The Chrysler Building, New York's Beauty October 01 2014

Woody Allen, who once said, "There are very few modern skyscrapers that I like," nevertheless he included the 1931 Chrysler Building on the itinerary of the architectural tour of Manhattan that Sam Waterstone gave in Allen's Hannah and Her Sister. 

The beautiful edifice was built by automobile manufacturer Walter P. Chrysler to express both the luxury and mechanical precision of the automobile in its Jazz Age incarnation. Designed by William Van Alen and completed in 1930, it is one of New York's finest Art Deco buildings. 

The lobby is one of the city's most beautiful interiors. The walls are veneered with sensuously veined Moroccan marble in warm tones of buff and red. The delightful elevator doors and walls are inlaid with African woods in intricate floral designs, and the elevator cabs are marquetried, not two alike. 

In the movie, Two Weeks Notice, Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock are circling the building in a helicopter, while Grant tells of the famous rivalry in the late 1920s between the Chrysler Building Architect and his former partner H. Craig Severence to built the the world's tallest building. - Severence who was working on the Manhattan Company Building at 40 Wall Street, lost; and both man were overshadowed a few years later when the Empire State Building made its debut.

What is it about The Chrysler Building that's so appealing? Its six-story Art Deco spire? Its huge chrome gargoyles, which were designed to look like 1931 Chrysler hood ornaments? Or simply the fact that there will never be another building like this one?