"Juke Joint in the Sky"

Chrysler building
Originally uploaded by vegacura.

The Chrysler Building -- the most amazing structure in the most amazing skyline in the world -- turns 75 tomorrow.

In the annals of New York real estate, the height race of 1929 has never been surpassed in intensity and human drama. Two skyscrapers vied to be the world's tallest: the Chrysler Building, at 405 Lexington Avenue, and the Bank of the Manhattan Company Building, at 40 Wall Street.

Adding to the sense of showdown, the respective architects, William Van Alen and H. Craig Severance, were former associates who had parted acrimoniously a few years before. It was Van Alen who "finished" first, with newspaper accounts reporting that he would complete his nickel-chromium cupola 925 feet above street level. Severance promptly seized his chance. He ratcheted his tower slightly higher so that it could peer down on the Chrysler Building, haughty and smug, from a perch exactly two feet higher.

Every New Yorker knows the end of the story: inside the Chrysler dome, in immense secrecy, a massive metal spire was being constructed. As soon as Severance's building was near completion, the Chrysler majestically deployed its spire, releasing it like the stinger of a colossal wasp. The building's tip rose and rose, finally topping out at 1,046 feet, making the Chrysler the tallest building in the world and - even after the Empire State Building surpassed it less than a year later - the apotheosis of modern American striving.

The New York Times devotes its entire "House & Home" section to this marvel of kitchy but cool architecture, with reports on the former glory of the restaurant that used to be near the top of the building, and some of the lucky tenants perched within its spire.