
Inside the metal pyramid, on the building's top floors, a duplex luxury apartment with triangular windows was built for Walter Chrysler's use, completed with a walk-in fireplace. During the Prohibition, the fashionable Art Deco-style Cloud Club at the top of the building, on floors 65 and 66, was an exclusive male club with a jazzy atmosphere for the social elite. A large mural on the club wall depicted the city as seen from the clouds. On the 71st floor, an observatory deck -- living its heyday from August 1930 until the opening of Empire State's observatory eight months later -- sported a ceiling mural depicting night sky. The club and the observatory deck have been closed for decades and all the interior decor there has been recently removed in preparation of the space's lease for new tenants.
The present owner of the building, Jerry Speyer, (who also co-owns Rockefeller Center, as well as several other notable high-rises) bought the building, together with the neighbouring Chrysler Building East, for an estimated amount of $220 million in 1997 -- with additional $100 million worth of repairs waiting in the building.
from http://www.greatgridlock.net/NYC/nyc2a.html#28