How did the Chrysler Building win the race to be tallest?

Why it matters

The Chrysler Building stands at the corner of 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue, one block east of Grand Central, and its crown is one of the few shapes on the skyline that everyone can name. It is one of forty-one buildings in Manhattan with its own ZIP code. At one thousand and forty-six feet, it is the tallest brick building with a steel frame anywhere, and when it opened in 1930 it briefly held the title of tallest building in the world.

It was designed by the architect William Van Alen in the Art Deco style and named for Walter Chrysler, the head of the Chrysler Corporation, who paid for it himself as an investment for his children. The building never served as the company's headquarters, which stayed in Detroit, home to the rest of its operations.

What sets it apart is its top: a crown of stainless steel that catches the sun by day and glows at night, visible from almost anywhere in Midtown. The effect has made it one of the most recognized outlines on the Manhattan skyline, far beyond its brief spell as the tallest building anywhere.

It held the title of tallest building in the world for eleven months, until the Empire State Building overtook it in 1931. That race, and the speed with which the Empire State rose, is a story worth reading in its own right, and it shaped how New Yorkers watched the skyline for decades afterward.

The race for the sky

The Chrysler rose in the middle of a contest among three towers racing to be the tallest in the world: the Chrysler, the Empire State Building, and 40 Wall Street downtown. The architect of 40 Wall Street, H. Craig Severance, had once been William Van Alen's partner, and the two had complemented each other, Van Alen the imaginative designer and Severance the shrewd businessman.

Their partnership dissolved acrimoniously, with lawsuits over the firm's clients and money that lasted more than a year. Van Alen's answer was a trick: he had a spire of stainless steel, the needle, assembled secretly inside the frame of the building, so that Severance would not know how tall the Chrysler would finally be.

On October 23, 1929, a week after the Chrysler passed the height of the Woolworth Building and one day before the Wall Street Crash, the spire was assembled, and within ninety minutes its pieces were raised through the top of the building and riveted into place, lifting the tower to one thousand and forty-six feet.

The new height made it the tallest building in the world, overtaking 40 Wall Street at a stroke, a title the Chrysler held until the Empire State Building opened in 1931, ending its reign after eleven months at the top of a skyline it had briefly claimed for itself.

What you actually see

The crown and spire are clad in Nirosta, a bright stainless steel developed by Krupp in Germany; the Chrysler was the first American project to use it, and stainless steel producers later used the building to judge how the metal held up in architecture over the decades that followed its debut.

The crown rises in a series of arches that step up and narrow like a sunburst, ribbed and riveted, each pierced by triangular windows, and the effect is often compared to the spokes of a wheel. At night the triangles are outlined in light, so the crown seems to glow from within after dark.

Lower down, the ornament borrows from Chrysler's cars. At the corners of the 31st floor stand enormous winged radiator caps, modeled on the hood ornaments of the 1929 Chrysler and shaped like the winged helmet of Mercury, above a frieze of hubcaps and fenders, a detail easy to miss from street level but unmistakable from across Lexington Avenue.

At the 61st floor, steel eagle heads lean out from the corners over the street, like the gargoyles on a Gothic cathedral, a nod to the national bird. About fifty metal ornaments project from the corners on five floors in all, best seen from 42nd Street near Grand Central or from Lexington Avenue and 44th Street. From higher up, the decks of Summit One Vanderbilt and the Top of the Rock look directly across at the crown, offering another angle on the same view.

The lobby

The lobby is triangular, with entrances on Lexington Avenue, 42nd Street and 43rd Street, and it is one of the great Art Deco rooms in the city. Its walls are marble, bands of yellow Siena travertine mark the paths across the floor, and the doors and storefronts are framed in the same steel as the crown outside.

The ceiling carries a mural measuring one hundred ten feet by sixty-seven feet, Transport and Human Endeavor, designed by Edward Trumbull, which was cleaned and restored in 1999. Seen from the floor, the scale of the painting is easy to underestimate until you look up and trace its full width across the room.

Van Alen first planned four large columns in the lobby; Chrysler had them removed because they made the room look cramped. The result is an open triangular space with long sightlines from each entrance, something later visitors often notice before they look up at the mural overhead, framed by the same steel trim seen at the doors below.

The elevator doors and cabs are works of wood marquetry, each cab fitted with its own combination of veneers, and the critic Vincent Curcio called them among the most beautiful small enclosed spaces in New York. Lighting in the lobby stays dim, which makes the stone and metal glow rather than glare.

How to visit

The building does not operate an observation deck for visitors today. It once had one, called Celestial, on the 71st floor, high above the city; it ran from 1930 to 1945, after which the floors above served mainly as landings for the stairs up into the spire, which stays off limits to visitors.

By the 2000s, the lobby was the only part of the building visitors could enter, and access depends on the building's owners. If the doors stand open, step inside, keep your voice down, and let office workers pass; if not, admire the exterior and check with the building for current visiting rules.

The outside is always free to look at, day or night, from any of the surrounding sidewalks. Several subway lines stop at Grand Central–42nd Street, a block away, making the Chrysler an easy first stop on a walk east along 42nd Street, described elsewhere on this site, including nearby stops worth visiting the same day.

Nearby

Grand Central Terminal is a block west of the Chrysler Building, and its concourse makes a natural next stop after admiring the crown outside. The Grand Central page covers what to look for inside, including its painted ceiling and its well-known concourse clock, a favorite meeting spot before heading out again.

Walking on along 42nd Street leads past the New York Public Library and Bryant Park, both an easy stroll from the Chrysler's doors. Together with Grand Central, they make up one short, walkable stretch of Midtown worth covering in a single afternoon, since all three sit within a few streets of each other.

North up Fifth Avenue sits Rockefeller Center, another Art Deco complex from the same era, with an observation deck of its own that looks back across the city toward the Chrysler's crown from a different angle. Visitors planning a full day of Midtown sightseeing often pair the two buildings together.