Wikipedia Deep Dive

Chrysler Building

16 min read

The Secret Spire

In 1929, two skyscrapers were racing toward the sky in Manhattan, each desperate to claim the title of world's tallest building. The architects of 40 Wall Street thought they had won. They topped out at 927 feet and celebrated their victory.

They didn't know about the secret weapon hidden inside the Chrysler Building.

For months, workers had been quietly assembling a 185-foot steel spire inside the building's crown, piece by piece, in total secrecy. On October 23, 1929, in just ninety minutes, a crane hoisted the gleaming needle through an opening in the roof and bolted it into place. The Chrysler Building shot past its rival to become the tallest structure ever built by human hands—1,046 feet of Art Deco ambition piercing the Manhattan skyline.

It would hold the title for only eleven months before the Empire State Building claimed it. But the Chrysler Building had already won something more lasting than a height record. It had become, and remains, one of the most beloved buildings in America.

A Car Magnate's Personal Monument

Here's something that surprises most people: the Chrysler Building was never the headquarters of the Chrysler Corporation. The company's actual headquarters sat in Detroit at the Highland Park plant, where it remained until 1996. The Manhattan skyscraper was Walter Chrysler's personal investment, built with his own money as a real estate venture for his children.

Chrysler didn't even start the project. A New York real estate developer and former state senator named William H. Reynolds originally commissioned the building, hiring architect William Van Alen to design it. But Reynolds ran into financial trouble, and Walter Chrysler stepped in to take over in 1928. He immediately pushed Van Alen to make the building taller and more dramatic.

The result was something unprecedented. Van Alen created a tower that celebrated the machine age—specifically, the automobile—with an exuberance that bordered on the theatrical. The building's corners at the 31st floor sprout massive replicas of 1929 Chrysler radiator cap ornaments. A frieze of hubcaps and fenders wraps around the same floor. The hood ornaments take the shape of Mercury's winged helmet, echoing the embellishments on actual Chrysler cars of the era.

Some critics found this garish. When the building opened, architectural reviewers were split. Some called it inane and unoriginal—a giant advertisement masquerading as architecture. Others recognized it as something genuinely new: a building that embraced modernity without apology, that made industrial design beautiful, that turned the symbols of American manufacturing into decorative art.

History sided with the admirers. In 2007, the American Institute of Architects ranked it ninth on their list of America's Favorite Architecture. It became a National Historic Landmark in 1976 and a New York City designated landmark in 1978.

The Crown That Catches the Light

If you've ever seen the Chrysler Building, you remember the crown. Seven terraced arches radiate outward from the central spire, each clad in a distinctive stainless steel that catches the sun like no other material in the city. The pattern is a sunburst of ribbed and riveted metal, punctuated by triangular windows that repeat in smaller and smaller forms as the crown narrows toward the needle.

That steel has a name: Nirosta. It's an austenitic alloy—a type of stainless steel developed by the German manufacturer Krupp, composed of 18 percent chromium and 8 percent nickel. The Chrysler Building was the first structure in America to use this particular formulation, now commonly called 18-8 stainless steel.

Van Alen chose it for a specific reason. He wanted "permanently bright metal" that would emphasize the building's upward thrust. As one contemporary observer noted, the shining steel accentuated "the gradual upward swing until it literally dissolves into the sky." The material was so new and untested that the American Society for Testing Materials created a special committee to study how it performed on the building. They examined the panels every five years until 1960, when they finally stopped because the steel had shown almost no deterioration after three decades of exposure to New York weather.

The curved shape of the dome created a construction challenge. Unlike flat panels, the Nirosta sheets couldn't be measured in advance and fabricated offsite. Workers had to measure each piece on location, then shape it in temporary workshops set up on the 67th and 75th floors of the building itself. The entire crown was essentially hand-fitted, a testament to the skill of 1920s metalworkers.

Gargoyles of the Machine Age

Medieval cathedrals placed gargoyles at their corners—grotesque stone figures that served as waterspouts while warding off evil spirits. The Chrysler Building has gargoyles too, but they're made of steel and shaped like automobile parts.

About fifty metal ornaments protrude from the building's corners across five different floors. The 31st floor features the famous radiator cap replicas—giant versions of the hood ornaments that graced Chrysler automobiles. The 61st floor sports eagles, their wings spread wide, a nod to America's national symbol that also echoes the streamlined aesthetic of the Art Deco movement.

These aren't merely decorative. They serve a visual purpose, breaking up the building's massive vertical planes and giving the eye places to rest as it travels up the facade. The radiator caps at the 31st floor also solve an optical problem: tall buildings with horizontal bands can create an illusion where the upper floors appear larger than the lower ones. The corner extensions counteract this effect, making the base look more substantial.

The Lobby as Cathedral

By the 2000s, the lobby was the only part of the Chrysler Building accessible to the general public. It's worth the visit.

The space is triangular, connecting entrances on Lexington Avenue, 42nd Street, and 43rd Street. The floors are banded with yellow travertine from Siena, Italy, marking pathways between the entrances and the elevator banks. The walls are clad in huge slabs of African red granite. Doors and storefronts are fashioned from Nirosta steel, the same material that crowns the building.

Walter Chrysler wanted this space to impress other architects and automobile magnates, so he imported materials from around the world regardless of cost. The lighting is intentionally dim, creating an intimate atmosphere that makes the space feel more like a private club than a commercial lobby. Vertical bars of fluorescent light are covered with Belgian blue marble and Mexican amber onyx, softening and diffusing the illumination. The marble and onyx bands are designed as inverted chevrons, a classic Art Deco motif.

On the ceiling, a massive mural stretches 110 feet by 67 feet. Titled "Transport and Human Endeavor," it was designed by Edward Trumbull and celebrates the theme of energy and human progress. The composition incorporates images of the building itself alongside representations of industrial achievement.

One wall panel pays tribute to the workers who built the skyscraper: clinchers, surveyors, masons, carpenters, plasterers, and builders. Fifty different figures were modeled after actual construction workers. In 1999, restorers returned the mural to its original state, removing a polyurethane coating and filling holes that had been added in the 1970s.

Building by the Book

The Chrysler Building's distinctive shape—those stepped setbacks that make it look like a ziggurat or a wedding cake—wasn't purely an aesthetic choice. It was a legal requirement.

In 1916, New York City passed the first comprehensive zoning resolution in the United States, partly in response to the Equitable Building, a massive tower that rose straight up from the sidewalk and cast a seven-acre shadow over Lower Manhattan. The 1916 Zoning Resolution mandated that buildings above a certain height had to step back from the street, ensuring that light and air could reach the sidewalks and lower floors of neighboring buildings.

Van Alen designed the Chrysler Building to comply with these setback requirements on floors 16, 18, 23, 28, and 31. Above the 31st floor, the building rises without interruption until the 60th floor, where it narrows into the Maltese cross shape that supports the crown. This arrangement gives the building an asymmetrical appearance: on one side, it looks like a stepped pyramid; on the other, like a palazzo with a U-shaped courtyard.

The U-shape served a practical purpose beyond code compliance. The recess created an air shaft that brought light and ventilation to interior offices that would otherwise have been dark and stuffy. In an era before air conditioning became standard, such considerations were essential.

The Race to the Sky

The late 1920s saw an extraordinary competition among New York developers to build the world's tallest building. Three projects were underway simultaneously: the Chrysler Building, 40 Wall Street (now known as the Trump Building), and the Empire State Building.

The Chrysler and 40 Wall Street were in direct competition, each architect trying to outdo the other. H. Craig Severance, architect of 40 Wall Street, kept making his building taller as construction progressed, trying to beat whatever height Van Alen announced. Severance eventually settled on 927 feet, confident he had won.

But Van Alen had planned the secret spire from the beginning. He assembled it inside the building specifically to prevent Severance from learning about it and adding more height to 40 Wall Street. The dramatic raising of the needle—completed in just ninety minutes—caught everyone by surprise. The Chrysler Building wasn't just taller; at 1,046 feet, it was the first building ever to exceed 1,000 feet, making it the world's first supertall skyscraper.

The victory was short-lived. The Empire State Building, which had been under construction at the same time, topped out at 1,250 feet in 1931, surpassing the Chrysler by more than 200 feet. But unlike the Chrysler, which immediately became beloved, the Empire State Building opened into the depths of the Great Depression and remained largely empty for years, earning the nickname "the Empty State Building."

The Chrysler Building, by contrast, was substantially leased even before it opened. Its Art Deco elegance and prime location near Grand Central Terminal made it instantly desirable.

A Building That Broadcasts

Before television came to the Empire State Building, it came to the Chrysler Building.

In 1938, WCBS-TV, which broadcast on Channel 2, began transmitting from the top of the Chrysler Building. This was during television's experimental era, years before the medium became a household staple. The Chrysler Building's height and location made it ideal for broadcasting signals across the metropolitan area.

WCBS-TV continued transmitting from the building until 1960, when competition forced a move. The Radio Corporation of America, which owned NBC, had established a powerful transmitter on the Empire State Building. To compete, CBS relocated its transmitter there as well. For many years afterward, WPAT-FM and WTFM (now known as WKTU) continued broadcasting from the Chrysler, but they too eventually moved to the Empire State Building. By the 1970s, commercial broadcasting from the Chrysler Building had ended.

Lighting the Night

Today, the crown and spire are illuminated by a combination of fluorescent lights framing the distinctive triangular windows and colored floodlights that face toward the building. This allows the Chrysler to be lit in different color schemes for special occasions—red, white, and blue for Independence Day; green for St. Patrick's Day; rainbow colors for Pride Month.

The V-shaped fluorescent tube lighting—hundreds of 480-volt, 40-watt bulbs framing 120 window openings—was actually part of Van Alen's original design, but wasn't installed until 1981. For decades, the building had been illuminated only by its interior lights shining through the windows.

Until 1998, the building's lights were turned off at 2 a.m. A newspaper columnist named Ron Rosenbaum, writing for The New York Observer, convinced the building's owners at Tishman Speyer to keep the lights on until 6 a.m. His argument was simple: the Chrysler Building was too beautiful to go dark while anyone might still be awake to see it.

Since 2015, however, the building has participated in the Audubon Society's Lights Out program, turning off its lights during bird migration seasons. The bright lights of city skyscrapers can disorient migrating birds, causing them to crash into windows or circle buildings until they collapse from exhaustion. The Chrysler Building, along with other major towers, now dims during peak migration periods to protect the millions of birds that pass over New York each year.

The Details That Delight

Part of what makes the Chrysler Building endure in public affection is the care lavished on details that most people will never see up close.

The ground floor exterior is covered in polished black granite from a company called Shastone. The three floors above are clad in white marble from Georgia. The main entrances on Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street are three stories high, framed by the black granite in proscenium shapes—like the frames of theatrical stages. At some distance into each entryway, revolving doors sit beneath intricately patterned metal and glass screens, designed to amplify the visual drama of entering the building.

The facade below the 16th floor is clad in white brick interrupted by white marble bands in a pattern resembling basket weaving. Above, between the 16th and 24th floors, vertical columns of white brick are separated by windows, with aluminum spandrels creating the illusion of continuous vertical lines. The 20th through 22nd floors feature abstract reliefs on these spandrels. The 24th floor displays decorative pineapples nine feet tall.

Why pineapples? In the Art Deco vocabulary, they represented hospitality and welcome. They also added visual interest to a transitional zone of the building, preventing the eye from jumping straight from the heavy lower floors to the dramatic crown.

A Home for Working

The Chrysler Building was designed as office space, and it incorporated innovations that were advanced for its time.

The partitions between offices were soundproofed and divided into interchangeable sections, allowing tenants to reconfigure their layouts quickly and easily. Pipes under the floors carried both telephone and electrical cables, keeping unsightly wires out of sight and making it simple to add or move connections. These features might seem unremarkable today, but in 1930 they represented cutting-edge thinking about how modern offices should function.

The building's shape created a challenge for the upper floors. As the tower narrows toward the crown, each successive floor becomes smaller. The topmost stories contain only about 5,000 square feet each—intimate by the standards of modern skyscrapers, though still substantial spaces. The original design optimized the lower floors, where the floor plates were largest and the rental rates highest. The upper floors, with their smaller footprints but spectacular views, commanded premium prices for their prestige rather than their square footage.

Changing Hands

Walter Chrysler intended the building as an investment for his children, but the family sold it in 1953, just twenty-three years after its completion. An annex had been added in 1952, and the combined complex has changed hands numerous times since.

The building's ownership history reflects the complex economics of Manhattan real estate. The land itself—roughly trapezoidal, with frontages on Lexington Avenue, 42nd Street, and 43rd Street—was donated to The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 1902. Cooper Union, a tuition-free college for art, architecture, and engineering, has retained ownership of the land even as the building above it has been bought and sold. This arrangement, common in Manhattan, means that building owners must pay ground rent to the landowner in addition to any mortgage payments.

The building sits on an unusual piece of geography. The eastern side of its base is slightly askew from the Manhattan street grid because the site borders the old Boston Post Road, which predated the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 that established Manhattan's regular pattern of numbered streets and avenues. The building has its own ZIP code—10174—one of only 41 buildings in Manhattan with that distinction.

The Neighborhood

The Chrysler Building sits at the intersection of 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue, in what's now called East Midtown. It's surrounded by other notable buildings from the same era of Manhattan development.

Across Lexington Avenue stand the Grand Hyatt New York hotel (built into what was originally the Commodore Hotel) and the Graybar Building, a 30-story office tower connected to Grand Central Terminal. Across 42nd Street rises the Socony-Mobil Building, now known as 150 East 42nd Street, a massive structure clad in stainless steel panels. To the southwest, diagonally across the intersection, stands the Chanin Building, another Art Deco tower completed in 1929.

This cluster of early skyscrapers around Grand Central Terminal represents one of the greatest concentrations of Art Deco architecture in the world. The terminal itself, completed in 1913, drew commercial development to the area, and the Chrysler Building became the crown jewel of the district.

Why It Endures

Many buildings have been taller than the Chrysler. The Empire State Building surpassed it after just eleven months. Today, One World Trade Center rises to 1,776 feet, more than 700 feet taller. The Chrysler Building isn't even in the top ten tallest buildings in New York City anymore.

Yet it remains one of the most recognized and beloved skyscrapers in the world.

Part of this is pure aesthetics. The sunburst crown, the gleaming steel, the playful automotive ornaments—these create a visual identity that's instantly recognizable. Unlike the monotonous glass boxes that dominate contemporary skylines, the Chrysler Building has personality. It looks like nothing else.

Part of it is historical timing. The building opened in 1930, at the pivot point between the exuberance of the 1920s and the devastation of the Great Depression. It represents the last gasp of American optimism before the crash, a monument to the belief that technology and commerce could build a gleaming future. That the building has survived intact while so much of that era has been demolished or renovated adds to its nostalgic power.

And part of it is the audacity of that hidden spire—the secret weapon that won a race everyone else thought was already over. The Chrysler Building embodies a particularly American confidence: the belief that with enough ambition and ingenuity, you can always find a way to come out on top.

Ninety-five years after its completion, the Chrysler Building still catches the light, still draws the eye, still makes people stop on the sidewalk and look up. In a city that tears down and rebuilds constantly, that's the only victory that really matters.