CHRYSLER BUILDING

Designed by William Van Alen, completed 1930 New York City The Chrysler Building, designed by William Van Alen, stands 77 stories tall at Lexington Avenue between 42nd and 43rd Streets in Manhattan, and is considered one of the most famous and admired skyscrapers in the world. The Chrysler Building owes this position primarily to its distinctive tower, which terminates in a series of curves that support a final pointed spire. At night, v-shaped light patterns mark the successive curves, keeping the structure conspicuous around the clock.

The building occupies an easily visible site, across the street from the Grand Central Terminal, where subway lines, commuter rail lines, and long-distance rail lines converge. Other buildings in the area attract less attention because their towers are rectilinear, and thus commonplace. Not only does the Chrysler spire draw attention at close range as well as from afar, but also the ground floor features tall, angular entrances, a lavishly decorated lobby, and beautifully inlaid elevator cabs. Several setbacks along the building’s silhouette have easily visible decorations including metal eagles, winged radiator caps, and a brick frieze of Chrysler automobiles. The combination of stiff stylization and recognizable imagery marks a phase of the style known as Art Deco, an amalgam of French-inspired semi-abstraction and popular, easily intelligible subject matter. The decorative forms at the Chrysler Building are more energetic than the more classicizing ones used at the contemporary Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

All this came about when Walter Chrysler, Jr., a free spirit in his family of automobile industrialists, obtained the building site and existing plans in 1928. Between 1925 and 1929, high-rise office construction in New York City expanded markedly, and a site convenient to public transportation was an ideal one for luring tenants in a highly competitive market. There are entrances to the subway and terminal system within the building, so that people could avoid walking outdoors to reach their workplaces.

To design the project, Chrysler employed William Van Alen, a socially well- connected architect trained in the neo Renaissance tradition of the École des Beaux-Arts who accommodated his work to the stylistic preferences of his clients. For Chrysler he created a building that is seen as glamorous, amusing, and utilitarian all at once, although it is rarely considered to exemplify serious high art. Neither architect nor client was making a profound aesthetic or philosophical statement; the aim was pragmatic: to be distinctive, as a good advertisement is. Van Allen was probably prodded by Chrysler to design details in a more popular contemporary mode than was customary for this architect.

The owner hoped to capture additional publicity by building the world’s tallest office building. The title was then held by 40 Wall-Street, but Chrysler expected that his building in the newer office zone of midtown Manhattan would confirm a trend toward relocation of major firms to the Grand Central area. He did not achieve his goal because the owners of the nearby rival Empire State Building commissioned a last-minute change of design from their architects and erected a higher tower. Nevertheless, the Chrysler tower earns more aesthetic admiration.

The imaginations of architect and client were constrained by the zoning regulations of New York City, which decreed that buildings taller than specified limits had to be set back from the building line on several sides. The setback rules applied particularly to the silhouette above a legal multiple of the adjacent street width. Above that level, the building had to recede until it occupied only one-quarter of the site, at which point it could rise as a tower to any height that the owner desired; this accounts for the setbacks and tower of the Chrysler Building.

Their imaginations were also constrained by the building code, which required provisions for safety and health, and also by the customs of the day. These determined that tenants would not rent office space that was more than 30 feet from perimeter windows, as deeper spaces were considered to lack sufficient light and air. Accordingly, owners and architects designed insets, courtyards, and other receding forms to produce maximal office space and minimal storage or service space, as the latter rented at lower rates per square foot.

No constraints seem to have operated when it came to decorating the Chrysler Building. At ground level, shops along the street and the entrances to the building were given angular decoration, much of it in metal that forecast vibrant embellishments inside. The lobby, entered from both Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street, appears triangular, thus unusual in a city where axial lobbies are the norm. The Chrysler’s lobby is decorated in warm colors of inlaid wood, of metal, and of paint. Above the marble and granite walls, a ceiling mural by Edward Trumbull depicts the building, airplanes, the Chrysler automobile assembly line, and other emblems of modernity. The 30 elevator cabs are inlaid in wood veneer on steel, featuring simplified floral forms and geometric shapes, separated into panels.

The office floors have double-loaded corridors and office spaces that were standard at the period of their construction; several revisions have-been made to parts of the interior since the building was completed in 1930. At the top of the tower is a tall space, furnished for dining and receptions. The exterior surface is made primarily of pale brick over a steel frame; stainless steel marks the entrances, decorative details, and the tower. Tower lighting, originally planned, was activated in 1981.

Minor alterations and restoration especially of the lobby, entrances, and ornamental features, followed several changes of ownership. In 1978 the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the Chrysler Building as a municipal landmark. This prevents the owners from changing the designated features unless severe economic hardship can be demonstrated. Aware of the building’s prestige, owners have generally been willing to repair essential functional and ornamental features. The building is now admired as a delightful relic of an optimistic era in skyscraper building and an urban icon, although, having always functioned as an obvious self advertisement, it has not been regarded as a seminal work of modern architecture.