The Chrysler Building: Creating a New York Icon Day by Day (Hardcover)

by D Stravitz (Author), Christopher Gray (Introduction)
Key Phrases: main concourse

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
While buying some equipment from an elderly photographer, Stravitz, a designer and product developer who holds more than 100 patents and 400 copyrights, stumbled onto a collection of negatives taken by the commercial and industrial photographers Peyser & Patzig that chronicled the construction of the Chrysler Building, the art deco masterpiece on New York City's 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue. Introduced by New York Times "Streetscapes" columnist Christopher Grey, these 170 duotones-some lush and some grainy-begin with the lot's nondescript previous building, which was demolished by 1928, and continue through the massive girding of the uncompleted tower, swarmed over by teams of bricklayers and captured in long shots as it neared being "ready for occupancy in the Spring of 1930" (as one billboard reads)-a year or so ahead of the rival Empire State Building. Images of offices with stiff-looking bureaucrats and deluxe interior shots of marble, chrome and frescos top things off. The photos are catalogued in the back, leaving them uncluttered by extraneous text-it's all pure loft and shimmer from the golden age of skyscrapers.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
New York City's Chrysler Building, which was completed just after the 1929 stock market crash, remains one of the most spectacular and recognizable features of the city's skyline. Its shiny stainless steel spire made the building the tallest in the world for a short time and attracted both negative and admiring attention for its "frivolous" Art Deco design. Designer and photo aficionado Stravitz here presents a visual record of the building's construction, as documented by stock photographers of the day, in more than 100 black-and-white images. The 8 10 negatives of these photos were about to be scrapped for silver in 1979 when Stravitz bought and "rescued" them from a retired New Jersey photographer. The full-page plates, identified in the back of the book, are preceded by an introduction by New York Times architectural writer Christopher Gray (Changing New York), who briefly discusses the building's history. A more thorough text would have given the volume further value. Still, the book is packed with visual information about early 20th-century construction and the details of the daily life happening around it. For all New York City libraries and large public libraries.
Carolyn Kuebler, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press; 1 edition (September 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568983549
• ISBN-13: 978-1568983547
• Product Dimensions: 12 x 9.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #351,699 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Loving Restoration, April 19, 2005

By	John P Bernat (Kingsport, TN USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This book is very expensive, but very worth it.

As described, the author discovered, almost by accident, a real treasure trove of exquisitely high quality photographs taken to document the building's completion to architectural specification. Rounding out a wonderfully detailed description of the economic and entrepreneurial forces behind its construction, these beautiful pictures bring the reader back into not just a major building project but a whole era. See the clothes, the cars - everything that made this a pinnacle of American exuberance and optimism.

While the text is good, you might want to look at two other better examples of stories of the buildings that symbolized this era: John Tauranac's book on the Empire State building and "Great Fortune," Daniel Okrent's rendering of "The Epic of Rockefeller Center."

They were hard times, to be sure, but often remembered with special fondness for those things which symbolized what we aspired.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A walk back in time..., October 16, 2002

By	Laura Breach (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book takes you on a journey into the past with this thoughtfully displayed, step by step photographic documentation of the construction of the Chrysler Building. The book is well organized, displaying all of the full page photographs sequentially. All written information is in the back of the book. The photographs come alive on the pages. This book is a MUST HAVE for anyone even minutely interested in New York history!

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Nice PHOTOGRAPHS, December 26, 2002

By A Customer

This is a beautiful book of photographs. However, I was quite diappointed in the fact that there is very little text in this book. The history of the building of the Chrysler Building is fascinating, yet explanations and descriptions are non-existent in this book. One would have to buy another book to learn of all the facts, the building process, the "competition" with the Empire State Building, or the architect, who was never truly recognized and compensated for this magnificent work of art. It is a nice book to add to a collection, but I would seek out a more comprehensive book to get a true and complete picture of the masterpiece of the Chrysler Building.