Why the Chrysler Building is an Art Deco icon

Though it only had the distinction of being the world’s tallest building for 11 months, the Chrysler Building in midtown Manhattan has remained one of the most recognizable skyscrapers in the world — and a glimmering architectural icon of the Art Deco period, which celebrates its centennial on April 28.

The 1920s and 1930s gave rise to buildings such as Chicago’s Tribune Tower and New York’s Waldorf Astoria hotel that mixed materials and colors through the use of steel, glass, terracotta, stone and marble. This new modern style prized vertical designs that drew the eye upwards, decorative glass and metalwork with geometric and floral motifs, high-shine lacquered surfaces, and unique sculptural adornments — overall, a movement toward originality instead of references to the past.

“Until the 1920s, American architects tended to design their buildings with one eye looking over their left shoulder of Europe,” said Anthony W. Robins, a founding member and former vice president of The Art Deco Society of New York, in a phone call. Architectural styles in the US often followed revivals popular across the West, he noted, such as the Greek, Romanesque and Italian Renaissance revivals that fell in and out of favor.

But Art Deco didn’t have a name for decades; in 1966, during renewed interest in the era, a group of curators named the style after the “Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes,” which took place on April 28, 1925 in Paris and drew some 16 million visitors over seven months, forging a new period of architecture, design and decorative arts that influenced many parts of the world.

The 1,046-foot-tall Chrysler Building, completed in May of 1930, was the pinnacle of both the then-unnamed Art Deco period and the skyscraper boom that rapidly transformed New York City’s skyline. It dethroned the Eiffel Tower as the world’s tallest structure, and was only eclipsed by the Empire State Building before such lofty projects came to a halt as the global economy cratered during the Great Depression, Robins noted.

“(The Chrysler Building) and the Empire State Building were the culmination of this huge skyscraper race,” he said. “They weren’t the last to open up before the Depression put an end to it, but they were … the two that took the title of the ‘world’s tallest building.’”

Higher and higher

Designed by the architect William van Alen for the automotive magnate Walter P. Chrysler, who took over the project from the developer and politician William H. Reynolds, the tower features a steel frame and white and gray bricks that ascend skyward with three vertical columns of windows on each side, flanked by horizontal rows that appear like notches at each level. Climaxing with a cascade of curvilinear sunbursts at its peak, it tapers off to a gleaming 185-foot-tall spire — one that had to be secretly assembled and erected from the inside to deliver on its promise to become the world’s new tallest building.

During construction, the Chrysler’s superlative was at risk by a structure rising in tandem at 40 Wall Street. Though the New York Times reported in October 1929 that Paul Starrett, the downtown building’s developer, denied competing for “height supremacy,” the building plans had changed to accommodate additional floors. The press played up the rivalry over the course of a year, Robins noted, until Van Alen resolved it by having the spire covertly assembled from five parts on the 65th floor and quickly hoisted up in 90 minutes so that competitors would not know its final height until it was completed.

With the Empire State Building on the horizon, as well as plans for other supertalls that were never built — including the Noyes Building, a monumental, four-block wide, 1,600-foot-tall terracotta tower that, in New York’s skyline, would have only fallen short of One World Trade Center today — the Chrysler Building was the symbol of a rapidly changing skyline.

“What next February’s skyline will be like it would take a rash guesser to say,” the New York Times journalist H.I. Brock wrote in 1930 of the year ahead. “But it will be different. July’s skyline will be a new skyline, for that matter.”

Striking details

What makes the Chrysler Building so striking can be attributed, in part, to the experimentation of the Art Deco period, with its variety of textures, colors and materials, including its use of Nirosta steel: a new type of rustproof stainless steel from Germany.

“The color in the metal — that extraordinary silvery glow of the Nirosta at the top — it just stands out. You get there when the sun hits it on a good day, and it knocks your socks off,” Robins said.

But one landmark piece of legislation also contributed to its visual appeal, Robin said. New York City’s 1916 Zoning Resolution — the first citywide zoning code in the US to be established — included a requirement that large buildings taper off as they rise so as not to block the sun. Van Alen used the Chrysler Building’s five step-like setbacks to vary the design at each level, including ornaments on each ledge. Steel eagle heads and sculptural pineapples can be spotted on different levels, as well as replicas of Chrysler’s 1929 radiator hub caps — a tribute to innovation as well as a direct reference to the building’s original owner.

“It’s very common among Art Deco skyscrapers that the ornaments, aside from being ornamental, will… tell us who the building was built for and include the building itself in the ornament somewhere,” Robins said.

Those motifs continue inside, where the skyscraper’s dramatic vertical entrances of polished black granite and recessed glass panels lead visitors into the red marble and yellow travertine lobby. On the ceiling, Edward Trumbull’s monumental mural, “Transport and Human Endeavor,” is dedicated to the human ingenuity and technology that created the building, with a depiction of the skyscraper itself included.

Shifting attitudes

For all its favorable attention today, the Chrysler Building was completed to mixed reviews. Architecture critics considered the last-minute spire to be a stunt, according to the New York Times. In 1931, the acclaimed critic Lewis Mumford wrote: “Heaven help the person who critically looks at this building without the help of distance and heavy mists. The ornamental treatment of the facade is a series of restless mistakes.”

The architectural tides also shifted drastically as the International Style architectural movement swiftly rose to prominence in the 1930s, prizing functionality in its blocky concrete forms with no decor — the antithesis of its predecessors. But with Art Deco’s revival in the 1960s — along with its official name — as well as the skyscraper’s designation as a federal and city landmark in 1976 and 1978, respectively, the Chrysler Building’s renown grew with time.

That wasn’t the case for its architect, however, as Van Alen’s promising career dwindled, and he became mired in litigation with his client, Chrysler, over payment for the project. (The courts ultimately ruled in Val Alen’s favor and he received his fee.)

“The Chrysler is the building in his life, and it was the last major building in his life,” Robins said.

Though the building was completed in 1930, it took until 1981 for Van Alen’s full vision to be realized, when lighting technicians illuminated the skyscraper’s crown for the first time according to the architect’s original designs.

“There’s no spire that looks anything like that,” Robins said. “You’re flying over Manhattan — that’s the one that just catches your eye.”