MODERN AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE

Hokitika Guardian, 6 July 1929, Page 8

MODERN AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE

TRE OMUYSM'vR. BUILDING. The placing ut concrete and steel foundations for the 68 storey Chrysler building at Forty-second Street and Lexington Avenue in New York City has been followed by the steady advance of the steel structure, bringing into being a colossal black lace network which will dominate the midtown skyline until 1930. By that date the granite, marble and brick which eomprioes the face of the building will have covered it entirely. The face of the building will 'bo made of blocks of Shastone granite, Georgia marble will be used as high as the fifth floor, and from that point to the sixteenth floor and its cornice, there will be a basket weave pattern of Georgia marble and white faced bricks. From that point to the top of the building the construction will be brick of a sptcial design, in greys and blacks the black being used to accentuate the vertical lines of the structure.

An interesting departure in skyscraper construction will be the coping and finials of cast aluminium. Spandrels between windows from the nineteenth to the twenty-second floor will also be in this material.

Under the New York zoning laws, tho setback of the building was fixed at one to four. Sixteen stories measuring 182 feet are without setback. The first setback is 18 feet on the next seventeen stories. The main volume of the building is 56 stories, inhaling the tower, while the dome is 12 stories. A utilisation of the automobile itself as a motif in the design of the Chrysler Building in a frieze at the 30th story marks a departure in modern architecture. In conventionalized design the whole profile of a limousine, showing body lines, fenders, and wheels, will he depicted in sharply contrasting white, gray and red brick. The bul) caps on the wheels will be of aluminium 14 inches in diameter. The frieze will terminate in a finial at the four corners, where 10 foot long Chrysler wings will stand out against the skies of Manhattan. The dome of the ’ starts in octagonal form, finally receding to the summit in proper donm ‘’-■••••nation. Tf vill be easily distinguished on the sky line, being the only object of its partjcular size and shape. The spire at the top of the dome is in the form of a great star with thirty points. Flood lights, cleverly arranged behind the ray-like decorations which spread out from the dome at regular intervals, will play brilliant lights on the shining aluminium. The spring of 1930 wil see the Chrysler Building completed—a new business mecca in the heart of the business 'world.