Chrysler Building
The Chrysler Building is a, Art Deco skyscraper in the East Midtown neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, United States. Located at the intersection of 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue, it is the tallest brick building in the world with a steel framework. It was both the world's first supertall skyscraper and the world's tallest building for 11 months after its completion in 1930., the Chrysler is the 13th-tallest building in the city, tied with The New York Times Building.
Originally a project of real estate developer and former New York State Senator William H. Reynolds, the building was commissioned by Walter Chrysler, the head of the Chrysler Corporation. The construction of the Chrysler Building, an early skyscraper, was characterized by a competition with 40 Wall Street and the Empire State Building to become the world's tallest building. The Chrysler Building was designed and funded by Walter Chrysler personally as a real estate investment for his children, but it was not intended as the Chrysler Corporation's headquarters. An annex was completed in 1952, and the building was sold by the Chrysler family the next year, with numerous subsequent owners.
When the Chrysler Building opened, there were mixed reviews of the building's design, some calling it inane and unoriginal, others hailing it as modernist and iconic. Reviewers in the late 20th and early 21st centuries regarded the building as a paragon of the Art Deco architectural style. In 2007, it was ranked ninth on the American Institute of Architects' list of America's Favorite Architecture. The facade and interior became New York City designated landmarks in 1978, and the structure was added to the National Register of Historic Places as a National Historic Landmark in 1976.
Site
The Chrysler Building is on the eastern side of Lexington Avenue between 42nd and 43rd streets in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, United States. The land was donated to The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 1902. The site is roughly a trapezoid with a frontage on Lexington Avenue; a frontage on 42nd Street; and a frontage on 43rd Street. The site bordered the old Boston Post Road, which predated, and ran aslant of, the Manhattan street grid established by the Commissioners' Plan of 1811. As a result, the east side of the building's base is similarly aslant. The building is assigned its own ZIP Code, 10174. It is one of 41 buildings in Manhattan that have their own ZIP Codes, as of 2019.The Grand Hyatt New York hotel and the Graybar Building are across Lexington Avenue, while the Socony–Mobil Building is across 42nd Street. In addition, the Chanin Building is to the southwest, diagonally across Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street.
Architecture
The Chrysler Building was designed by William Van Alen in the Art Deco style and is named after one of its original tenants, automotive executive Walter Chrysler. With a height of, the Chrysler is the 12th-tallest building in the city as of 2019, tied with The New York Times Building. The building is constructed of a steel frame infilled with masonry, with areas of decorative metal cladding. The structure contains 3,862 exterior windows. Approximately fifty metal ornaments protrude at the building's corners on five floors reminiscent of gargoyles on Gothic cathedrals. The 31st-floor contains gargoyles as well as replicas of the 1929 Chrysler radiator caps, and the 61st-floor is adorned with eagles as a nod to America's national bird.The design of the Chrysler Building makes extensive use of bright "Nirosta" stainless steel, an austenitic alloy developed in Germany by Krupp. It was the first use of this "18–8 stainless steel" in an American project, composed of 18% chromium and 8% nickel. Nirosta was used in the exterior ornaments, the window frames, the crown, and the needle. The steel was an integral part of Van Alen's design, as E.E. Thum explains: "The use of permanently bright metal was of greatest aid in the carrying of rising lines and the diminishing circular forms in the roof treatment, so as to accentuate the gradual upward swing until it literally dissolves into the sky...." Stainless steel producers used the Chrysler Building to evaluate the durability of the product in architecture. In 1929, the American Society for Testing Materials created an inspection committee to study its performance, which regarded the Chrysler Building as the best location to do so; a subcommittee examined the building's panels every five years until 1960, when the inspections were canceled because the panels had shown minimal deterioration.
Form
The Chrysler Building's height and legally mandated setbacks influenced Van Alen in his design. The walls of the lowermost sixteen floors rise directly from the sidewalk property lines, except for a recess on one side that gives the building a U-shaped floor plan above the fourth floor. There are setbacks on floors 16, 18, 23, 28, and 31, making the building compliant with the 1916 Zoning Resolution. This gives the building the appearance of a ziggurat on one side and a U-shaped palazzo on the other. Above the 31st floor, there are no more setbacks until the 60th floor, above which the structure is funneled into a Maltese cross shape that "blends the square shaft to the finial", according to author and photographer Cervin Robinson.The floor plans of the first sixteen floors were made as large as possible to optimize the amount of rental space nearest ground level, which was seen as most desirable. The U-shaped cut above the fourth floor served as a shaft for air flow and illumination. The area between floors 28 and 31 added "visual interest to the middle of the building, preventing it from being dominated by the heavy detail of the lower floors and the eye-catching design of the finial. They provide a base to the column of the tower, effecting a transition between the blocky lower stories and the lofty shaft."
Facade
Base and shaft
The ground floor exterior is covered in polished black granite from Shastone, while the three floors above it are clad in white marble from Georgia. There are two main entrances, on Lexington Avenue and on 42nd Street, each three floors high with Shastone granite surrounding each proscenium-shaped entryway. At some distance into each main entryway, there are revolving doors "beneath intricately patterned metal and glass screens", designed so as to embody the Art Deco tenet of amplifying the entrance's visual impact. A smaller side entrance on 43rd Street is one story high. There are storefronts consisting of large Nirosta-steel-framed windows at ground level. Office windows penetrate the second through fourth floors.The west and east elevations contain the air shafts above the fourth floor, while the north and south sides contain the receding setbacks. Below the 16th floor, the facade is clad with white brick, interrupted by white-marble bands in a manner similar to basket weaving. The inner faces of the brick walls are coated with a waterproof grout mixture measuring about thick. The windows, arranged in grids, do not have window sills, the frames being flush with the facade. Between the 16th and 24th floors, the exterior exhibits vertical white brick columns that are separated by windows on each floor. This visual effect is made possible by the presence of aluminum spandrels between the columns of windows on each floor. There are abstract reliefs on the 20th through 22nd-floor spandrels, while the 24th floor contains decorative pineapples.
Above the third setback, consisting of the 24th through 27th floors, the facade contains horizontal bands and zigzagged gray-and-black brick motifs. The section above the fourth setback, between the 27th and 31st floors, serves as a podium for the main shaft of the building. There are Nirosta-steel decorations above the setbacks. At each corner of the 31st floor, large car-hood ornaments were installed to make the base look larger. These corner extensions help counter a common optical illusion seen in tall buildings with horizontal bands, whose taller floors would normally look larger. The 31st floor also contains a gray and white frieze of hubcaps and fenders, which both symbolize the Chrysler Corporation and serves as a visual signature of the building's Art Deco design. The bonnet embellishments take the shape of Mercury's winged helmet and resemble hood ornaments installed on Chrysler vehicles at the time.
The shaft of the tower was designed to emphasize both the horizontal and vertical: each of the tower's four sides contains three columns of windows, each framed by bricks and an unbroken marble pillar that rises along the entirety of each side. The spandrels separating the windows contain "alternating vertical stripes in gray and white brick", while each corner contains horizontal rows of black brick.
Crown and spire
The Chrysler Building is renowned for, and recognized by its terraced crown, which is an extension of the main tower. Composed of seven radiating terraced arches, Van Alen's design of the crown is a cruciform groin vault of seven concentric members with transitioning setbacks. The entire crown is clad with Nirosta steel, ribbed and riveted in a radiating sunburst pattern with many triangular vaulted windows, reminiscent of the spokes of a wheel. The windows are repeated, in smaller form, on the terraced crown's seven narrow setbacks. Due to the curved shape of the dome, the Nirosta sheets had to be measured on site, so most of the work was carried out in workshops on the building's 67th and 75th floors. According to Robinson, the terraced crown "continue the wedding-cake layering of the building itself. This concept is carried forward from the 61st floor, whose eagle gargoyles echo the treatment of the 31st, to the spire, which extends the concept of 'higher and narrower' forward to infinite height and infinitesimal width. This unique treatment emphasizes the building's height, giving it an other worldly atmosphere reminiscent of the fantastic architecture of Coney Island or the Far East."Television station WCBS-TV originated its transmission from the top of the Chrysler Building in 1938. WCBS-TV transmissions were shifted to the Empire State Building in 1960 in response to competition from RCA's transmitter on that building. For many years WPAT-FM and WTFM also transmitted from the Chrysler Building, but their move to the Empire State Building by the 1970s ended commercial broadcasting from the structure.
The crown and spire are illuminated by a combination of fluorescent lights framing the crown's distinctive triangular windows and colored floodlights that face toward the building, allowing it to be lit in a variety of schemes for special occasions. The V-shaped fluorescent "tube lighting" – hundreds of 480V 40W bulbs framing 120 window openings – was added in 1981, although it had been part of the original design. Until 1998, the lights were turned off at 2 am, but The New York Observer columnist Ron Rosenbaum convinced Tishman Speyer to keep the lights on until 6 am. Since 2015, the Chrysler Building and other city skyscrapers have been part of the Audubon Society's Lights Out program, turning off their lights during bird migration seasons.