The best Art Deco tower in the world, and you cannot go up it. The lobby is open, the crown is not, and it is still worth the detour.
The spire in the fire shaft
In 1929 William Van Alen was building for Walter Chrysler and H. Craig Severance was building 40 Wall Street for the Bank of Manhattan, and the two architects — former partners who had fallen out badly — were racing for the title of world’s tallest building. Severance kept revising his height upward whenever the Chrysler plans leaked.
Van Alen’s answer was to assemble a 185-foot stainless steel spire in four sections inside the building’s fire shaft, in secret, while everyone assumed the tower was finished at its terrace. On 23 October 1929 a crew raised it through the roof and bolted it into place in about ninety minutes. The Chrysler Building was suddenly 1,046 feet tall, taller than 40 Wall Street and taller than the Eiffel Tower, and Severance had no answer.
It held the title for eleven months. The Empire State Building opened the following spring.
Walter Chrysler then refused to pay Van Alen his fee, alleging kickbacks. Van Alen sued, won, and never got another significant commission.
What the crown is made of
The seven radiating arches with their triangular windows are clad in Nirosta, a German stainless steel alloy that was new at the time and has never been polished or replaced. It has not rusted in nearly a century. On a bright day the crown is genuinely dazzling, and at night it is lit from within the triangles.
Lower down, at the 61st floor, the corners carry stainless steel eagles modelled on the hood ornaments of a 1929 Chrysler Plymouth. At the 31st, the corner ornaments are enlarged radiator caps. The building is a car advertisement, and it is not subtle about it.
The lobby
This is the only part you can get into, and it is worth the five minutes. Red Moroccan marble, blue marble from Belgium, chrome and amber onyx, and a ceiling mural by Edward Trumbull called Transport and Human Endeavor that runs to 100 by 97 feet and includes the building itself. The lift doors are inlaid Japanese ash, Oriental walnut and steel, each of the four banks with a different pattern, and they are the single best thing in the room.
The lobby is open during office hours on weekdays. It is a working building lobby, so security will move you along if you set up a tripod, and photographs on a phone are fine.
There is no observation deck. There was one, a small gallery on the 71st floor, and it closed in 1945. The Cloud Club, a members’ restaurant on floors 66 to 68 with a Tudor-styled dining room, closed in 1979 and the space has sat empty ever since.
Where to look at it from
Standing at its base you see almost nothing of what makes it famous. Better vantages: eastbound on 42nd Street from around Fifth Avenue, the observation deck at Top of the Rock, the terrace at Summit One Vanderbilt a block away, and Tudor City Place, the raised residential terrace east of Second Avenue, which frames it down the length of 42nd Street.
More Skyscrapers & Views
Empire State Building
Built in 410 days during the Depression and empty for years afterwards. The 86th-floor deck is open air, which is what the newer decks in Midtown are not.
Top of the Rock
The deck to pick if you are only doing one, for the simple reason that the Empire State Building is in the photograph rather than under your feet.
One World Observatory
The tallest building in the western hemisphere, at a height of 1,776 feet chosen for the year rather than the engineering. Fully enclosed, with a harbour view no other deck gets.