Chrysler Building Facts and Information

The most iconic building near the Chrysler Building is the MetLife Building.
The Chrysler Building is only 100 meters away from the Grand Central Terminal, which is located in front of the MetLife Building.

Height:

The Chrysler Building stands 319 meters (1047 ft) tall and has 77 floors, when the building was built in 1930, it surpassed the Eiffel Tower in Paris becoming the tallest man-made structure in the world, and overtook the title of the world's tallest building from the Trump Building in Lower Manhattan, it had been holding that title from 1930 to 1931, for 11 months, until it was surpassed by the nearby Empire State Building.

The building contains a 122 ft spire, its roof height is 925 ft(282 meters), which is measured to the bottom of the spire from the ground. The highest floor in the Chrysler Building is 77th floor at 858 ft high, and the highest occupied floor is at 828 ft.
The Chrysler Building is the 11th tallest building in New York City among all the completed and topped-out buildings in the city.
Although nowadays the Chrysler Building is not as tall as lots of skyscrapers around world, the building is still the tallest building in the world built with bricks.

Owner:

As its name suggests, Chrysler Building was initially owned by Chrysler family, who moved out and sold the building in 1953, however, the building still bears their name. In 2008, Abu Dhabi Investment Council purchased 90% of the building for $800 million, co-owned the building with the real estate firm Tishman Speyer for more than a decade.

In March 2019, the New York-based real estate company RFR Holding bought the Chrysler Building for only $150 million, becoming the current owner of the building.

Uses:

The Chrysler Building is a pure-office building. It had once been the headquarters of the Chrysler Corporation since its opening in 1930 until in 1953, when Chrysler Corporation sold the building and moved out. Now the building is occupied by a variety of tenants.

After RFR Holding purchased the building in March 2019, the owner of the company Aby Rosen expressed the interest in transforming the tower into a hotel.

When the Chrysler Building first opened, it used to have a public observation deck on the 71st floor at a height of 783 ft, but was closed and transferred to office space in 1945. The closing of the observation deck was because people preferred to visit the observation deck on Empire State Building, as it's higher and open-air, while in the enclosed observatory on the Chrysler Building, visitors must see the views through small triangular windows.

In April 2019, the new owner of the Chrysler Building said he will incorporate a new observation deck to the building, in an effort to revitalize the building, which he views as a sleeping beauty.

Apart from the observation deck, there was a private lunch club called Cloud Club at 66th to 68th floors. Walter Chrysler had a private dining room on the 2nd floor of the club. The Cloud Club closed in late 1970s. Now the space of the Cloud Club has been leased as office space by its former owner Tishman Speyer.

Design:

The Chrysler Building was designed by New York architect William Van Alen, the building is a leading example of Art Deco architecture, buildings designed with this type of architectural style generally feature an overall shape in simple rectangular forms, but are also heavily decorated with many ornamental elements. Art Deco buildings are mostly built with traditional materials like bricks, concrete, marble, etc. Other notable examples of Art Deco buildings in New York include the Empire State Building, 70 Pine Street, American Radiator Building, 30 Rockefeller Plaza.
The facade of Chrysler building is mostly clad with white brick, and mixed with a small proportion of dark gray brickwork in window rows, it's used as horizontal decoration to enhance the building's window rows. The building has a total of 3,862 windows.

The Chrysler Building was specifically designed for Chrysler Corporation, there are many elements of the building meant to be a subtle nod to the car manufacturer. For instance, the building's spire was inspired by a car radiator grill, and one of the most famous features on Chrysler Building is the eagle gargoyle sculptures found on eight corners below the building's crown, these eagle gargoyles were inspired by the hood ornaments on Chrysler cars.

The most recognized feature of the Chrysler building is its terraced crown. Each of four faces of the crown is composed of seven radiating terraced arches, each arch is mounted up behind another arch at a lower position, and each arch has a certain number of triangular form windows radiating from the below terrace.

The unique and iconic appearance of the Chrysler Building has influenced designs of many other skyscrapers around world. Some notable examples are One Liberty Place in Philadelphia, Business Central Towers in Dubai, "New York New York" Tower and Sheraton IBC twin towers in Chongqing.

Development:

In late 1920s, there was an intense competition in New York City to build the world’s tallest building.
Walter Chrysler, the owner of Chrysler Corporation planned to build a tallest building in Midtown New York, he wished to make the building the headquarters of his company, the construction fee was not paid by Chrysler Corporation but by Walter Chrysler himself, because he wanted to let his children inherit the building after he died.
Construction of the Chrysler Building commenced on September 18, 1928.
The building was rising very fast, with an average of 4 floors built per week, and no one was killed during the construction, by contrast, 5 workers were killed during the construction of Empire State Building.
There were a total of 391831 rivets, 29,961 tons of steel, and approximately 3,826,000 bricks were used in the construction, the construction cost $20 million, approximately $287 million in 2018, this figure is stilled considered on lower side compared to other buildings in today's New York City, the construction of One World Trade Center cost $3.9 billion in 2014, this is partially because the construction labor in America was come from immigrants by that time.
The building was complete on May 27, 1930 after its spire was raised to the top in 90 minutes, giving the building an additional height of 122 ft, hence surpassed 40 Wall Street becoming the tallest building in the world.