Skyscraper Chrysler Building (30 photos)

The Chrysler Building skyscraper once belonged to the Chrysler company. The building was built in 1930, today it is considered one of the symbols of New York. The height of the building is 319 m. It is located in the eastern part of Manhattan. Now the owners of the skyscraper are: TMW Real Estate (75 percent) and Tishman Speyer Properties (25 percent).

3 In the late twenties and early thirties of the last century, skyscrapers were built one after another in New York, and for the owners of each of them, it was a matter of prestige to surpass the height of its predecessor. Architect William van Alen designed the 246-meter-tall building for contractor William Reynolds, but the rights to the building were later purchased by Walter Chrysler, who planned to house the headquarters of his automobile corporation in the new building. At Chrysler's request, the project was revised, the planned height of the building increased by ten floors (up to 282 meters).

Van Alen's original design featured a diamond-shaped glass roof as decoration. The design also specified a base in which the exhibition windows were tripled in height and had 12 floors above them with glass corners, which was supposed to create a visual and physical effect of lightness, as if the tower was floating in the air. Also, initially the skyscraper was supposed to be 246 meters in height. However, the project was considered too ahead of its time, and also expensive for its customer, William G. Reynolds, who did not approve of Van Alen's original plan. The design and leases were then sold to Walter P. Chrysler, who worked with Van Alen and redesigned the skyscraper, adding several floors; it eventually reached 282 meters in height. Since Walter Chrysler was the chairman of the Chrysler Automobile Corporation, various architectural details and especially the statues and gargoyles on the building were made to resemble Chrysler products, such as Plymouth hoods; they represented the mechanical age in the 1920s

Work to clear the area for construction began in October 1928, six months later construction of the foundation began, and after another six months the steel frame of the building was completely erected. The opening of the building took place on May 27, 1930.

In total, nearly 400,000 rivets were used and approximately 3,826,000 bricks were laid by hand to create the skyscraper's curtain walls. Contractors, builders and engineers were joined by other building service experts to coordinate construction.

Chrysler's 77-story skyscraper was part of a wild, three-way competition to become the tallest building in the world. The Bank of Manhattan company with the building 40 Wall Street, erected by Van Alen's former partner, and his main bitter rival Craig Severance, as well as the Empire State Building, fought with Chrysler for this title. When Severance caught wind that the Chrysler was going to be built to a height of 925 feet (281.94 m), he added a 50-foot (15.24 m) flagpole, which made his building two feet taller, reaching 927 feet (282.55 m). Then, in August 1930, Van Alen revealed his "secret weapon" - the top, a stainless steel spire that was secretly assembled inside the building's dome and then raised, bringing the skyscraper to a height of 1,048 feet (319.43 m). The Van Alen Spire was the first man-made structure to surpass the height of the 1,024.5-foot (312.27 m) Eiffel Tower, which had held the height record since the 1889 Paris World's Fair.

At the same time, construction of another skyscraper was being completed in New York - the seventy-story building at 40 Wall Street (later known as the Trump Building). Its architect was Craig Severance, a former colleague and then rival of van Alen. Knowing the expected height of the Chrysler Building, Severance, in pursuit of glory, increased the height of his construction to 283 meters.

William Van Alen's response was to obtain permission to increase the height of the Chrysler Building. Without unnecessary publicity, he assembled a steel spire about 38 meters high inside the skyscraper under construction. After the spire was placed on top of the building, the Chrysler Building reached a height of 320 meters, becoming the tallest structure in the world.

The land on which the Chrysler Building stands was given to The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, a private college offering full scholarships to every student, in 1902. The land was leased to Chrysler Corporation in 1929. The college still owns the land. Several owners had rights to the building itself. The Chrysler family sold the building in 1947. Chrysler Corp. moved out in the 1950s, and in 1957 it was purchased by real estate leaders Saul Goldman and Alex DiLorenzo and taken over by the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company. The lobby was newly furnished and the façade redone in 1978-1979. In 1979, the building was owned by Jack Kent Cook, an investor from Washington, DC. The spire underwent reconstruction, which was completed in 1995. In 1998, Tishman Speyer Properties and Travelers Insurance Group purchased the Chrysler Building at 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue and the adjacent Kent Building in 1997 for approximately $220 million from consortium of banks and the Jack Kent Cooke organization. Until 1997, Tishman Speyer Properties obtained a 150-year lease on the land from Cooper Union and continues to hold the lease.

In 2001, a 75% stake in the building was sold for $300 million to the German subsidiary of Atlanta-based investment fund TMW. On June 11, 2008, it was reported that the Abu Dhabi Investment Board was in talks to buy a 75% stake from TMW and a 15% stake from Tishman Speyer Properties, as well as a stake in neighboring Trylons for $800 million. On July 9, 2008, it was announced that the deal had been completed and that the Abu Dhabi Investment Board now owned a 90% stake in the building.

The Chrysler Building held the crown of the tallest building in the world for only eleven months until it was defeated by the Empire State Building, which opened in May 1931. (Without its mooring mast, the Empire State was only two feet (0.61 m) taller than the Chrysler. However, a 200-foot (60.96 m) mast, originally intended to moor airships, then installed in 1950 A 204-foot (62.18 m) television antenna increased its height to 1,452 feet, 8 and 9/16 inches (442.787 m) to the top of the lightning rod.)

There have been many attempts to decipher the Chrysler façade, especially the spire, which was derided by leading critics of the time as a "junk design" with "all this vapid romanticism, this meaningless voluptuousness, this empty symbolism", as an "inverted swordfish" and as "the architecture of the Little Nemo," referring to the futuristic space design.

The thirty-first floor of the tower, clad in white brick with gray brick accents, features a frieze of stylized automobiles topped with winged urns reminiscent of the radiator cap of a 1929 Chrysler model. On the next ledge, eight giant metal eagle heads guard the cardinal directions like protective symbols on medieval castles.

The leitmotif of the building is a car turning into an aircraft, or a vehicle becoming a living flying creature. Urns that grew wings, eagle heads made of metal. In this context, the spire can be interpreted as an empennage made of metal, with triangular windows and shaped metal panels being elements of this empennage.

On May 27, 1930, the Chrysler Building opened to the public. Despite the very fast pace of construction (four floors per week) and very primitive safety measures, not a single person died during the construction of the building.
The Chrysler Building is a classic example of the Art Deco style of architecture. Stainless steel was widely used in the finishing of the brick building, including the arched “crown” and spire that crown the building. The lobbies, elevators and other interior spaces of the skyscraper are also no less luxuriously decorated.

The Chrysler Building is also known for the crown that adorns the front of the roof. Featuring seven semicircular terrace arches, Van Alen's crown design is a cross vault made from seven semicircular sections with transitional chamfers erected one after the other. The stainless steel coverings are anchored and forged into a solar pattern with numerous triangular vaulted windows flowing into small segments of the seven narrow bevels of the crown façade. The crown itself is made of silver metal "Enduro KA-2" - an austenitic stainless steel developed in Germany by Krupp and marketed under the name "Nirosta" (the German acronym for nichtrostender Stahl - stainless steel).

When the building originally opened, it had a gallery accessible to the public on the 71st floor, which was closed in 1945. This floor is now the highest occupied floor in the building, most recently occupied by an office company. A private club, the Cloud Club, occupied space on three floors, 66 to 68, but it closed in the late 1970s. Above the 71st floor, the building is mainly a staircase up to the spire. These very narrow floors with low slanted ceilings are used exclusively for storing radios and other equipment. WCBS-TV (Channel 2) originally broadcast from the top of the Chrysler Building in the 1940s and early 1950s before moving to the Empire State Building. For many years, radio stations WPAT-FM and WTFM (now WKTU) also used the Chrysler Building as their tower, but they also moved to the Empire State Building by the 1970s. There are currently no radio stations in the Chrysler Building.

There are two types of lighting on the spire and its decoration. The first is V-shaped lighting entrances in the building itself. A group of floodlights were later added on light pole brackets facing the rear of the building. This allows the roof of a building to be illuminated with lights of different colors for special occasions. This lighting was installed by electrician Charles Londner and his team during the construction of the building.

According to many experts, the Chrysler Building is the most beautiful of Manhattan's many skyscrapers. The building is traditionally one of the ten “most beloved” architectural structures in the United States of America.

Immediately after the completion of the building, an observation deck accessible to visitors was located on the seventy-first floor, but already in 1945 it was closed. Until the end of the seventies of the last century, three floors of the Chrysler Building (from sixty-six to sixty-eighth) were occupied by the private “Cloud Club”. For some time, television and radio transmitters were installed on the upper (technical) floors of the building, but over time, almost all of them “moved” to the Empire State Building.

In 1976, the Chrysler Building received the status of a US National Historic Landmark.

Until the fifties of the 20th century, the building remained the property of the Chrysler family; subsequently it changed many owners. Nowadays, the offices of many companies are located here, and therefore free access is open only to the lobbies of the first floor. Nevertheless, the Chrysler Building is one of the most famous landmarks and symbols of New York and constantly attracts the attention of numerous tourists.

The Chrysler Building is an example of Art Deco architecture. The peculiar ornamentation of the skyscraper is a repetition of the design motifs for the wheel rims of Chrysler cars of that time. Perhaps the Chrysler Building is the best example of the Art Deco period in New York architecture, which is considered the most beautiful period in the development of the city.

The lobby of the skyscraper is unusually elegant, and at the top of the building there was an observation deck, which was replaced a few years later by a restaurant. But with the onset of the Great Depression, the former observation deck was turned into a private club. The uppermost levels of the skyscraper are narrow, have low ceilings, were created primarily for viewing from the outside, and were used to install radio equipment and other apparatus (mechanical and electrical).

The materials used in the decoration of the building are luxurious and exotic - red Moroccan marble with a pattern reminiscent of flames, the crimson layers of which seem to have captured the spirit of the Jazz Age, and floors made of yellow Siena marble. Exquisitely inlaid doors and elevator cabins, like a poem read aloud from memory: teak wood, Philippine mahogany, Cuban plum, English maple with green wood, American and South African prima vera, aspen, curly maple and walnut from America, Australian silk oak. The rich wood trim is another literal image of the car in the interior design of the building, because cars of that time had many wooden elements in their interior decoration, as well as a wooden dashboard

At one time, the Chrysler Building was criticized for its "frivolous" design, which moved away from modernism, characterized by straightforwardness and functionality. For example, at the top of the building there are huge silver gargoyles in the form of eagles. But still, the public accepted the building with admiration and enthusiasm, sometimes even giving it nicknames, for example, “The Beauty of Manhattan.” Over time, many have recognized the Chrysler skyscraper as the highest architectural expression of the 1920s era.

And, of course, the unusual and beautiful building was noticed and used in many films, games and cartoons. In recent years, the Chrysler Building has continued to be a favorite building for New Yorkers. In the summer of 2005, the Skyscraper Museum in New York City asked 100 architects, builders, critics, engineers, historians and scientists to choose their 10 favorite buildings from New York City's 25 towers. The Chrysler Building took first place, as 90% of respondents named it in their top ten favorite buildings.

The Chrysler Building's distinctive design inspired architects to build similar buildings, including One Liberty Place in Philadelphia.

Being one of the symbols of New York, the Chrysler Building has appeared in almost all forms of art - films, photography, video games, painting, advertising, music, literature and even fashion, since the choice of hosting various events often falls on it.

Tallest building before it: Trump Building (40 Wall Street) Tallest building after it: Empire State Building Address: 405 Lexington Avenue, Manhattan, NY, United States Built: 1928-1930 Use: Office Height with antenna/spire: 318.9 m (1,046 ft) Height with roof: 282 m (925 ft) Top floor: 274 m (899 ft) Number of floors: 77 Total area: 1,195,000 sq ft (111,000 m2) ) Number of elevators: 32

Interior finishing: