99% Invisible - 100- Higher And Higher

Episode Date: February 4, 2014

Like the best of these stories, the two bitter rivals started out as best friends: William Van Alen and Craig Severance. They were business partners. Van Alen was considered the artistic maverick and Severance was the savvy businessman. It’s unclear … Continue reading →

Welcome to the first episode of the Kickstarter funded season four of 99% invisible now weekly from here on out And I'm excited to announce the launch of radio topia from PRX a collective of the best story driven audio shows on the planet We'll have more information about radio topia at the end of the show So thank you all for your generosity and support. We're gonna make you proud Here we go. This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. The greatness of New York is perhaps most spectacularly seen in its buildings. While other cities have spread outward, New York has been forced to build upward. Like the best of these stories, the two bitter rivals started out as best friends.

William Van Allen? Van Allen was kind of the archetype of architect as artists. He looked at buildings as art and he wanted to revolutionize in that way. And Craig Severance. Craig Severance was very much architect as businessman. He looked at buildings as a way to make the land pay. They were business partners. And as partners, they were incredible together because you had Van Allen as the architect as artists and you have

Severance as the businessman making everything run on time making things work efficiently and together They were able to do quite a bit, but they were not just business partners. They stood up at each other's weddings Van Allen was the godfather to Severance's daughter, but years of working together had taken its toll Sadly, we don't know exactly what the sort of precipitating factor was. Other than the fact that there were some records that I discovered just about and I wanted to change plans sort of continuously running over budget. And to someone like Severance, that wasn't going to stand. And so they were late on plans, they weren't delivering.

And I think that Severance at a certain point said, you know, I could do this better on my own. Telling our story today is Neil Bascom. My name is Neil Bascom. He wrote a great book about this called Higher, a historic race to the sky and the making of a city. On the author of Higher and a number of other books. At the time of the Van Allen and Severance break up, New York City was undergoing a boom

like nothing ever seen before. Massive wealth concentrated on this tiny island turned Manhattan into the most valuable property in human history, and when property gets valuable, we build up. The roaring 20s, the stock market is going crazy. Real-stay prices are going through the roof. A skyscraper is a machine designed to turn the land into money. At least, that's how severance viewed skyscrapers.

There were talks of skyscrapers of 1,200 feet, 1,500 feet. I mean, off the charts. It was a symbol both of the economics and also of the times. I mean, the culture was we won everything faster, higher, better, and so it sort of all came together into the skyscraper race. At this point in 1928, late 1928, Van Allen's career is basically, you know, in the basement. I mean, he's not getting many commissions.

Meanwhile, Severance is going crazy. I mean, he's getting commission many commissions. Meanwhile, Severance is going crazy. I mean, he's getting commission after commission on big building, after big building. So in late 1928, Walter Chrysler, founder of the Chrysler Car Company, came to New York City and bought a plot of land and wanted to build what he referred to as a monument to me. Van Allen had already been working on plans

for the previous owner of that plot, and Chrysler decided to hire him to develop that plan into what would become the Chrysler building. Chrysler, I think, was in his own way a revolutionary. It was very committed to art and design, and I think saw in a very real way a kindred spirit in Van Allen. Meanwhile, downtown at Forty Wall Street, Van Allen's ex-partner Craig Severance was building the Manhattan Company Building. And Severance's building was very different,

key to exactly to his personality. The Manhattan Company Building was downtown, the Chrysler Building was uptown, Severance was an investor in this building, it was being funded primarily by a man named George Orstrom who was considered the boy wonder of Wall Street. He was 34, he was incredibly rich, incredibly quickly, and their building was in a very real way was to make money. Wow, the Chrysler building was to sort of make

a monument to what Chrysler had achieved, but also to sort of break new ground in architecture. At the time, Cass Gilbert's Woolworth building towered over everything. 792 feet tall. It's the tallest building in New York. And in true monument to me fashion, Chrysler set his sights on his building being taller than the Woolworth building, the tallest in the city. And even though the Manhattan Company Building didn't quite have the same motivation to be the tallest to celebrate one man's greatness, the team decided that they wanted to take

the crown from Woolworth and be the tallest. I think the motivation initially for the Wall Street building, for the Manhattan Company building is one, because of the cost of land, downtown in Wall Street, you have to build high. They got their spreadsheets out and decided exactly how high that would be. And then they decided to go a little bit higher to have the impromotor of the World's tallest building, which when you're selling office space is something that is a real estate agent, you can sort of hand out a card and says, do you want to work in the world's tallest building, which when you're selling office space is something that is a real state agent, you can sort of hand out a card and says, do you want to work in the world's tallest

building? So it was a sales tactic as well as an economic decision. And so the race was on. Two ex partners, Van Allen with the Chrysler Building and Severance with the Manhattan Company Building were going to battle it out for supremacy on the skyline. Initially the Chrysler Building and Severance with the Manhattan Company Building. We're going to battle it out for supremacy on the skyline. Initially, the Chrysler Building was the first to announce its height. Chrysler and Van Allen were a little bit further along. And so they announced in early 1929 that they're going to roughly 820 feet,

which is taller than the Woolworth at 792. Well, a couple months after that, Craig Severance comes out and says, well, we're building to $840 feet. And then you have this over the course of that year, particularly that summer, even as the buildings are going up, even as the setting the foundation, even as they're ordering steel, van Allen and Severance are both changing their plans, both not knowing what the other person is doing, but sure that their respective losses want to go higher. And I think at this point they very much want to beat each other.

But it wasn't just a height race. It was also a speed race. At the point in the summer of 1929, when both of these buildings are going up very fast, it's very much who can beat the wall worth building first, who can release that first statement saying, world's tallest building. And the public was into it. It was a race almost weekly. There were newspaper articles about this building's going higher.

Christel was going to be 900 feet. My husband company building is going to be 950 feet. Severance wins, Van Allen wins. I mean, all these sort of premature statements, and it was very much covered in the press and all of the New York newspapers of that time, which were many. Big, you know, front page photographs,

it was pretty incredible. But both Chrysler and Van Allen were not content just being the fastest on the tallest. Van Allen remembers a time going into Chrysler's office when Chrysler's on the floor, you know, with plans spread out on the carpet, you know, looking at how the lobby is going to be set up. Walter Chrysler was very interested in art and architecture. And so he wanted a beautiful building, one of a building like none other in the world. Meanwhile, at the Manhattan Company Building. Basically, what's happening on the Manhattan

Company Building is they're just adding floors. They're saying, well, the foundation will be able to do this if we had four floors, if we had 10 floors, we had this little flag at the top, we can go higher. So it was almost incremental movements on the Manhattan Company Building. On the Chrysler Building, they were achieving

last-minute height advantages in two ways. One, originally the dome of the Chrysler building that arched dome was much more compact. As you see it now, it's almost like it's stretched out. And that happened because of the height race. They wanted to find more floors, they wanted to get some more height. And so that elegant elongated dome that we love on the Chrysler building was the result of the silly high-rise. But the sneaky masterstroke that ultimately led the Chrysler building was the result of the silly high-race. But the sneaky masterstroke

that ultimately led the Chrysler building to surpass the Manhattan Company building for good was the gleaming spire called the vertex. And that was a 185 foot triangular spire that was built inside the stairwell, basically, the fire stairwell, inside the building at the top of the building so that Manhattan Company Building had no idea what was going on. They brought up each piece separately up the side of the building by Derrick's, constructed it inside the fire tower. And one day after the Manhattan Company Building was finished, topped out. No chance to add any more floors. Suddenly, this concealed vertex is brought up from inside the building. And as Van Allen said, sort of like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon,

they put this thing on top of the building. It was 185 foot tall and it made the Chrysler building 1046 feet high in the tall structure in the world. Now surpassing the Eiffel Tower. And if you're thinking this stunt of secretly riveting a giant metal-spire 900 feet in the air sounds ridiculously dangerous, you are right. It's extremely dangerous. I can imagine today not getting approval. Everyone basically thinking from Chrysler to Van Allen is this thing going to fall. And if it does, you're going to impale half a street or more. And you can imagine

the damage that would have done. Now, you probably know and can clearly picture the now classic art deco style of the Chrysler building. The steel clad arches, the sunburst triangular windows, not to mention the hood ornament style, eagles, and the hub cap freezes. It was made for a car guy after all. But it's doubtful that you even heard of the Manhattan Company building. First, because now it's called Forty Wall Street or the Trump building. But also because it just never took hold in the public consciousness, even though I actually really dig its green roof. Curiously, the Manhattan Company building Forty Wall Street got all the accolades.

It won awards, the design was mostly by this Japanese architect Yasui Matsui, so it did wonderful in the trades. And it was just basically a fairly bland looking building at the time. And then you have the Chrysler Building with this new dome, this new vertex, something that really New York or the world had never seen. It was pretty remarkable stuff and it was almost universally pan. It was considered a stunt design. What? Some people called it a monstrosity. No. It was largely reviled by architectural critics. What do they know? And it was only over time that the Chrysler building that the Christ of Building

became the sort of treasure landmark that it is. And if the story stopped there, you might think Van Allen, the artistic maverick, won the day. The Christ of Building was the tallest structure in the world. And even though the design was pan-originally, we all know that it eventually got its due. But the story does not end there.

After all this hubbub, a partner against partner fighting for who would be the tallest, a mere 11 months later, the great Empire State Building was completed, and it became the tallest building in the world for nearly 40 years. Frankly, I don't care about that so much. What happened next was the real tragedy. The lack of business acumen that probably contributed to Van Allen and Severance parting ways really came back to bite William Van Allen. He never actually had a contract with Walter Chrysler to design the Chrysler building.

Chrysler, at the end of the day, said, well, I'm not going to pay you your fee because we didn't have a sign contract. It was widely considered normal at the time for the architect to be paid roughly 6% of the cost of the building. That sum of money is what Van Al expected. It's what Chrysler wasn't willing to pay. Van Alen ended up suing Chrysler. It hit the newspapers and at the end of the day, Cass Gilbert, who did the wall work, came and said,

you know, yes, that percentage is the typical rate. That's what Van Allen should be paid. Van Allen was paid that. But Van Allen was never given a major commission again. I think both because the Great Depression had hit and also because he had now sued his patron. And that was something that I think others shot away from. Van Allen spent most of the rest of his life teaching sculpture at the

Bozart's Institute of Design, but severance on the other hand continued to succeed. The Mahang Company building did terribly like every other office building in New York at the time. But Severance went into the depression and got a bunch of government work, actually built a bunch of hangars for balloons and such. And so he did quite well and lived nicely and died in luxury. So that's at least one happy ending for you. But we do have the happy ending in the fact that the Chrysler building is this sort of hollowed structure now.

And Van Allen really did get the commission of a lifetime. There was no expense spared by Chrysler. If you ever go into the Chrysler building, from the lobby all the way to the top, I mean, it's just expense and expense. I mean, just beautiful Art Deco interior work, wood paneling, Art Deco murals. It's just an incredible building top to bottom inside and out. And very rarely do you have a commission where money is no object. And so Vanone was given one shot and

I think he came through. If Craig Severance was standing in front of me, I think I'd say, I wish you worked it out with Van Allen. You did well, you deserved it. But I think you would have been greater together. And if I could talk to Van Allen, I'd say, I'm sorry you didn't get to build more great structures, but know that you created the building that can stop the most architecturally blind and generally this interested person dead in their tracks, and they will marvel at your accomplishment. Know that.

And to Walter Chrysler, I'd say, you pay your bills you deadbeat I could I mean we could have had another Chrysler building or something is good if you had ruined Van Allen's life I mean probably not because the Great Depression and all but we'll never know will we you bomb I'm gonna need a minute. 99% in visible is Sam Greenspan, Avery, Truppleman, and me Roman Mars. We are a project of 91.7 local public radio, KALW in San Francisco, and produced out of the offices of Arxine, a brilliant architecture firm and beautiful downtown Oakland, California. When we get a little out of hand, they sometimes ask us to use our inside voices. But to that, I say, you should try working next to Snap Judgment. have judgment. You can find the show and like the show on Facebook.

I tweet at Roman Mars, Sam tweets at Sam listens, Avery tweets at Troubleman. But right now, it is the first episode of season 4 where we are going weekly from here on out. So now is a great time to tell everyone you know and love to start listening to 99% invisible and everything you need to become to 99% invisible and everything you need to become a 99% invisible fan is available at 99pod.org. Radio to Pia. From PRX.

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