Product Description

The Chrysler Building was completed in 1930, a symbol of big-city glamour and style. Its Moderne design, cloud-piercing spire, and ornaments depicting winged helmets of Mercury and automobile hubcaps represent the thrill of the machine age. It is also one of the least documented buildings in New York: there are no archives of its design or construction. Nevertheless, author David Stravitz discovered a box of glass negatives on the floor of a defunct stock photo company days before they were to be shipped off for silver reclamation. The photographs were taken by a professional photo company hired to document the construction of the building, but they also capture life on the streets in exquisite detail. These never-before-seen photographs illustrate the day-by-day construction of an American skyscraper icon.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #743156 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10-15
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .86" h x 10.05" w x 12.07" l, 3.01 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 164 pages

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.

From Booklist
With images of the destruction of the World Trade Center towers seared into our collective consciousness, it is a joy to behold the birth of a skyscraper: the daring Chrysler Building, a bold and sexy emblem of hope when it was erected during the Great Depression, and now a symbol of survival and pride. The fact that this handsome book exists at all is testimony to the brighter side of fate. After product designer Stravitz began taking photographs in 1979, he visited an elderly photographer who was closing his studio and selling his equipment. When Stravitz inquired about a stack of boxes, the photographer assured him the old negatives they contained were of no interest; but to the contrary, Stravitz discovered hundreds of photographs of New York City during the twenties and thirties, including, most amazingly, more than 150 that document every stage of the rapid construction of the Chrysler Building. Briefly but informatively introduced, these dramatic black-and-white street scenes, city vistas, and architectural details portray this once controversial, now precious building as the grand work of art it truly is. Donna Seaman
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