Running Head WILLIAM VAN ALEN

William Van Alen

William Van Alen

Introduction

William Van Alen is a renowned architect, best known for his creative architectural masterpiece, the Chrysler building in New York City. Undoubtedly, the Chrysler building is New York City's best Art Deco skyscraper. As evident in the Chrysler building's structure, Van Alen became the first architect to use stainless steel over a grand, exposed building surface. Even though Van Alen earned a reputation for designing largely conventional and commercial structures, however, the Chrysler building is one of Manhattan's most well-known landmarks (Drowne & Huber 2004).

Many refer to the Chrysler building as one of New York's most 'entertaining' buildings. The silver hooded structure originated from Coney Island's dreamland amusement park. Real estate developer, William H. Reynolds, commissioned architect William Van Alen to design the Chrysler building. At the time, the Chrysler building's rivals were the Manhattan Company at 40 Wall Street and the Empire State building. Van Alen's archrival, Craig Severance added a fifty foot flagpole on his building when he found out that Van Alen was planning to top 925 feet. This is when Alen's secret weapon, the 'vertex', surfaced.

The vertex was a spire of chrome made from nickel steel that the architect got assembled within the Chrysler's dome, raising it to increase the Chrysler building's height to 1.048 feet. Van Alen's 'vertex' thus became the first man-made edifice that topped the Eiffel Tower's 1.024.feet. Since the Paris World Fair of 1889, the Eiffel Tower had dominated tall structures in the world. Sadly enough, the Chrysler building's hegemony lasted only eleven months until the Empire State building topped it in 1931. The Empire State building was only 2 feet higher than the Chrysler building without its mast. However, a 200 foot tall mast and a 204 foot tall television antenna, added in the fifties, increased the Empire State building's height (Nash & McGrath p.63).

Discussion

Van Alen's Works

Even though a colleague referred to him as 'the Ziegfeld of his profession' (The New York Times, 1998), the world only knows him for his masterpiece in Manhattan, New York. Alen's career began at the young age of sixteen when he started working with Clarence True, a well-known architect. Alen then went on to work for Clinton & Russell, an architecture firm, as a draftsman working on Hotel Astor in Times Square.

Van Alen began practicing in 1911. Most of the buildings that he designed in his early years have yet to be identified. Van Alen formed a partnership with Severance in 1914. Alen's earliest designs included the Standard Arcade and Albermarle on Broadway. At this stage in his career, Van Alen began to establish himself as a modernist through designs such that those of the Gidding building and the Bainbridge building. The Bainbrdige building is Van Alen's signature design. The building has limestone walls with giant show windows in the lower story. This structure rebelled against the heavy masonry walls of older days, indeed modernism at its best. Even though these buildings were highly sophisticated ...