William Van Alen

William Van Alen was an American architect, born in Brooklyn, New York, on August 10, 1883, and dead on May 24, 1954. He is best known as the architect in charge of designing the Chrysler Building in New York City, built from 1928 to 1930. He studied at the Pratt Institute while working for the architect Clarence True, spent three years at the Atelier Masqueray, and won the Paris Prize scholarship in 1908, which took him to the atelier of Victor Laloux at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Back in New York in 1910 he took up the modernism for which he later became known, and from 1911 until 1924 he practiced in partnership with H. Craig Severance. Among his smaller works, 604 Fifth Avenue, completed in 1925, used curved glass corner windows with no supporting corner post. At 1,046 feet his Chrysler Building won the race against Severance's 40 Wall Street to be the world's tallest, though the Empire State Building surpassed both in 1931. A lawsuit over his unpaid fee damaged his reputation, and he later taught sculpture at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design.