Chrysler Building

This guide to the Chrysler Building in New York follows architect William Van Alen's secret rivalry with his former partner, H. Craig Severance, as the two raced in 1929 to complete the taller of two competing towers, each revising plans mid-construction to outdo the other. Severance pushed his own tower past nine hundred feet and topped it with a flagpole, certain he'd secured the record. Van Alen, meanwhile, said nothing about what his crew had already assembled in secret inside this building's crown.