William Van Alen

Chrysler Building

William Van Alen (born August 10, 1882 in Brooklyn , New York City , † May 24, 1954 ) was an American architect . He became known for the construction of the Chrysler Building (1928 to 1930).

Life

After graduating from high school, Van Alen studied at the School of Architecture at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. During his training and immediately afterwards, he worked in various New York architecture firms. In 1908, a Lloyd Warren scholarship enabled him to travel to Europe. Until 1911 Van Alen studied at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris with Victor Laloux .

In 1911, he set out with his partner H. Craig Severance in New York with its own architectural practice independently . The two became known for their skyscrapers, but got into an argument and dissolved their community in 1925.

At the end of the 1920s, Van Alen was commissioned by Walter P. Chrysler to build a building that not only scratches the sky but pierces it (“ A building which would not merely scrape the sky but positively pierce it ”). After the Chrysler Building was completed in 1930, the Art Deco building was the tallest house in the world for a year until the Empire State Building was completed . However, Van Alen also got into an argument with Chrysler, which was detrimental to his career for the rest of his life.

In 1943, William Van Alen was elected Associate Member ( ANA ) of the National Academy of Design .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ nationalacademy.org: Past Academicians "V" / Van Alen, William ANA 1943 ( Memento of the original from April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on July 18, 2015)