The Chrysler Building's Secret Spire Goes Up

William Van Alen was racing his old business partner H. Craig Severance, who was building 40 Wall Street a few blocks south, to put up the tallest building in the world. Van Alen's answer was a 185 foot steel spire, built in total secrecy inside the Chrysler Building's fire shaft so Severance had no idea how tall the finished tower would actually be. On October 23, 1929, workers hoisted the spire's sections up through the dome and riveted them together in sequence, and within about 90 minutes the tower jumped to its full height while Van Alen and Walter Chrysler watched from the street. That height, 1,046 feet, beat both 40 Wall Street's 840 feet and the Eiffel Tower, then the tallest structure on the planet. The next day, Wall Street began its historic crash.