The full story of the secret tower has yet to be told, but the new Chrysler Building attracted more popular comment than any other building since the Woolworth in 1913.

Architectural critics were generally offended by the last-minute tower, considering it a gimmicky stunt, trivial and unworthy of Architecture with a capital A. But Kenneth Murchison, an architect and critic, liked the frank, commercial quality of a building erected with advertising clearly in mind. In the September 1930 issue of American Architect he observed that Van Alen, who had, like Murchison, studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, was "the only student who returned from Paris without a box full of books."

Murchison also admired the steel crown and "the astonishing plays of light which nature alone can furnish." While other buildings had been put up with distinctive spires, they were all in traditional materials: copper, terra cotta, iron, stone, brick. But on the Chrysler Building the entire upper section above the 61st floor -- and much of the ornament below -- is gleaming chrome-nickel steel, which reflects sunlight with dazzling brilliance.

To withstand corrosion, the architect specified a particular steel developed by Krupp, the German steelworks, called Nirosta.

Mixing in about 18 percent chromium and about 8 percent nickel produced an "18-8" steel with which, wrote Chrysler in the building's original brochure, "maintenance expense is eliminated; there is no need of polishing, replacement or refinishing." For the tallest part of the tallest building in the world, this was not just grandstanding.