By Jared Ebersole in Video — 02 Mar 2026

The Skyscraper Feud That Gave New York the Chrysler Building

William Van Alen and H. Craig Severance turned a broken partnership into the race between the Chrysler Building and 40 Wall Street.

The Chrysler Building's most famous feature was basically a revenge move.

Not just architectural ambition. Not just corporate vanity. Revenge, staged in stainless steel, hoisted into place before New York understood it had been tricked.

Where it is

The Chrysler Building is at 405 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10174. Its rival, 40 Wall Street, stands at 40 Wall Street, New York, NY 10005.

The feud began with two architects who had once been partners. William Van Alen and H. Craig Severance formed a successful firm in the early twentieth century, combining design talent and business instincts. Van Alen was the more flamboyant designer; Severance was the dealmaker. For a while, the combination worked.

Then it broke.

Accounts of the split usually point to ego, credit, money, and resentment. A magazine profile helped frame Van Alen as the creative genius of the partnership, leaving Severance feeling erased. Lawsuits and bitterness followed. By the late 1920s, the former partners were no longer sharing clients. They were trying to beat each other in public.

New York gave them the perfect arena: the race for the world's tallest building.

Severance was designing 40 Wall Street, a downtown tower backed by the Bank of Manhattan. Van Alen was designing the Chrysler Building for automobile magnate Walter Chrysler, uptown at Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street. The race was not only about height. It was about headlines, prestige, tenants, financing, and the idea that a building could turn its owner into a permanent part of the skyline.

The numbers kept changing because each side watched the other.

Van Alen's tower grew. Severance's tower grew. 40 Wall Street added height and a pyramidal top, reaching about 927 feet and briefly claiming the title. Severance had reason to worry that Van Alen had something hidden, and some accounts say he even considered extra permit options in case he needed a final adjustment.

He was right to be suspicious.

Van Alen had secretly designed a spire for the Chrysler Building and had it assembled inside the building's upper structure, out of sight. The Skyscraper Museum describes the spire as 27 tons and notes that it was raised to the top in about 90 minutes. Other sources describe the needle as roughly 125 feet long, concealed until the final move. Once installed, it brought the Chrysler Building to 1,046 feet, well above 40 Wall Street.

The brilliance was not only that Chrysler won. It was how.

A skyscraper race is supposed to be visible. Floor by floor, workers climb into the air while newspapers count. Van Alen turned the finish line into a magic trick. He hid the winning piece inside the building, then revealed the final height only when it was too late for Severance to respond.

The timing was almost mythological. The Chrysler spire went up in October 1929, just before the stock market crash. The gesture belonged to the final moments of Jazz Age confidence: shiny, vertical, expensive, theatrical, and convinced the future would keep rising.

It did not.

The Chrysler Building held the world's tallest title for less than a year. The Empire State Building soon passed both rivals, opening in 1931 at a height that made the earlier duel look almost quaint. The new champion was not just taller; it arrived in a Depression market so brutal that it was nicknamed the Empty State Building because so much of it sat vacant.

The race cost Van Alen too. Walter Chrysler later refused to pay the architect's full customary fee, and Van Alen sued. Despite designing one of the most beloved skyscrapers on earth, he never again received a commission of comparable importance.

That is the strange aftertaste of the story. Severance lost the race. Van Alen won the skyline and lost much of the career that should have followed. Chrysler got the monument. The Empire State Building got the title. New York got the drama.

And the Chrysler Building got the spire that still makes the whole feud worth retelling.

It is a beautiful thing, but it is also a weapon: 27 tons of Art Deco pride, lifted into place to settle an argument between former partners.