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New York. The Beating Heart of the World
Sezione 1
Sezione 2
Chrysler Building
Walter Chrysler. 1930
PLAY ME
By the mid-1920s,
the New York metropolitan area had overtaken London
as the most populous city in the world. This era, known as the 'Roaring Twenties', was characterised by profound social and technological change. National prosperity more than doubled between 1920 and 1929. This economic growth was not only visible in American consumer choices, but also in the development of modern buildings in New York.
I am the owner of an automobile company: the Chrysler Corporation, which a few years ago, in 1927, became the third largest manufacturing company of its kind in the United States. I was even named "Person of the Year" in Time magazine. I wanted to shape the immense growth of my company with one of the most beautiful and largest buildings in the city.
The Chrysler Building, whose construction was completed just this year. It was built on the East Side of Manhattan and is an Art Deco skyscraper, a very fashionable design in our time. The building is three hundred metres high and is now the tallest masonry building with a steel structure. Although the building was built and designed specifically for the automotive
industry, I did not give the corporation permission to pay for its construction. I decided to pay for it myself, so that my children would be able to inherit it in the future, as it is not a 'simple' building: it is the product of the hard work of a corporation that made it possible! It represented the beauty of a city that will soon, in this very century, become the capital of the world... Wait and see!
Sezione 3
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