Postcard Thursday: The Chrysler Building

Today is the 140th birthday of Walter Chrysler (April 2, 1875-August 18, 1940), founder of the eponymous automobile company as well as the man behind what many still regard as New York's greatest skyscraper.

As we write in Inside the Apple:

The race to make the Chrysler Building the tallest in the world was...a question of personal ego. In fact, two egos: those of Walter Chrysler, the automobile magnate and owner of the building, and his architect, William Van Allen. The building they were racing to beat, the Manhattan Company, was being designed by Van Allen’s former partner and now bitter rival, H. Craig Severance. 

The rivalry played out in the press. In March 1929, the announced height of the Chrysler Building was 809 feet, to be topped with a dome. The Manhattan Company rejoined by announcing it was to be 840 feet. By October, Chrysler’s estimated final height had risen to 905 feet and—after a few last-minute drafting sessions by Severance and partner Yasuo Matsui—the Manhattan Company was revised upward to 925 feet.

But no one knew of the “vertex,” a secret spire that Van Allen’s crew had been assembling inside the steel dome since September. On October 23, 1929, it was set in place. No newspapers carried the story the next day; no newsreel cameras were on hand to record the momentous occasion. Chrysler and Van Allen were happy to keep their secret—if you can call a 185-foot spire crowning a 1,046-foot building a secret—until the time was right.

As Van Allen succinctly put it: “We’ll lift the thing up and we won’t tell ‘em anything about it. And when it’s up we’ll just be higher, that’s all.”

Their timing couldn’t have been worse. The next day, October 24, the Wall Street crash began, culminating five days later on Black Tuesday. The race to be the tallest in the world had suddenly taken a back seat to more pressing matters. On November 12, the Manhattan Company held a media event to showcase the topping out of their 925-foot skyscraper, hailed as the world’s tallest. Van Allen only let that sit for four days before revealing the truth—his vertex had not only catapulted the Chrysler Building 121 feet taller than his rival, but it was also sixty feet taller than the Eiffel Tower—and thus [at the time] the tallest man-made structure ever built.

* * * * *

Explore more NYC history in

Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers

If you haven't had a chance to pick up a copy of Footprints yet,

you can order it from your favorite online retailers (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.) or

from independent bookstores across the country.

And, of course, Inside the Apple is available at fine bookstores everywhere.

Will the World Trade Center be America's Tallest?

As you may have read, there is controversy brewing as to whether the new World Trade Center building (formerly known as the Freedom Tower), will be America's tallest building upon its completion.

At issue is the building's spire, which was designed to reach a final height of 1,776 feet, thus marking the year of the Declaration of Independence. This piece of symbolism has stayed with the building from Daniel Liebskind's original master plan through architect David Childs's architectural redrafts. However, back in January, the Durst Organization (co-developers of the building) made the decision to strip the spire of its $20 million cladding, leaving it a bare--and functional--antenna. And there's the rub: according to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, decorative spires count in a building's final height; solely functional antennae do not.

This controversy between functional vs. decorative height can be traced back to the construction of the Chrysler Building, 40 Wall Street, and Empire State Building in the late 1920s.

As we write in Inside the Apple, the contest between 40 Wall and the Chrysler Building to be the world's tallest building was stiff:

In March 1929, the announced height of the Chrysler Building was 809 feet, to be topped with a dome. The Manhattan Company [aka 40 Wall Street] rejoined by announcing it was to be 840 feet. By October, Chrysler’s estimated final height had risen to 905 feet and—after a few last-minute drafting sessions by Severance and partner Yasuo Matsui—the Manhattan Company was revised upward to 925 feet. 

But no one knew of the “vertex,” a secret spire that Van Allen’s crew had been assembling inside the steel dome since September. On October 23, 1929, it was set in place. No newspapers carried the story the next day; no newsreel cameras were on hand to record the momentous occasion. Chrysler and Van Allen were happy to keep their secret—if you can call a 185-foot spire crowning a 1,046-foot building a secret—until the time was right. 

As Van Allen succinctly put it: “We’ll lift the thing up and we won’t tell ‘em anything about it. And when it’s up we’ll just be higher, that’s all.”

This stunt caused many to cry foul--could the Chrysler Building really be the world's tallest with the simple addition of a decorative spire? The Empire State Building wasn't going to wait to find out.

After William Van Allen revealed the Chrysler Building’s vertex, it became imperative to make the Empire State Building taller without adding a “useless” spire. To that end, Smith announced in December 1929 that the top of the Empire State would house a mooring mast, 1,300 feet from the ground, for transatlantic dirigibles. 

This was utter folly. Not only does a dirigible need to be anchored by both the nose and the tail (which is why they landed at air fields in New Jersey in the first place), the updrafts in Midtown were so strong that a zeppelin the length of two city blocks would have whipped around in the wind like a child’s toy. More to the point, a dirigible’s gondola was in the ship’s center; people would never have been able to (as pictured here in an early publicity drawing) exit from the helium-filled balloon straight into the 102nd-story waiting room.

In late September 1931, the New York Evening Journal completed the only successful dirigible mooring. At great danger to life and limb, it delivered a package of newspapers from the Financial District to the Empire State Building’s roof. It looked great on the newsreel cameras, but would be the closest the mooring mast ever saw to real use.

It's ironic that the Empire State Building worked to make its spire functional (even if it never would be), when today having a solely functional spire doesn't count toward a building's final height. Of course, to many people the most important measurable statistic is highest occupied floor, which will continue to be held by the Willis Tower in Chicago, whether or not the Council on Tall Buildings decides to count the World Trade Center's spire or not.

* * *

Read more about the race to the be world's tallest building in

Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City

get RSS feeds from this blog, point your reader to this link.

Or, to subscribe via email, follow this link.

Also, you can now follow us on Twitter.

Happy 80th Birthday, Empire State Building

As Ephemeral New York recently reminded us, for years May 1 was "moving day" in New York City, when all  commercial leases expired. (Can you imagine the chaos as people moved from office to office all around town?)

The biggest moving day of them all was May 1, 1931, when the Empire State Building--at 1,250 feet, the tallest building in the world--opened, eighty years ago today.


After the race between the Manhattan Company on Wall Street and the Chrysler Building to be the tallest (complete with Chrysler's secret vertex), the Empire State Building had to come up with a way to add a spire to its roof that didn't arouse public suspicion and wasn't considered by architects to be a cheat. To do that, they added a dirigible mooring mast. As we write in Inside the Apple: 

This was utter folly. Not only does a dirigible need to be anchored by both the nose and the tail (which is why they landed at air fields in New Jersey in the first place), the updrafts in Midtown were so strong that a zeppelin the length of two city blocks would have whipped around in the wind like a child’s toy. More to the point, a dirigible’s gondola was in the ship’s center; people would never have been able to (as pictured here in an early publicity drawing) exit from the helium-filled balloon straight into the 102nd-story waiting room.

In late September 1931, the New York Evening Journal completed the only successful dirigible mooring. At great danger to life and limb, it delivered a package of newspapers from the Financial District to the Empire State Building’s roof. It looked great on the newsreel cameras, but would be the closest the mooring mast ever saw to real use.

When the building opened, it was soon nicknamed the "Empty State" Building due its lack of tenants, and custodial staff were instructed to go around flipping on and off the lights to make it seem occupied!

* * *

Read more about the Empire State Building in
Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City.

To get RSS feeds from this blog, point your reader to this link.
Or, to subscribe via email, follow this link.

A Literal Crash on Wall Street: November 12, 1929

Everyone knows about the Wall Street crash of October 1929 that triggered the Great Depression. But there was another, much more literal crash a couple of weeks later. Eighty-one years ago today, one of the great skyscrapers races of all time was coming to a close: The Bank of the Manhattan Company at 40 Wall Street was topping out and thus becoming the tallest building in the world. But an hour before the ceremonies, Wall Street was a scene of chaos.

As The New York Times reported, crowds were gathering around noon for the ceremonies to mark the completion of the world's tallest structure when "a half-ton block of limestone fell from the thirty-fifth floor of the new seventy-story building of the Bank of the Manhattan Company, crashed through the roof of the eighth-story setback down to the fifth floor and scattered debris over the street below."

Luckily, only three people were mildly injured in the accident. A woman in a parked car was cut when a piece of debris shattered the car's window; a steamfitter was struck by a piece of scaffolding in the shoulder; and a young office clerk crossing Wall Street had his leg cut by a shard of granite. As one police officer noted at the scene, "it was miraculous that no others were injured."

One the dust had settled and the injured persons treated at the scene or sent to the hospital, the work of topping out the building commenced. About an hour later the highest piece of structural steel was put atop 40 Wall Street--and, as the papers duly noted the next, it had become the world's tallest building.

Just four days later, the truth would be revealed: the Chrysler Building on 42nd Street had already surpassed 40 Wall Street's height. (You can read our more detailed entry about the skyscraper race from last year for further details.)

* * *

Read more about the race between the Chrysler Building and 40 Wall Street in

Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City.

To get RSS feeds from this blog, point your reader to this link.
Or, to subscribe via email, follow this link.
Also, you can now follow us on Twitter.

   

The Manhattan Company vs. the Chrysler Building

The Bank of the Manhattan Company by CR on flickr.

A couple of weeks ago, there were a number of commemorations of the 80th anniversary of the Great Crash of 1929 which led to the Great Depression. As the stock market was plummeting, however, buildings in the Financial District were still soaring to new heights, including the Bank of the Manhattan Company at 40 Wall Street, which was racing against the Chrysler Building on 42nd Street to be the tallest building in the world.

Eighty years ago today--on November 12, 1929--the Manhattan Company finally topped out at 925 feet. As far as anyone knew at the time, that meant it was the tallest building in the world. (The New York World, reporting the day's events, noted that it had bested the rival Chrysler Building which only stood at 808 feet.)

But the news of the Manhattan Company topping out was overshadowed by a construction accident an hour before the ceremony. In front of a large crowd of spectators, a half-ton block of limestone that was being hauled up the building broke free from its harness at the 35th floor. The huge stone tore through the 8th-floor setback and through three more stories of steel and concrete before stopping at the fifth floor. Debris rained down onto Wall Street; one piece struck Helen Pratt, who was waiting in a car parked across the street. She was only slightly injured and insisted on being taken home and not to the hospital. One of the building's construction workers, James Bellis, was injured by a piece of falling scaffolding and taken to the hospital but was ultimately fine.

The accident so overshadowed the reason people were there -- to see the building's last piece of structural steel hoisted into place -- that the New York Times didn't even bother reporting on the building's completion. Indeed, those news outlets that did proclaim 40 Wall Street to be the "world's tallest tower" were in for a rude shock. Just four days later, it was revealed that the Chrysler Building was not 808 feet tall as previously reported, but that its spire--hoisted into place on October 23--was its crowning architectural element, bringing its full height to 1,046 feet. That not only made the Chrysler Building significantly taller than the Manhattan Company, it also made it taller than the Eiffel Tower and thus the tallest structure in the world.

After the Bank of the Manhattan Company merged with Chase in 1955 to become Chase Manhattan, the skyscraper at 40 Wall went through a succession of owners, including at one time Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos. Donald Trump purchased the dilapidated tower in 1995 for $1 million and emblazoned his name in large, shiny letters across the front, thus causing all sorts of tourists to think it is Trump Tower and might be full of wanna-be apprentices. Trump has tried to sell the building at least once but has yet to find suitable buyers.

* * *

Read more about this skyscraper race, the Great Crash of 1929, and New York during the Depression in Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City.

To get RSS feeds from this blog, point your reader to this link.
Or, to subscribe via email, follow this link.

Also, you can now follow us on Twitter.