Talk:The Chrysler Building

Not in its entirety, but some of it is copied. For instance, near the end, "The act of climbing up or down in this stairwell is somewhat akin, if one doesn't mind reverse psychology, to wearing a fur coat inside out; the sensuality of the fabulous marbles is overwhelming and refreshing." This sentence comes from [1]. Anyway, the information here should be merged into the existing article Chrysler Building. FreplySpang (talk) 05:50, 8 November 2005 (UTC)Reply

Since this is unencyclopedic, a possible (partial) copy-vio, and redundant with Chrysler Building -- i changed this page to a redirect and copied the original text below. If someone wants to fish through this and merge information with the main article, please do: --Quasipalm 16:07, 8 November 2005 (UTC)Reply

A view of the New York City skyline reveals many architectural triumphs throughout history. There were the World Trade Towers, the Empire State Building, and one of the most recognizable buildings in the world – the Chrysler Building. As seen by many other buildings in New York City, buildings expand vertically instead of horizontally. The Chrysler Building is seen by many as the quintessential skyscraper in the entire world.

Walter P. Chrysler, a mechanic turned entrepreneur, wanted “a bold structure, declaring the glories of the modern age”. He kept architect William Van Alen on staff after purchasing the lease from William H. Reynolds. Van Alen was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1883. While he attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, he also worked in the office for Clarence True. In 1908 Van Alen won the Lloyd Warren Scholarship which allowed him to study in Europe. After three years of studying in Europe, he moved back to New York and formed a fellowship with architect H. Craig Severance. The partnership became known for its distinctive multistory commercial structures which abandoned the historic formula of base, shaft, and capital. William Van Alen is best known for the Chrysler Building which is located in midtown New York City at Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street. His associate architect on this project was Reinhard, Hofmeister & Walquist. Although the Chrysler Building is highly regarded, William Van Alen’s career suffered after the completion due to the fact that Walter Chrysler made powerful accusations against him. Chrysler never paid architect William Van Alen for his work on the Chrysler Building because he believed Van Alen was involved in some suspicious financial arrangements with the building's contractors. William Van Alen died in 1954.

William H. Reynolds, a real estate developer and former New York senator, was leasing the property where the Reynolds Building was going to be built. Unable to complete it because of the financial downturn, Reynolds sold the unfinished building to Chrysler, in 1928, who financed it out of his own pocket, boasting that no corporate funds would be used, thus ensuring that his sons would one day inherit his personal monument to his own greatness. Design plans were originally that the Reynolds Building was going to have a glass dome, lighted from within, to give the effect of a giant glowing diamond in the New York evening sky. Once Chrysler purchased the lease the dome was turned into a peak and the name of the building was changed to the Chrysler Building.

Groundbreaking took place on September 19, 1928. When Van Alen began construction of the Chrysler Building, he planned to have the building stand 925 feet tall. At the same time that the Chrysler Building was being built, former partner H. Craig Severance was working on building the Bank of Manhattan. When Severance found out that Van Alen’s building was going to be 925 feet tall, he added a flagpole to the Bank of Manhattan Building to make it stand 927 feet tall and to claim the title of having the “world’s tallest building”. When Van Alen heard of Severance’s flagpole, he came up with his own rendition of the flagpole – a spire. Much to Severance’s dismay, the tall stainless steel spire was secretly assembled in the fire shaft, raised through the dome, and bolted into place, adding a victorious 123 feet to the Chrysler Building, raising the height of the Chrysler Building to an astonishing 1,048 feet. (The Chrysler Building was the first building to exceed the height of the Eiffel Tower.) The 27 ton spire was hoisted up onto the top of the building in 90 minutes. This happened in November of 1929 shortly after Severance’s building looked as though it would be complete. The distinctive stainless steel spire was based on the radiator cap of the 1930 Chrysler car. The spire’s triangular windows with sunburst patterns (a popular art deco theme) make it the epitome of art deco. Successive rows of brightly lit inverted “V’s” illuminate the nighttime NYC skyline. The Chrysler Building was the first to use Nirosta metal on the exterior, which is a mixture of chrome, nickel and steel made to look like platinum. Nirosta is also a low maintenance, corrosion free metal. The Nirosta metal gives the appearance of platinum. In order to construct the entire Chrysler Building, 20,691 tons of structural steel; 391,881 rivets; 3,826,000 bricks and 10,000 light bulbs were used. On top of that, there are 3,862 windows in the Chrysler Building. More than 750 miles of electrical conductor wire was used in the construction of the skyscraper. That is as long as the distance from New York City to Chicago!

With 77 stories and 32 elevators, this skyscraper is definitely one of a kind. High buildings rely on two basic developments – metal-skeleton construction and the passenger elevator. The cost of constructing the Chrysler Building was a steep $20 million. (That is a hefty sum of money back then and even today.) The cladding, or covering of the metal framework, is made of brick. The structural engineers for the Chrysler Building were Ralph Squire & Sons. The construction company Van Alen hired was Fred T. Ley & Company while Otis Elevator Company supplied all 32 elevators. Each of the elevators is inlaid with a different kind of wood from a different part of the world. Other buildings have followed this model, including the Williams Tower, in Texas which has different marble from different parts of the world in each elevator. Throughout its construction, the Chrysler Building was continually lauded for its efficiency and outstanding safety record. Even the New York Times reported that four floors were added weekly and that there had been no fatalities in its construction, a rarity in the 1920’s and 30’s. The safety record was believed to be a result of a new phone system that was used during the building’s construction. When a load of supplies would arrive, the proper foreman would be called on the phone and they would be dealt with immediately, rather than create a hazard on the building site indefinitely.

The central core of concrete helps stabilize the building as wells as houses the elevators and other mechanical systems. The skeleton of the Chrysler Building is made from steel. Stone provides insulation in addition to serving as the façade for the building. This however, does not provide any additional support for the structure.

This art deco building drew much of its decorative inspiration from the motor car, particularly from stylized radiator grilles, hub caps, and hood ornaments. The gargoyles on the 61st floor were created by Cesley Bonestell and inspired by hood ornaments from the 1929 Chrysler Plymouth. Examination of the art deco façade indicates that this was planned as the automotive tower of the city. Chrysler hoped that if he decorated his skyscraper just like his cars, that such a distinctive building would make his car company a household name. The Chrysler Building was one of the first buildings to use metal extensively on the exterior; the building's ornament makes reference to the automobile. When looking at the building from the exterior, you notice several levels of setbacks. At each setback, are different designs modeled after Chrysler’s motor cars. The building flares out sharply at the fourth setback into what appears to be shiny radiator caps. At other levels there are basket-weave designs and a band of abstract automobiles. The pioneering photographer Margaret Bourke-White occupied an office on the 61st floor and made Chrysler’s gargoyle ornaments world famous when she crept out on one to take a picture of the city from that vantage point, even as she was having another taken of the event. The east wall of the Chrysler Building’s lower setback is not parallel to the north-south avenues – this is because the property line follows the route of the former East Post Road, which in the 18th century ran approximately between Lexington and Third avenues, winding its way up Manhattan Island.

The building has a triangular lobby, which has modernistic African marble and chrome steel details below the ceiling murals. The walls are luxurious red Moroccan marble, the floor yellow Siena marble with amber onyx and blue marble trim. The lobby once served as a showroom for Chrysler Motors products. The lobby was restored in 1978. The large lobby ceiling is covered by a mural, with measurements of 76 feet by 100 feet, entitled "Energy and man's application of it", by Edward Turnbull. The elaborate and confusing mural contains a large image of the building, a plane, workers, and decorative patterns. Turnbull allegedly used some of the building’s construction workers as models for the complex mural. A particularly beautiful example of the Art Deco style, the lobby of Chrysler Building is clad in different marbles, onyx and amber (Wolfe, 303).

“Here is a city within a city - a community with its Schrafft's restaurant and its Terminal barber shop, its stores, and beauty parlor, its two gymnasiums and its two emergency hospitals for men and for women... Every contribution to efficiency, sanitation, comfort and even inspiration, that human ingenuity can conceive or money can buy is provided.” ~ Original Chrysler Building Brochure

Opening ceremonies took place on May 28, 1930; however, the Chrysler building was not actually completed until August of 1930 (Reynolds, 236). A private lounge called "Cloud Club" and an observation area were located at the top of the building. Legend has it that Walter Chrysler ordered the observation area to be closed the day the Empire State Building surpassed the Chrysler Building in height. But in fact it was closed some time in 1945. “One of the features of the observation floor will be an exhibition at the entrance which will include a picture of the Chrysler Building site as it was slightly more than fifty years ago - a goat farm, and another of the old four-story buildings which were torn down to make way for the present structure. Between these two pictures will be displayed the mechanics' tools which Mr. Chrysler made with his own hands, and above this, as if rising out of the tool box, will be a drawing of the new building.” ~ “Finishing Touches”

Due to many of the recent renovations to the building, I do not believe that anything would need to change if we were to build the Chrysler Building today. In the 1970’s, Tishman Speyer Properties spent $100 million to renovate the Chrysler Building. Renovations included the reclading with glass of the white-brick annex office tower at Third Avenue and the creation of angled, prismatic structures in the low-rise spaces between the annex and the Chrysler Building, the mural was restored in 1999 by the EverGreene Painting Studios. The lobby was restored in 1978 and JCS Design Associates and Joseph Pell Lombardi were the architects involved in the restoration. In the 1980's, the triangular windows were illuminated at night, making it New York's answer to a rocket liftoff at Cape Kennedy (Kaldor, 38).

A stairwell to the mezzanine and basement levels has a very attractive Art Deco chrome banister and walls similar to the lobby. It is a much more effective space than the lobby, perhaps because of its smaller size and the tactile act of using the banister on the stairs. The act of climbing up or down in this stairwell is somewhat akin, if one doesn't mind reverse psychology, to wearing a fur coat inside out; the sensuality of the fabulous marbles is overwhelming and refreshing.