- Hi, I'm Michael Wyetzner
and I've been an architect in New York City
for over 35 years.
Today we're gonna look at the details
that make the Chrysler Building
an iconic New York skyscraper.
[soft jazz music]
The Chrysler Building was completed in 1930
and defines the modern skyscraper
and the New York City skyline.
Look at any photo of the skyline of New York,
and you'll right away see the World Trade Center,
the Empire State Building,
and of course the Chrysler Building.
Let's take a look at the entire building from top to bottom.
So here's a photo of pre-war New York City,
and you could see the Chrysler Building prominently in it.
So here's everything that jumps out at me.
Right away, you could see the colossal grandeur
of these skyscrapers
and how they tower over the existing tenement buildings
that you see below here that are six, seven stories tall.
The other thing you see is
that they all have this wedding cake base based
on the setback zoning rules.
And the purpose of the setback law was
to let sunlight penetrate down to the street.
And the other thing they all have are these ornate tops.
And you could see the sun glinting off
of the ornate crown of the Chrysler Building,
which is made out of stainless steel.
And you could see in this photo
that it clearly is much taller
than all of the other skyscrapers surrounding it.
Walter Chrysler, who ran Chrysler Motors,
who this building was built for,
wanted it to be the tallest building in the world,
and it holds the distinction
of being the tallest building in the world
for the shortest amount of time,
11 months until the Empire State Building was completed.
So the general rules of the skyscraper were set down
by Louis Sullivan,
who was part of the firm of Adler and Sullivan in Chicago.
And those rules were based on a Greek column,
which has a base, a shaft, and a capital.
Sullivan designed a number
of what were considered skyscrapers back then.
But basically they were about 15, 16 stories tall.
He created the Wainwright Building in St. Louis,
the Prudential Building in Buffalo,
the Bayard Building here in New York on Bleecker Street,
and the Chicago Auditorium in Chicago,
which has a tower component.
The Chrysler Building, along with a lot
of the other buildings in this photo,
are basically composed of a base, a shaft,
and then an ornate capital at the top.
And those rules were generally followed up until 1952
when Skidmore, Owings & Merrill built the Lever House,
the iconic modernist skyscraper along Park Avenue.
The other thing that defines the skyscraper is
it can't exist without three things,
the invention of high-strength steel,
the invention of the safety elevator,
the invention of the subway.
'Cause before the subway there weren't enough people
in the surrounding area to actually fill the building.
So the skyscraper was born
as an outgrowth of the Industrial Revolution.
So elevators had been around for a while,
but before the safety elevator,
there was the danger that they could plummet
and kill everybody within them.
Because what the safety elevator did was
it employed a set of brakes.
So in case there was a malfunction,
and the car started to plummet down the shaft,
a set of brakes would pop out like this
and lock it in place
so that it couldn't fall down the shaft.
This gave people comfort knowing
that they could go up many, many stories
and still feel safe.
So let's zoom in a little
and take a look at the influences
that the Chrysler Company had
on the design of this building.
Right away you could see these setbacks
that we talked about earlier.
You could see the different colors of banded brick
that act as ornament throughout.
There's the off-white brick,
there's this beige brick,
and there's this very dark banding of brick.
And the thing I really like
about this dark banding of brick,
especially on these rows,
is that working in concert with the voids of the windows,
it dematerializes the window.
And all you read are these white squares
of bricks running around the building.
You can also see some elements of the car
or the automobiles specifically, especially right here.
These appear to be tires with hubcaps in the center.
And this appears to be a fender,
all made out of brick that wraps around those tires.
And then these gargoyle-like pieces,
which are made outta stainless steel,
are exact replicas blown up in scale
of the radiator caps that were found
on Chrysler automobiles at the time.
And they had to be custom made onsite
on the 65th and 66th floors.
They set up workshops where they could actually measure
and then fabricate onsite all these metal ornaments,
including these lotus blossoms,
which could be found on the lower setback,
shown on the corners here.
The stainless steel sunburst crown
was also fabricated onsite in the building,
and then raised into place.
So this is a photograph
of the famous iconic crown of the Chrysler Building.
And the crown is basically composed
of these metal stainless steel arches
that are concentric that rise up the building
on all four sides.
And within these are actually triangular windows
that give it this sunburst pattern.
And the thing I love about this photo is
that you could see the actual sheets of stainless steel
and the joints between them,
and you could see this arched form
that the crown springs from.
And within that arched form,
you could see this arched window,
which is bifurcated and has these vertical stripes
on the brick spandrels between the windows,
and at the corners,
it has this horizontal banding of darker brick,
and that runs all the way down.
And then as the building expands further,
you could see it has these tapered recess of the spandrels
giving it this somewhat trapezoidal Egypttoid feel.
And the spire itself, which you could see here,
was raised in secret at the last minute,
this dramatic reveal.
And that's what made it the tallest building in the world.
So unlike the Empire State Building
whose spire was intended to be a docking station
for Dirigibles and Zeppelins,
this one on the Chrysler Building was purely decorative
and was intended just to make it the tallest building
in the world.
So although this building was very unique,
it's also of its time.
And that time was art deco.
So let's take a look where we can see those influences
on the building.
So looking at this photo,
there's a few things that jump right out at me immediately.
One is that they set the spandrels and the windows back
so that the verticals of these bricks reads as columns
and give it this vertical look.
And then these read as voids.
And within these voids you could see sunbursts again,
of this nice metal work
that sit at the spandrels between the windows.
And a spandrel is just the horizontal piece
that sits between two vertical windows.
And the other thing that you could see is
there's this horizontal line
that ties the whole building together,
this square pattern that's made using darker brick,
and then again, horizontal lines.
And you could see these chevrons,
which are very reminiscent of Native American patterning,
which was very common in art deco.
So the term art deco comes from the International Exposition
of Decorative Arts and Modern Industries,
which was held in Paris in 1925
and was essentially a world's fair.
And that's the first place
where some of these styles were first exhibited.
It wasn't until the book "Art Deco of the 20s and 30s"
was published in 1968
that the term came to define the movement.
And there were many other famous designers
who worked in the art deco style,
Raymond Hood, the designer of the McGraw-Hill Building
and Rockefeller Center,
and Raymond Loewy, a famous industrial designer
who was all about movement and streamlining.
And that worked perfectly with the Chrysler Building
and the automobile and movement.
Another element of art deco is this repeating motif,
this pleated repetition of form.
You could see it here on the wings
on the radiator cap ornament.
But it's also repeated elsewhere on light fixtures.
And another great example of it is the interior
of Radio City Music Hall
where the curved form of the proscenium radiates out
and forms the walls and ceiling of the interior.
Let's look at one of the entrances
where you could see further art deco details.
So what jumps out at me immediately
is how the top of this huge window above the front door
is actually tapered just like
at the top of the building before the crown.
And that is outlined again here in this dark stone trim,
which is against the limestone.
So the building is essentially brick,
except for the bottom two stories,
which were made out of limestone and black granite.
And then the stainless steel,
which we saw at the top is repeated into the entrance
in that idea of pleading and repetition you could see
to the side of both doors.
And you could see that these diagonals
are basically mirroring the tapering at the top.
And then the leftover piece
is this very interesting lightning bolt pattern,
which is very reminiscent of a Native American design.
And the glass itself is this translucent yellow glass
that makes the whole building glow.
And you could see some of the stone
from the interior of the lobby coming out to the sidewalk.
So let's go inside and take a look there.
When you look at the interior,
you see this beautiful red Moroccan marble floor
and the walls as well in this book-matched pattern.
And then the other thing I love is that what leads
to the elevator lobbies is this gold leaf ceiling
with these very small downlights in it.
But at the lintel to that elevator lobby,
they do this repetition of lights.
So the light is integral of the decoration.
And there's this beautiful mural painted on the ceiling
in this very ornate pattern.
So what I love about these lights is
that they're actually on the wall,
and they're not on the ceiling,
so that it actually highlights the ceiling
and the mural that's there.
And if one looks at the elevator doors,
you could see this beautiful inlaid wood patterning
that make this beautiful design.
So art deco grew out of the art nouveau
and Vienna secessionist style,
and one of its first examples
is the Theatre Des Champs-Elysees in Paris.
Art deco is not just an architectural style
but it also encompasses product design,
the design of locomotives and automobiles
and even fonts and typefaces
so that it's almost a total design.
This whole design aesthetic was also very popular
with movie palaces of the era
'cause as movies became very successful,
the original movie palaces used art deco
because that was the style of the time.
So let's take a look
at how this Chrysler Building looks today
in the New York City skyline.
And the thing that jumps out at me,
especially compared to that very first photo we looked at,
is how many other buildings have grown up around it.
So what I'm amazed by in this photo is
how well the Chrysler Building still stands up
almost a hundred years later.
And you could see the more muscular Empire State Building
in the background compared
to the more streamlined Chrysler Building here
in the middle ground.
And you could also see all the way to the left,
One World Trade Center.
You could see what was the PanAm Building,
and is now known as the MetLife Building by Walter Gropius.
And you could see the more recent Vanderbilt Place.
A common complaint of these more modern skyscrapers is
that they don't have the flair
or the ornamentation or the great iconic crowns
of the art deco skyscrapers from the '30s.
Most people consider the Chrysler Building
to be the peak of art deco design.
And the reason it's still so iconic
and stands out along the New York skyline is
that famous crown with the sunburst pattern
and the stainless steel.
It's still such a distinct presence
on the New York City skyline.
So those are some of the architectural details
that make the Chrysler Building an outstanding part
of the New York City skyline.
Let me know what other iconic buildings you'd like
to see broken down in the comments below.