Cultural Depictions

As an iconic part of the New York City skyline, the Chrysler Building has been depicted countlessly in almost every medium - film, photography, video games, art, advertising, music, literature, and even fashion, as its use quickly establishes without doubt the location in which the depicted events are occurring.
In the music scene, Meat Loaf's 1993 album Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell's cover art depicts a demonic bat clinging to the top floors of the Chrysler Building. The artwork was by done by Michael Whelan.[33] The Chrysler building is widely known to be depicted in many films, such as the 1998 film Deep Impact, where the wall of water that surrounds the skyscraper, people can be seen on the 61st floor observation deck fleeing to the other side of the building.[34] In another film, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, while Johnny Storm chases the Silver Surfer through Manhattan, The Silver Surfer flies straight through the Chrysler Building.[35][36] Towards the end of Steven Spielberg's A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, the Chrysler Building is seen totally submerged underwater as the aliens guide their spacecraft through the submerged ruins of Manhattan.[34] In the film Spider-Man, Spider-Man perches on top of one of the building's gargoyles, mourning of a beloved relative's murder.

Lighting

There are two sets of lighting in the top spires and decoration. The first are the V-shaped lighting inserts in the steel of the building itself. Added later were groups of floodlights which are on mast arms directed back at the building. This allows the top of the building to be lit in many colors for special occasions. This lighting was installed by electrician Charles Londner and crew during construction

Design beginnings

Van Alen's original design for the skyscraper calls for a decorative jewel-like glass crown. His design also features the building's base in which showroom windows were tripled in height and topped by various number of stories with glass-wrapped cor­ners, creating an impression that the tower appeared physically and visually light as if floating on mid air.[8] The height of the skyscraper was also originally designed to be 246.0 m (807 ft) tall.[7] However, the design was proved to be costly. Hence, building contractor William H. Reynolds disapproved Van Alen's original plan.[9] The design and lease was sold to Walter P. Chrysler, who worked with Van Alen and redesigned the skyscraper for additional stories was later revised to be 282.0 m (925 ft) tall.[7] As Walter Chrysler was the chairman of the Chrysler Automobile Corporation,[7] various architectural details and especially the building's gargoyles were modeled after Chrysler automobile products like the hood ornaments of the Plymouth, and in which must also exemplify the machine age in the 1920s.

Crown ornamentation

The Chrysler Building is also well renowned and recognised for its terraced crown. Composed of seven radiating terraced arches, Van Alen's design of the crown is a cruciform groin vault constructed into seven concentric members with transitioning set-backs, mounted up one behind each other.[27] The stainless steel cladding was ribbed and riveted in a radiating pattern and had many triangular vaulted windows, transitioning into smaller segments of the seven narrow set-backs of the facade of the terraced crown. The entire crown is clad with silvery "Enduro KA-2" metal, an austenitic stainless steel developed in Germany by Krupp and marketed under the trade name "Nirosta" (A German acronym for "nichtrostender Stahl", meaning "rust-proof steel").

The Chrysler Building is considered a masterpiece of Art Deco architecture. The distinctive ornamentation of the building is based on features that were then being used on Chrysler automobiles. The corners of the 61st floor are graced with eagles, replicas of the 1929 Chrysler hood ornaments[23]. On the 31st floor, the corner ornamentation are replicas of the 1929 Chrysler radiator caps[24]. The building is constructed of masonry, with a steel frame, and metal cladding. In total, the building currently contains 3,862 windows on its facade and 4 banks of 8 elevators designed by Otis Elevator Corporation

Property

The Chrysler Building was bought in 1957 by real estate moguls Sol Goldman and Alex DiLorenzo, and later sold to the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company. The lobby was refurbished and the facade was renovated in 1978 - 1979[19][20]. The building was purchased by Jack Kent Cooke, a Washington, D.C. investor in 1979. The spire underwent a restoration that was completed in 1995. The building was sold by Cooke's estate to Tishman Speyer Properties and the Travelers Insurance Group in 1998. In 2001, a 75% stake in the ownership of the building was sold to TMW, a German investment group.[21] As of February 2008, the property is owned by the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, a private college, and is not taxed due to the non-profit status of the owners