I didn't realize, until I read this story in USA Today , that yesterday was the 75th birthday of the Chrysler Building:
NEW YORK (AP) — The Chrysler Building's spire was secretly installed 75 years ago in the Manhattan night, becoming the world's tallest edifice and an Art Deco monument to America's private wealth and its jazz age. On Friday, the anniversary of its opening on May 27, 1930, the 77-story high-rise was honored with a U.S. postage stamp unveiled in its lavish marble lobby.The building — made of 20,961 tons of steel and 3,826,000 bricks held together by 391,881 rivets — is "dedicated to world commerce and industry," wrote its builder, auto industry mogul Walter Chrysler.
Is there any reason to care? It's just a building, after all, and one in a city which, though I hail from there, I don't really care to visit ever again. And I've never even been inside the thing. Too, for much of my life I've preferred the Empire State Building anyway.
But...but damn, that's one beautiful building. Not, as a contemporary critic explains here, that the critics of the day deigned to laud the thing:
One reason was the theatricality of the Chrysler building. It was, cried the critics, showy, gaudy, tasteless. It did not sit in quiet grace and allow the viewer to behold it. It shouted to be looked at. It was a Busby Berkley musical where only dirges were acceptable. Even the entrances are huge, art deco prosceniums of black marble and steel, which draw one into the building's dark, warm interior. It is not a modest building by any means.
Pretty colorful -- and apt -- description, I think (disclaimer: I commissioned it back in the day when I edited the site on which it appeared). I've always loved Art Deco, and that's part of why I've always loved the (larger) Empire State Building -- but this, Van Alen's Fire Tower, this is different in kind: this one shouts, Look at me, consider how beautiful I am.
By any standard, by any measure. But let's have a real critic sum it up:
However, the real crux of the matter is Van Alen's audacity in putting the most spectacular, most dramatic part of his design on the top of the building, making people look up to admire it. If you look at other buildings from this era, you will find some of the most beautiful ornamentation down at street level where every passerby can see it. Van Alen's less stunning ornament doesn't start until the 28th floor, with its two color brickwork, and the helmets on the 31st floor. The majority of architects were bringing their designs down to a human level, entirely accessible to the common man. The International Style had no ornament at all, so there was no problem with where to place stunning effects.[The New Yorker critic] was more right than he knew: the Chrysler Building was "evolved to make the main in the street look up." Van Alen deliberately put a shining crown on his building, a symbol of man's modern ingenuity, an homage to the industrial age. This was Van Alen's crime: to construct a building which placed man's ingenuity on the level of the divine.
Happy Birthday, Fire Tower.