title: Melanoma

text: Mohs surgery has been reported with cure rate as low as 77% and as high as 98.0% for melanoma-in-situ. CCPDMA and the "double scalpel" peripheral margin controlled surgery is equivalent to Mohs surgery in effectiveness on this "intra-epithelial" type of melanoma.


title: Melanoma

text: Melanomas that spread usually do so to the lymph nodes in the area of the tumor before spreading elsewhere. Attempts to improve survival by removing lymph nodes surgically (lymphadenectomy) were associated with many complications, but no overall survival benefit. Recently, the technique of sentinel lymph node biopsy has been developed to reduce the complications of lymph node surgery while allowing assessment of the involvement of nodes with tumor.


title: Melanoma

text: Neither sentinel lymph node biopsy nor other diagnostic tests should be performed to evaluate early, thin melanoma, including melanoma in situ, T1a melanoma or T1b melanoma ≤ 0.5mm. People with these conditions are unlikely to have the cancer spread to their lymph nodes or anywhere else and have a 5-year survival rate of 97%. Because of these considerations, sentinel lymph node biopsy is considered unnecessary health care for them. Furthermore, baseline blood tests and radiographic studies should not be performed only based on identifying this kind of melanoma, as there are more accurate tests for detecting cancer and these tests have high false-positive rates. To potentially correct false positives, gene expression profiling may be used as auxiliary testing for ambiguous and small lesions.


title: Melanoma

text: Sentinel lymph node biopsy is often performed, especially for T1b/T2+ tumors, mucosal tumors, ocular melanoma and tumors of the limbs. A process called lymphoscintigraphy is performed in which a radioactive tracer is injected at the tumor site to localize the sentinel node(s). Further precision is provided using a blue tracer dye, and surgery is performed to biopsy the node(s). Routine hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) and immunoperoxidase staining will be adequate to rule out node involvement. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests on nodes, usually performed to test for entry into clinical trials, now demonstrate that many patients with a negative sentinel lymph node actually had a small number of positive cells in their nodes. Alternatively, a fine-needle aspiration biopsy may be performed and is often used to test masses.


title: Melanoma

text: If a lymph node is positive, depending on the extent of lymph node spread, a radical lymph node dissection will often be performed. If the disease is completely resected, the patient will be considered for adjuvant therapy.


title: Melanoma

text: Excisional skin biopsy is the management of choice. Here, the suspect lesion is totally removed with an adequate (but minimal, usually 1 or 2 mm) ellipse of surrounding skin and tissue. To avoid disruption of the local lymphatic drainage, the preferred surgical margin for the initial biopsy should be narrow (1 mm). The biopsy should include the epidermal, dermal, and subcutaneous layers of the skin. This enables the histopathologist to determine the thickness of the melanoma by microscopic examination. This is described by Breslow's thickness (measured in millimeters). However, for large lesions, such as suspected lentigo maligna, or for lesions in surgically difficult areas (face, toes, fingers, eyelids), a small punch biopsy in representative areas will give adequate information and will not disrupt the final staging or depth determination. In no circumstances should the initial biopsy include the final surgical margin (0.5 cm, 1.0 cm, or 2 cm), as a misdiagnosis can result in excessive scarring and morbidity from the procedure. A large initial excision will disrupt the local lymphatic drainage and can affect further lymphangiogram-directed lymphnode dissection. A small punch biopsy can be used at any time where for logistical and personal reasons a patient refuses more invasive excisional biopsy. Small punch biopsies are minimally invasive and heal quickly, usually without noticeable scarring.


title: Melanoma

text: High-risk melanomas may require adjuvant treatment, although attitudes to this vary in different countries. In the United States, most patients in otherwise good health will begin up to a year of high-dose interferon treatment, which has severe side effects, but may improve the patient's prognosis slightly. However, the British Association of Dermatologists guidelines on melanoma state that interferon is not recommended as a standard adjuvant treatment for melanoma. A 2013 meta-analysis suggested that the addition of interferon alpha increased disease-free and overall survival for people with AJCC TNM stage II-III cutaneous melanoma. A 2011 meta-analysis showed that interferon could lengthen the time before a melanoma comes back but increased survival by only 3% at 5 years. The unpleasant side effects also greatly decrease quality of life.


title: Melanoma

text: Chemotherapy drugs such as Dacarbazine have been the backbone of metastatic melanoma treatment since FDA approval in 1975; however, its efficacy in terms of survival has never been proven in an RCT.


title: Melanoma

text: In people with locally advanced cutaneous malignancies and sarcoma, isolated limb infusion (ILI) has been found to be a minimally invasive and well-tolerated procedure for delivering regional chemotherapy.


title: Melanoma

text: Melanoma cells have mutations that allow them to survive and grow indefinitely in the body. Small-molecule targeted therapies work by blocking the genes involved in pathways for tumor proliferation and survival. The main treatments are BRAF, C-Kit and NRAS inhibitors. These inhibitors work to inhibit the downstream pathways involved in cell proliferation and tumour development due to specific gene mutations. People can be treated with small-molecule targeted inhibitors if they are positive for the specific mutation. BRAF inhibitors, such as vemurafenib and dabrafenib and a MEK inhibitor trametinib are the most effective, approved treatments for BRAF positive melanoma. Melanoma tumors can develop resistance during therapy which can make therapy no longer effective, but combining the use of BRAF and MEK inhibitors may create a fast and lasting melanoma therapy response.


title: Melanoma

text: A number of treatments improve survival over traditional chemotherapy. Biochemotherapy (chemotherapy with cytokines IL-2 and IFN-α) combined with BRAF inhibitors improved survival for people with BRAF positive melanoma. Biochemotherapy alone did not improve overall survival and had higher toxicity than chemotherapy. Combining multiple chemotherapy agents (polychemotherapy) did not improve survival over monochemotherapy. Targeted therapies result in relatively short progression-free survival (PFS) times. The therapy combination of dabrafenib and trametinib has a 3-year PFS of 23%, and 5-year PFS of 13%.


title: Melanoma

text: Immunotherapy is aimed at stimulating the person's immune system against the tumor, by enhancing the body's own ability to recognize and kill cancer cells.  The current approach to treating melanoma with immunotherapy includes three broad categories of treatments including cytokines, immune check point inhibitors, and adoptive cell transfer. These treatment options are most often used in people with metastatic melanoma and significantly improves overall survival. However, these treatments are often costly. For example, one immune check point inhibitor treatment, pembrolizumab, costs $10,000 to US$12,000 for a single dose administered every 3 weeks.


title: Melanoma

text: Cytokine therapies used for melanoma include IFN-a and IL-2. IL-2 (Proleukin) was the first new therapy approved (1990 EU, 1992 US) for the treatment of metastatic melanoma in 20 years. IL-2 may offer the possibility of a complete and long-lasting remission in this disease in a small percentage of people with melanoma. Intralesional IL-2 for in-transit metastases has a high complete response rate ranging from 40 to 100%. Similarly, IFN-a has shown only modest survival benefits and high toxicity, limiting its use as a stand-alone therapy.


title: Melanoma

text: Immune check point inhibitors include anti-CTLA-4 monoclonal antibodies (ipilimumab and tremelimumab), toll-like receptor (TLR) agonists, CD40 agonists, anti-PD-1 (pembrolizumab, pidilizumab, and nivolumab) and PD-L1 antibodies. Evidence suggests that anti-PD-1 antibodies are more effective than anti-CTLA4 antibodies with less systemic toxicity. The five-year progression-free survival for immunotherapy with pembrolizumab is 21%. A therapeutic approach that includes the combination of different therapies improves overall survival and progression-free survival compared to treatment with the separate immunotherapy drugs alone.


title: Melanoma

text: Ongoing research is looking at treatment by adoptive cell transfer. Adoptive cell transfer refers to the application of pre-stimulated, modified T cells or dendritic cells and is presently used to minimize complications from graft-versus-host disease.


title: Melanoma

text: The combination nivolumab/relatlimab (Opdualag) was approved for medical use in the United States in March 2022.


title: Melanoma

text: Standard excision is still being done by most surgeons. Unfortunately, the recurrence rate is exceedingly high (up to 50%). This is due to the ill-defined visible surgical margin, and the facial location of the lesions (often forcing the surgeon to use a narrow surgical margin). The narrow surgical margin used, combined with the limitation of the standard "bread-loafing" technique of fixed tissue histology – result in a high "false negative" error rate, and frequent recurrences. Margin control (peripheral margins) is necessary to eliminate the false negative errors. If bread loafing is used, distances from sections should approach 0.1 mm to assure that the method approaches complete margin control. A meta-analysis of the literature in 2014 found no randomized controlled trials of surgical interventions to treat lentigo maligna or melanoma in-situ, even though surgery is the most widely used treatment.


title: Melanoma

text: Mohs surgery has been done with cure rate reported to be as low as 77%, and as high as 95% by another author. The "double scalpel" peripheral margin controlled excision method approximates the Mohs method in margin control, but requires a pathologist intimately familiar with the complexity of managing the vertical margin on the thin peripheral sections and staining methods.


title: Melanoma

text: Some melanocytic nevi, and melanoma-in-situ (lentigo maligna) have resolved with an experimental treatment, imiquimod (Aldara) topical cream, an immune enhancing agent. Some derma-surgeons are combining the 2 methods: surgically excising the cancer and then treating the area with Aldara cream postoperatively for three months. While some studies have suggested the adjuvant use of topical tazarotene, the current evidence is insufficient to recommend it and suggests that it increases topical inflammation, leading to lower patient compliance.


title: Melanoma

text: Radiation therapy is often used after surgical resection for patients with locally or regionally advanced melanoma or for patients with un-resectable distant metastases. Kilovoltage x-ray beams are often used for these treatments and have the property of the maximum radiation dose occurring close to the skin surface. It may reduce the rate of local recurrence but does not prolong survival. Radioimmunotherapy of metastatic melanoma is currently under investigation.


title: Melanoma

text: Certain types of melanoma have worse prognoses but this is explained by their thickness. Less invasive melanomas even with lymph node metastases carry a better prognosis than deep melanomas without regional metastasis at time of staging. Local recurrences tend to behave similarly to a primary unless they are at the site of a wide local excision (as opposed to a staged excision or punch/shave excision) since these recurrences tend to indicate lymphatic invasion.


title: Melanoma

text: When melanomas have spread to the lymph nodes, one of the most important factors is the number of nodes with malignancy. Extent of malignancy within a node is also important; micro-metastases in which malignancy is only microscopic have a more favorable prognosis than macrometastases. In some cases micrometastases may only be detected by special staining, and if malignancy is only detectable by a rarely employed test known as the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), the prognosis is better. Macro-metastases in which malignancy is clinically apparent (in some cases cancer completely replaces a node) have a far worse prognosis, and if nodes are matted or if there is extracapsular extension, the prognosis is worse still. In addition to these variables, expression levels and copy number variations of a number of relevant genes may be used to support assessment of malignant melanoma prognosis.


title: Melanoma

text: Stage IV melanoma, in which it has metastasized, is the most deadly skin malignancy: five-year survival is 22.5%. When there is distant metastasis, the cancer is generally considered incurable. The five-year survival rate is less than 10%. The median survival is 6–12 months. Treatment is palliative, focusing on life extension and quality of life. In some cases, patients may live many months or even years with metastatic melanoma (depending on the aggressiveness of the treatment). Metastases to skin and lungs have a better prognosis. Metastases to brain, bone and liver are associated with a worse prognosis. Survival is better with metastasis in which the location of the primary tumor is unknown.


title: Melanoma

text: There is not enough definitive evidence to adequately stage, and thus give a prognosis for, ocular melanoma and melanoma of soft parts, or mucosal melanoma (e.g., rectal melanoma), although these tend to metastasize more easily. Even though regression may increase survival, when a melanoma has regressed, it is impossible to know its original size and thus the original tumor is often worse than a pathology report might indicate.


title: Melanoma

text: About 200 genes are prognostic in melanoma, with both unfavorable genes where high expression is correlated to poor survival and favorable genes where high expression is associated with longer survival times. Examples of unfavorable genes are MCM6 and TIMELESS; an example of a favorable gene is WIPI1.


title: Melanoma

text: Globally, in 2012, melanoma occurred in 232,000 people and resulted in 55,000 deaths. Australia and New Zealand have the highest rates of melanoma in the world. It has become more common in the last 20 years in areas that are mostly Caucasian.


title: Melanoma

text: The rate of melanoma has increased in the recent years, but it is not clear to what extent changes in behavior, in the environment, or in early detection are involved.


title: Melanoma

text: Australia has a very high – and increasing – rate of melanoma. In 2012, deaths from melanoma occurred in 7.3–9.8 per 100,000 population. In Australia, melanoma is the third most common cancer in either sex; indeed, its incidence is higher than for lung cancer, although the latter accounts for more deaths. It is estimated that in 2012, more than 12,000 Australians were diagnosed with melanoma: given Australia's modest population, this is better expressed as 59.6 new cases per 100,000 population per year; >1 in 10 of all new cancer cases were melanomas. Melanoma incidence in Australia is matter of significance, for the following reasons:


title: Melanoma

text: In the United States, about 9,000 people die from melanoma a year. In 2011, it affected 19.7 per 100,000, and resulted in death in 2.7 per 100,000.


title: Melanoma

text: Melanoma is more than 20 times more common in whites than in African Americans. Overall, the lifetime risk of getting melanoma is about 2.5% (1 in 40) for whites, 0.1% (1 in 1,000) for African Americans, and 0.5% (1 in 200) for Hispanics.


title: Melanoma

text: The risk of melanoma increases as people age. The average age of people when the disease is diagnosed is 63.


title: Melanoma

text: Although melanoma is not a new disease, evidence for its occurrence in antiquity is rather scarce. However, one example lies in a 1960s examination of nine Peruvian mummies, radiocarbon dated to be approximately 2400 years old, which showed apparent signs of melanoma: melanotic masses in the skin and diffuse metastases to the bones.


title: Melanoma

text: John Hunter is reported to be the first to operate on metastatic melanoma in 1787. Although not knowing precisely what it was, he described it as a "cancerous fungous excrescence". The excised tumor was preserved in the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. It was not until 1968 that microscopic examination of the specimen revealed it to be an example of metastatic melanoma.


title: Melanoma

text: The French physician René Laennec was the first to describe melanoma as a disease entity. His report was initially presented during a lecture for the Faculté de Médecine de Paris in 1804 and then published as a bulletin in 1806.


title: Melanoma

text: The first English-language report of melanoma was presented by an English general practitioner from Stourbridge, William Norris in 1820. In his later work in 1857 he remarked that there is a familial predisposition for development of melanoma ("Eight Cases of Melanosis with Pathological and Therapeutical Remarks on That Disease"). Norris was also a pioneer in suggesting a link between nevi and melanoma and the possibility of a relationship between melanoma and environmental exposures, by observing that most of his patients had pale complexions. He also described that melanomas could be amelanotic and later showed the metastatic nature of melanoma by observing that they can disseminate to other visceral organs.


title: Melanoma

text: The first formal acknowledgment of advanced melanoma as untreatable came from Samuel Cooper in 1840. He stated that the only chance for a cure depends upon the early removal of the disease (i.e., early excision of the malignant mole) ...'


title: Melanoma

text: The word "melanoma" came to English from 19th-century New Latin and uses combining forms derived from ancient Greek roots: "melano-" (denoting melanin) + "-oma" (denoting a tissue mass and especially a neoplasm), in turn from Greek μέλας "melas", "dark", and -ωμα "oma", "process". The word "melanoma" has a long history of being used in a broader sense to refer to any melanocytic tumor, typically, but not always malignant, but today the narrower sense referring only to malignant types has become so dominant that benign tumors are usually not called melanomas anymore and the word "melanoma" is now usually taken to mean malignant melanoma unless otherwise specified. Terms such as "benign melanocytic tumor" unequivocally label the benign types, and modern histopathologic tumor classifications used in medicine do not use the word for benign tumors.


title: Melanoma

text: Two kinds of experimental treatments developed at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), have been used in metastatic melanoma with tentative success.


title: Melanoma

text: The first treatment involves adoptive cell therapy (ACT) using TILs immune cells (tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes) isolated from a person's own melanoma tumor. These cells are grown in large numbers in a laboratory and returned to the patient after a treatment that temporarily reduces normal T cells in the patient's body. TIL therapy following lymphodepletion can result in durable complete response in a variety of setups.


title: Melanoma

text: The second treatment, adoptive transfer of genetically altered autologous lymphocytes, depends on delivering genes that encode so called T cell receptors (TCRs), into patient's lymphocytes. After that manipulation lymphocytes recognize and bind to certain molecules found on the surface of melanoma cells and kill them.


title: Melanoma

text: About 60% of melanomas contain a mutation in the B-Raf gene. Early clinical trials suggested that B-Raf inhibitors including Plexxicon's vemurafenib could lead to substantial tumor regression in a majority of patients if their tumor contain the B-Raf mutation. In June 2011, a large clinical trial confirmed the positive findings from those earlier trials.


title: Melanoma

text: In August 2011, Vemurafenib received FDA approval for the treatment of late-stage melanoma. In May 2013 the US FDA approved dabrafenib as a single agent treatment for patients with BRAF V600E mutation-positive advanced melanoma.


title: Melanoma

text: Some researchers believe that combination therapies that simultaneously block multiple pathways may improve efficacy by making it more difficult for the tumor cells to mutate before being destroyed. In October 2012 a study reported that combining Dabrafenib with a MEK inhibitor trametinib led to even better outcomes. Compared to Dabrafenib alone, progression-free survival was increased to 41% from 9%, and the median progression-free survival increased to 9.4 months versus 5.8 months. Some side effects were, however, increased in the combined study.


title: Melanoma

text: In January 2014, the FDA approved the combination of dabrafenib and trametinib for the treatment of people with BRAF V600E/K-mutant metastatic melanoma. In June 2018, the FDA approved the combination of a BRAF inhibitor encorafenib and a MEK inhibitor binimetinib for the treatment of un-resectable or metastatic melanoma with a BRAF V600E or V600K mutation.


title: Melanoma

text: Eventual resistance to BRAF and MEK inhibitors may be due to a cell surface protein known as EphA2 which is now being investigated.


title: Melanoma

text: At the American Society of Clinical Oncology Conference in June 2010, the Bristol-Myers Squibb pharmaceutical company reported the clinical findings of their drug ipilimumab. The study found an increase in median survival from 6.4 to 10 months in patients with advanced melanomas treated with the monoclonal ipilimumab, versus an experimental vaccine. It also found a one-year survival rate of 25% in the control group using the vaccine, 44% in the vaccine and ipilimumab group, and 46% in the group treated with ipilimumab alone. However, some have raised concerns about this study for its use of the unconventional control arm, rather than comparing the drug against a placebo or standard treatment. The criticism was that although Ipilimumab performed better than the vaccine, the vaccine has not been tested before and may be causing toxicity, making the drug appear better by comparison.


title: Melanoma

text: Ipilimumab was approved by the FDA in March 2011 to treat patients with late-stage melanoma that has spread or cannot be removed by surgery.


title: Melanoma

text: In June 2011, a clinical trial of ipilimumab plus dacarbazine combined this immune system booster with the standard chemotherapy drug that targets cell division. It showed an increase in median survival for these late stage patients to 11 months instead of the 9 months normally seen. Researchers were also hopeful of improving the five year survival rate, though serious adverse side-effects were seen in some patients. A course of treatment costs $120,000. The drug's brandname is Yervoy.


title: Melanoma

text: Advances in high resolution ultrasound scanning have enabled surveillance of metastatic burden to the sentinel lymph nodes. The Screening and Surveillance of Ultrasound in Melanoma trial (SUNMEL) is evaluating ultrasound as an alternative to invasive surgical methods.


title: Melanoma

text: In some countries oncolytic virotherapy methods are studied and used to treat melanoma. Oncolytic virotherapy is a promising branch of virotherapy, where oncolytic viruses are used to treat diseases; viruses can increase metabolism, reduce anti-tumor immunity and disorganize vasculature. Talimogene laherparepvec (T-VEC) (which is a herpes simplex virus type 1–derived oncolytic immunotherapy), was shown to be useful against metastatic melanoma in 2015 with an increased survival of 4.4 months.


title: Chrysler Building

text: The Chrysler Building is an Art Deco skyscraper on the East Side of Manhattan in New York City, at the intersection of 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. At , it is the tallest brick building in the world with a steel framework, and it was the world's tallest building for 11 months after its completion in 1930. , the Chrysler is the 11th-tallest building in the city, tied with The New York Times Building.


title: Chrysler Building

text: Originally a project of real estate developer and former New York State Senator William H. Reynolds, the building was constructed by Walter Chrysler, the head of the Chrysler Corporation. The construction of the Chrysler Building, an early skyscraper, was characterized by a competition with 40 Wall Street and the Empire State Building to become the world's tallest building. Although the Chrysler Building was built and designed specifically for the car manufacturer, the corporation did not pay for its construction and never owned it; Walter Chrysler decided to fund the entire cost personally so his children could inherit it. An annex was completed in 1952, and the building was sold by the Chrysler family the next year, with numerous subsequent owners.


title: Chrysler Building

text: When the Chrysler Building opened, there were mixed reviews of the building's design, ranging from views of it as inane and unoriginal to the idea that it was modernist and iconic. Perceptions of the building have slowly evolved into its now being seen as a paragon of the Art Deco architectural style; and in 2007, it was ranked ninth on the "List of America's Favorite Architecture" by the American Institute of Architects. The building was designated a New York City landmark in 1978, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places as a National Historic Landmark in 1976.


title: Chrysler Building

text: The Chrysler Building is on the eastern side of Lexington Avenue between 42nd and 43rd streets in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The land was donated to The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 1902. The site is roughly a trapezoid with a frontage on Lexington Avenue; a frontage on 42nd Street; and a frontage on 43rd Street. The site bordered the old Boston Post Road, which predated, and ran aslant of, the Manhattan street grid established by the Commissioners' Plan of 1811. As a result, the east side of the building's base is similarly aslant. The building is assigned its own ZIP Code, 10174; it was one of 41 buildings in Manhattan that had their own ZIP Codes .


title: Chrysler Building

text: The Grand Hyatt New York hotel and the Graybar Building are across Lexington Avenue, while the Socony–Mobil Building is across 42nd Street. In addition, the Chanin Building is to the southwest, diagonally across Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street.


title: Chrysler Building

text: The Chrysler Building was designed by William Van Alen in the Art Deco style and is named for one of its original tenants, automotive executive Walter Chrysler. It is constructed of a steel frame infilled with masonry, with areas of decorative metal cladding. The structure contains 3,862 exterior windows. Approximately fifty metal ornaments protrude at the building's corners on five floors reminiscent of gargoyles on Gothic cathedrals. The 31st-floor contains gargoyles as well as replicas of the 1929 Chrysler radiator caps, and the 61st-floor is adorned with eagles as a nod to America's national bird.


title: Chrysler Building

text: The Chrysler Building uses bright "Nirosta" stainless steel extensively in its design, an austenitic alloy developed in Germany by Krupp (a German acronym for "nichtrostender Stahl", meaning "non-rusting steel"). It was the first use of this "18-8 stainless steel" in an American project, composed of 18% chromium and 8% nickel. Nirosta was used in the exterior ornaments, the window frames, the crown, and the needle. The steel was an integral part of Van Alen's design, as E.E. Thum explains: "The use of permanently bright metal was of greatest aid in the carrying of rising lines and the diminishing circular forms in the roof treatment, so as to accentuate the gradual upward swing until it literally dissolves into the sky..." Stainless steel producers used the Chrysler Building to evaluate the durability of the product in architecture. In 1929, the American Society for Testing Materials created an inspection committee to study its performance, which regarded the Chrysler Building as the best location to do so; a subcommittee examined the building's panels every five years until 1960, when the inspections were canceled because the panels had shown minimal deterioration.


title: Chrysler Building

text: The Chrysler Building's height and legally mandated setbacks influenced Van Alen in his design. The walls of the lowermost sixteen floors rise directly from the sidewalk property lines, except for a recess on one side that gives the building a "U"-shaped floor plan above the fourth floor. There are setbacks on floors 16, 18, 23, 28, and 31, making the building compliant with the 1916 Zoning Resolution. This gives the building the appearance of a ziggurat on one side and a U-shaped palazzo on the other. Above the 31st floor, there are no more setbacks until the 60th floor, above which the structure is funneled into a Maltese cross shape that "blends the square shaft to the finial", according to author and photographer Cervin Robinson.


title: Chrysler Building

text: The floor plans of the first sixteen floors were made as large as possible to optimize the amount of rental space nearest ground level, which was seen as most desirable. The U-shaped cut above the fourth floor served as a shaft for air flow and illumination. The area between floors 28 and 31 added "visual interest to the middle of the building, preventing it from being dominated by the heavy detail of the lower floors and the eye-catching design of the finial. They provide a base to the column of the tower, effecting a transition between the blocky lower stories and the lofty shaft."


title: Chrysler Building

text: The ground floor exterior is covered in polished black granite from Shastone, while the three floors above it are clad in white marble from Georgia. There are two main entrances, on Lexington Avenue and on 42nd Street, each three floors high with Shastone granite surrounding each proscenium-shaped entryway. At some distance into each main entryway, there are revolving doors "beneath intricately patterned metal and glass screens", designed so as to embody the Art Deco tenet of amplifying the entrance's visual impact. A smaller side entrance on 43rd Street is one story high. There are storefronts consisting of large Nirosta-steel-framed windows at ground level. Office windows penetrate the second through fourth floors.


title: Chrysler Building

text: The west and east elevations contain the air shafts above the fourth floor, while the north and south sides contain the receding setbacks. Below the 16th floor, the facade is clad with white brick, interrupted by white-marble bands in a manner similar to a basket weaving. The windows, arranged in grids, do not have window sills, the frames being flush with the facade. Between the 16th and 24th floors, the exterior exhibits vertical white brick columns that are separated by windows on each floor. This visual effect is made possible by the presence of aluminum spandrels between the columns of windows on each floor. There are abstract reliefs on the 20th through 22nd-floor spandrels, while the 24th floor contains decorative pineapples.


title: Chrysler Building

text: Above the third setback, consisting of the 24th through 27th floors, the facade contains horizontal bands and zigzagged gray-and-black brick motifs. The section above the fourth setback, between the 27th and 31st floors, serves as a podium for the main shaft of the building. There are Nirosta-steel decorations above the setbacks. At each corner of the 31st floor, large car-hood ornaments were installed to make the base look larger. These corner extensions help counter a common optical illusion seen in tall buildings with horizontal bands, whose taller floors would normally look larger. The 31st floor also contains a gray and white frieze of hubcaps and fenders, which both symbolizes the Chrysler Corporation and serves as a visual signature of the building's Art Deco design. The bonnet embellishments take the shape of Mercury's winged helmet and resemble hood ornaments installed on Chrysler vehicles at the time.


title: Chrysler Building

text: The shaft of the tower was designed to emphasize both the horizontal and vertical: each of the tower's four sides contains three columns of windows, each framed by bricks and an unbroken marble pillar that rises along the entirety of each side. The spandrels separating the windows contain "alternating vertical stripes in gray and white brick", while each corner contains horizontal rows of black brick.


title: Chrysler Building

text: The Chrysler Building is renowned for, and recognized by, its terraced crown, which is an extension of the main tower. Composed of seven radiating terraced arches, Van Alen's design of the crown is a cruciform groin vault of seven concentric members with transitioning setbacks. The entire crown is clad with Nirosta steel, ribbed and riveted in a radiating sunburst pattern with many triangular vaulted windows, reminiscent of the spokes of a wheel. The windows are repeated, in smaller form, on the terraced crown's seven narrow setbacks. Due to the curved shape of the dome, the Nirosta sheets had to be measured on site, so most of the work was carried out in workshops on the building's 67th and 75th floors. According to Robinson, the terraced crown "continue[s] the wedding-cake layering of the building itself. This concept is carried forward from the 61st floor, whose eagle gargoyles echo the treatment of the 31st, to the spire, which extends the concept of 'higher and narrower' forward to infinite height and infinitesimal width. This unique treatment emphasizes the building's height, giving it an other worldly atmosphere reminiscent of the fantastic architecture of Coney Island or the Far East."


title: Chrysler Building

text: Television station WCBS-TV (Channel 2) originated its transmission from the top of the Chrysler Building in 1938. WCBS-TV transmissions were shifted to the Empire State Building in 1960 in response to competition from RCA's transmitter on that building. For many years WPAT-FM and WTFM (now WKTU) also transmitted from the Chrysler Building, but their move to the Empire State Building by the 1970s ended commercial broadcasting from the structure.


title: Chrysler Building

text: The crown and spire are illuminated by a combination of fluorescent lights framing the crown's distinctive triangular windows and colored floodlights that face toward the building, allowing it to be lit in a variety of schemes for special occasions. The V-shaped fluorescent "tube lighting" – hundreds of 480V 40W bulbs framing 120 window openings – was added in 1981, although it had been part of the original design. Until 1998, the lights were turned off at 2 a.m., but "The New York Observer" columnist Ron Rosenbaum convinced Tishman Speyer to keep the lights on until 6 a.m. Since 2015, the Chrysler Building and other city skyscrapers have been part of the Audubon Society's Lights Out program, turning off their lights during bird migration seasons.


title: Chrysler Building

text: The interior of the building contains several innovative elements. The partitions between the offices are soundproofed and divided into interchangeable sections, so the layout of any could be changed quickly and comfortably. Pipes under the floors carry both telephone and electricity cables.


title: Chrysler Building

text: The lobby is triangular in plan, connecting with entrances on Lexington Avenue, 42nd Street, and 43rd Street. It is the only publicly accessible part of the Chrysler Building. The three entrances contain Nirosta steel doors, above which are etched-glass panels that allow natural light to illuminate the space. The floors contain bands of yellow travertine from Siena, which mark the path between the entrances and elevator banks. The writer Eric Nash described the lobby as a paragon of the Art Deco style, with clear influences of German Expressionism. Chrysler wanted the design to impress other architects and automobile magnates, so he imported various materials regardless of the extra costs incurred.


title: Chrysler Building

text: The walls are covered with huge slabs of African red granite. The walls also contain storefronts and doors made of Nirosta steel. There is a wall panel dedicated to the work of clinchers, surveyors, masons, carpenters, plasterers, and builders. Fifty different figures were modeled after workers who participated in its construction. In 1999, the mural was returned to its original state after a restoration that removed the polyurethane coating and filled-in holes added in the 1970s. Originally, Van Alen's plans for the lobby included four large supporting columns, but they were removed after Chrysler objected on the grounds that the columns made the lobby appear "cramped". The lobby has dim lighting with combined with the appliqués of the lamps, create an intimate atmosphere and highlight the space. Vertical bars of fluorescent light are covered with Belgian blue marble and Mexican amber onyx bands, which soften and diffuse the light. The marble and onyx bands are designed as inverted chevrons.


title: Chrysler Building

text: Opposite the Lexington Avenue entrance is a security guard's desk topped by a digital clock. The panel behind the desk is made of marble, surrounded by Nirosta steel. The lobby connects to four elevator banks, each of a different design. To the north and south of the security desk are terrazzo staircases leading to the second floor and basement. The stairs contain marble walls and Nirosta-steel railings. The outer walls are flat but are clad with marble strips that are slightly angled to each other, which give the impression of being curved. The inner railings of each stair are designed with zigzagging Art Deco motifs, ending at red-marble newel posts on the ground story. Above each stair are aluminum-leaf ceilings with etched-glass chandeliers.


title: Chrysler Building

text: The ceiling contains a mural, "Transport and Human Endeavor", designed by Edward Trumbull. The mural's theme is "energy and man's application of it to the solution of his problems", and it pays homage to the Golden Age of Aviation and the Machine Age. The mural is painted in the shape of a "Y" with ocher and golden tones. The central image of the mural is a "muscled giant whose brain directs his boundless energy to the attainment of the triumphs of this mechanical era", according to a 1930 pamphlet that advertised the building. The mural's Art Deco style is manifested in characteristic triangles, sharp angles, slightly curved lines, chrome ornaments, and numerous patterns. The mural depicts several silver planes, including the "Spirit of St. Louis", as well as furnaces of incandescent steel and the building itself.


title: Chrysler Building

text: When the building opened, the first and second floors housed a public exhibition of Chrysler vehicles. The exhibition, known as the Chrysler Automobile Salon, was near the corner of Lexington Avenue and 42nd Streets, and opened in 1936. The ground floor featured "invisible glass" display windows, a diameter turntable upon which automobiles were displayed, and a ceiling with lights arranged in concentric circles. Escalators led to the showroom's second floor where Plymouths, Dodges, and DeSotos were sold. The Chrysler Salon remained operational through at least the 1960s.


title: Chrysler Building

text: There are 32 elevators in the skyscraper, clustered into four banks. At the time of opening, 28 of the elevators were for passenger use. Each bank serves different floors within the building, with several "express" elevators going from the lobby to a few landings in between, while "local" elevators connect the landings with the floors above these intermediate landings. As per Walter Chrysler's wishes, the elevators were designed to run at a rate of , despite the speed restriction enforced in all city elevators at the time. This restriction was loosened soon after the Empire State Building opened in 1931, as that building had also been equipped with high-speed elevators. The Chrysler Building also had three of the longest elevator shafts in the world at the time of completion.


title: Chrysler Building

text: Over the course of a year, Van Alen painstakingly designed these elevators with the assistance of L.T.M. Ralston, who was in charge of developing the elevator cabs' mechanical parts. The cabs were manufactured by the Otis Elevator Company, while the doors were made by the Tyler Company. The dimensions of each elevator were deep by wide. Within the lobby, there are ziggurat-shaped Mexican onyx panels above the elevator doors. The doors are made of metal and covered with eight types of exotic woods. When the doors are closed, they resemble "tall fans set off by metallic palm fronds rising through a series of silver parabolas, whose edges were set off by curved lilies" from the outside, as noted by Curcio. However, when a set of doors is open, the cab behind the doors resembles "an exquisite Art Deco room". These elements were influenced by ancient Egyptian designs, which significantly impacted the Art Deco style. According to Vincent Curcio, "these elevator interiors were perhaps the single most beautiful and, next to the dome, the most important feature of the entire building."


title: Chrysler Building

text: Even though the woods in the elevator cabs were arranged in four basic patterns, each cab had a unique combination of woods. Curcio stated that "if anything the building is based on patterned fabrics, [the elevators] certainly are. Three of the designs could be characterized as having 'geometric', 'Mexican' and vaguely 'art nouveau' motifs, which reflect the various influences on the design of the entire building." The roof of each elevator was covered with a metal plate whose design was unique to that cab, which in turn was placed on a polished wooden pattern that was also customized to the cab. Hidden behind these plates were ceiling fans. Curcio wrote that these elevators "are among the most beautiful small enclosed spaces in New York, and it is fair to say that no one who has seen or been in them has forgotten them". Curcio compared the elevators to the curtains of a Ziegfeld production, noting that each lobby contains lighting that peaks in the middle and slopes down on either side. The decoration of the cabs' interiors was also a nod to the Chrysler Corporation's vehicles: cars built during the building's early years had dashboards with wooden moldings. Both the doors and cab interiors were considered to be works of extraordinary marquetry.


title: Chrysler Building

text: On the 42nd Street side of the Chrysler Building, a staircase from the street leads directly under the building to the New York City Subway's at Grand Central–42nd Street station. It is part of the structure's original design. The Interborough Rapid Transit Company, which at the time was the operator of all the routes serving the 42nd Street station, originally sued to block construction of the new entrance because it would cause crowding, but the New York City Board of Transportation pushed to allow the corridor anyway. Chrysler eventually built and paid for the building's subway entrance. Work on the new entrance started in March 1930 and it opened along with the Chrysler Building two months later.


title: Chrysler Building

text: The basement also had a "hydrozone water bottling unit" that would filter tap water into drinkable water for the building's tenants. The drinkable water would then be bottled and shipped to higher floors.


title: Chrysler Building

text: The private Cloud Club formerly occupied the 66th through 68th floors. It opened in July 1930 with some three hundred members, all wealthy males who formed the city's elite. Its creation was spurred by Texaco's wish for a proper restaurant for its executives prior to renting fourteen floors in the building. The Cloud Club was a compromise between William Van Alen's modern style and Walter Chrysler's stately and traditional tastes. A member had to be elected and, if accepted, paid an initial fee of $200, plus a $150 to $300 annual fee. Texaco executives comprised most of the Cloud Club's membership. The club and its dining room may have inspired the Rainbow Room and the Rockefeller Center Luncheon Club at 30 Rockefeller Plaza.


title: Chrysler Building

text: There was a Tudor-style foyer on the 66th floor with oak paneling, as well as an old English-style grill room with wooden floors, wooden beams, wrought-iron chandeliers, and glass and lead doors. The main dining room had a futuristic appearance, with polished granite columns and etched glass appliqués in Art Deco style. There was a mural of a cloud on the ceiling and a mural of Manhattan on the dining room's north side. The 66th and 67th floors were connected by a Renaissance-style marble and bronze staircase. The 67th floor had an open bar with dark-wood paneling and furniture. On the same floor, Walter Chrysler and Texaco both had private dining rooms. Chrysler's dining room had a black and frosted-blue glass frieze of automobile workers. Texaco's dining room contained a mural across two walls; one wall depicted a town in New England with a Texaco gas station, while the other depicted an oil refinery and Texaco truck. The south side of the 67th floor also contained a library with wood-paneled walls and fluted pilasters. The 68th floor mainly contained service spaces.


title: Chrysler Building

text: In the 1950s and 1960s, members left the Cloud Club for other clubs. Texaco moved to Westchester County in 1977, and the club closed two years later. Although there have been several projects to rehabilitate the club or transform it into a disco or a gastronomic club, these plans have never materialized, as then-owner Cooke reportedly did not want a "conventional" restaurant operating within the old club. Tishman Speyer rented the top two floors of the old Cloud Club. The old staircase has been removed, as have many of the original decorations, which prompted objections from the Art Deco Society of New York.


title: Chrysler Building

text: Originally, Walter Chrysler had a two-story apartment on the 69th and 70th floors with a fireplace and a private office. The office also contained a gymnasium and the loftiest bathrooms in the city. The office had a medieval ambience with leaded windows, elaborate wooden doors, and heavy plaster. Chrysler did not use his gym much, instead choosing to stay at the Chrysler Corporation's headquarters in Detroit. Subsequently, the 69th and 70th floors were converted into a dental clinic. In 2005, a report by "The New York Times" found that one of the dentists, Charles Weiss, had operated at the clinic's current rooftop location since 1969. The office still had the suite's original bathroom and gymnasium. Chrysler also had a unit on the 58th through 60th floors, which served as his residence.


title: Chrysler Building

text: From the building's opening until 1945, it contained a observation deck on the 71st floor, called "Celestial". For fifty cents visitors could transit its circumference through a corridor with vaulted ceilings painted with celestial motifs and bedecked with small hanging glass planets. The center of the observatory contained the toolbox that Walter P. Chrysler used at the beginning of his career as a mechanic; it was later preserved at the Chrysler Technology Center in Auburn Hills, Michigan. An image of the building resembling a rocket hung above it. According to a contemporary brochure, views of up to were possible on a clear day; but the small triangular windows of the observatory created strange angles that made viewing difficult, depressing traffic. When the Empire State Building opened in 1931 with two observatories at a higher elevation, the Chrysler observatory lost its clientele. After the observatory closed, it was used to house radio and television broadcasting equipment. Since 1986, the old observatory has housed the office of architects Harvey Morse and Cowperwood Interests.


title: Chrysler Building

text: The stories above the 71st floor are designed mostly for exterior appearance, functioning mainly as landings for the stairway to the spire and do not contain office space. They are very narrow, have low and sloping roofs, and are only used to house radio transmitters and other mechanical and electrical equipment. For example, the 73rd floor houses the motors of the elevators and a water tank, of which are reserved for extinguishing fires.


title: Chrysler Building

text: In the mid-1920s, New York's metropolitan area surpassed London's as the world's most populous metropolitan area and its population exceeded ten million by the early 1930s. The era was characterized by profound social and technological changes. Consumer goods such as radio, cinema, and the automobile became widespread. In 1927, Walter Chrysler's automotive company, the Chrysler Corporation, became the third-largest car manufacturer in the United States, behind Ford and General Motors. The following year, Chrysler was named "Time" magazine's "Person of the Year".


title: Chrysler Building

text: The economic boom of the 1920s and speculation in the real estate market fostered a wave of new skyscraper projects in New York City. The Chrysler Building was built as part of an ongoing building boom that resulted in the city having the world's tallest building from 1908 to 1974. Following the end of World War I, European and American architects came to see simplified design as the epitome of the modern era and Art Deco skyscrapers as symbolizing progress, innovation, and modernity. The 1916 Zoning Resolution restricted the height that street-side exterior walls of New York City buildings could rise before needing to be setback from the street. This led to the construction of Art Deco structures in New York City with significant setbacks, large volumes, and striking silhouettes that were often elaborately decorated. Art Deco buildings were constructed for only a short period of time; but because that period was during the city's late-1920s real estate boom, the numerous skyscrapers built in the Art Deco style predominated in the city skyline, giving it the romantic quality seen in films and plays. The Chrysler Building project was shaped by these circumstances.


title: Chrysler Building

text: Originally, the Chrysler Building was to be the Reynolds Building, a project of real estate developer and former New York state senator William H. Reynolds. Prior to his involvement in planning the building, Reynolds was best known for developing Coney Island's Dreamland amusement park. When the amusement park was destroyed by fire in 1911, Reynolds turned his attention to Manhattan real estate, where he set out to build the tallest building in the world.


title: Chrysler Building

text: In 1921, Reynolds rented a large plot of land at the corner of Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street with the intention of building a tall building on the site. Reynolds did not develop the property for several years, prompting the Cooper Union to try to increase the assessed value of the property in 1924. The move, which would force Reynolds to pay more rent, was unusual because property owners usually sought to decrease their property assessments and pay fewer taxes. Reynolds hired the architect William Van Alen to design a forty-story building there in 1927. Van Alen's original design featured many Modernist stylistic elements, with glazed, curved windows at the corners.


title: Chrysler Building

text: Van Alen was respected in his field for his work on the Albemarle Building at Broadway and 24th Street, designing it in collaboration with his partner H. Craig Severance. Van Alen and Severance complemented each other, with Van Alen being an original, imaginative architect and Severance being a shrewd businessperson who handled the firm's finances. The relationship between them became tense over disagreements on how best to run the firm. A 1924 article in the "Architectural Review", praising the Albemarle Building's design, had mentioned Van Alen as the designer in the firm and ignored Severance's role. The architects' partnership dissolved acrimoniously several months later, with lawsuits over the firm's clients and assets lasting over a year. The rivalry influenced the design of the future Chrysler Building, since Severance's more traditional architectural style would otherwise have restrained Van Alen's more modern outlook.


title: Chrysler Building

text: By February 2, 1928, the proposed building's height had been increased to 54 stories, which would have made it the tallest building in Midtown. The proposal was changed again two weeks later, with official plans for a 63-story building. A little more than a week after that, the plan was changed for the third time, with two additional stories added. By this time, 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue were both hubs for construction activity, due to the removal of the Third Avenue Elevated's 42nd Street spur, which was seen as a blight on the area. The adjacent 56-story Chanin Building was also under construction. Because of the elevated spur's removal, real estate speculators believed that Lexington Avenue would become the "Broadway of the East Side", causing a ripple effect that would spur developments farther east.


title: Chrysler Building

text: In April 1928, Reynolds signed a 67-year lease for the plot and finalized the details of his ambitious project. Van Alen's original design for the skyscraper called for a base with first-floor showroom windows that would be triple-height, and above would be 12 stories with glass-wrapped corners, to create the impression that the tower was floating in mid-air. Reynolds's main contribution to the building's design was his insistence that it have a metallic crown, despite Van Alen's initial opposition; the metal-and-crystal crown would have looked like "a jeweled sphere" at night. Originally, the skyscraper would have risen , with 67 floors. These plans were approved in June 1928. Van Alen's drawings were unveiled in the following August and published in a magazine run by the American Institute of Architects (AIA).


title: Chrysler Building

text: Eventually, this design would prove too advanced and expensive for Reynolds. He instead devised an alternate design for the Reynolds Building, which was published in August 1928. The new design was much more conservative, with an Italianate dome that a critic compared to Governor Al Smith's bowler hat, and a brick arrangement on the upper floors that simulated windows in the corners, a detail that remains in the current Chrysler Building. This design almost exactly reflected the shape, setbacks, and the layout of the windows of the current building, but with a different dome.


title: Chrysler Building

text: With the design complete, groundbreaking for the Reynolds Building took place on September 19, 1928, but Reynolds did not have the means to carry on construction. Reynolds sold the plot, lease, plans, and architect's services to Walter Chrysler for $2 million on October 15, 1928. That same day, the Goodwin Construction Company began demolition of what had been built. A contract was awarded on October 28, and demolition was completed on November 9. Chrysler's initial plans for the building were similar to Reynolds's, but with the 808-foot building having 68 floors instead of 67. The plans entailed a ground-floor pedestrian arcade; a facade of stone below the fifth floor and brick-and-terracotta above; and a three-story bronze-and-glass "observation dome" at the top. However, Chrysler wanted a more progressive design, and he worked with Van Alen to redesign the skyscraper to be tall. At the new height, Chrysler's building would be taller than the Woolworth Building, a building in lower Manhattan that was the world's tallest at the time. At one point, Chrysler had requested that Van Alen shorten the design by ten floors, but reneged on that decision after realizing that the increased height would also result in increased publicity.


title: Chrysler Building

text: From late 1928 to early 1929, modifications to the design of the dome continued. In March 1929, the press published details of an "artistic dome" that had the shape of a giant thirty-pointed star, which would be crowned by a sculpture five meters high. The final design of the dome included several arches and triangular windows. Lower down, the design was affected by Walter Chrysler's intention to make the building the Chrysler Corporation's headquarters, and as such, various architectural details were modeled after Chrysler automobile products, such as the hood ornaments of the Plymouth (see ). The building's gargoyles on the 31st floor and the eagles on the 61st floor, were created to represent flight, and to embody the machine age of the time. Even the topmost needle was built using a process similar to one Chrysler used to manufacture his cars, with precise "hand craftmanship". In his autobiography, Chrysler says he suggested that his building be taller than the Eiffel Tower.


title: Chrysler Building

text: Meanwhile, excavation of the new building's foundation began in mid-November 1928 and was completed in mid-January 1929, when bedrock was reached. A total of of rock and of soil were excavated for the foundation, equal to 63% of the future building's weight. Construction of the building proper began on January 21, 1929. The Carnegie Steel Company provided the steel beams, the first of which was installed on March 27; and by April 9, the first upright beams had been set into place. The steel structure was "a few floors" high by June 1929, 35 floors high by early August, and completed by September. Despite a frantic steelwork construction pace of about four floors per week, no workers died during the construction of the skyscraper's steelwork. Chrysler lauded this achievement, saying, "It is the first time that any structure in the world has reached such a height, yet the entire steel construction was accomplished without loss of life". In total, 391,881 rivets were used, and approximately 3,826,000 bricks were manually laid to create the non-loadbearing walls of the skyscraper. Walter Chrysler personally financed the construction with his income from his car company. The Chrysler Building's height officially surpassed the Woolworth's on October 16, 1929, thereby becoming the world's tallest structure.


title: Chrysler Building

text: The same year that the Chrysler Building's construction started, banker George L. Ohrstrom proposed the construction of a 47-story office building at 40 Wall Street downtown, designed by Van Alen's former partner Severance. Shortly thereafter, Ohrstrom expanded his project to 60 floors, but it was still shorter than the Woolworth and Chrysler buildings. That April, Severance increased 40 Wall's height to with 62 floors, exceeding the Woolworth's height by and the Chrysler's by . 40 Wall Street and the Chrysler Building started competing for the title of "world's tallest building". The Empire State Building, on 34th Street and Fifth Avenue, entered the competition in 1929. The race was defined by at least five other proposals, although only the Empire State Building would survive the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The "Race into the Sky", as popular media called it at the time, was representative of the country's optimism in the 1920s, which helped fuel the building boom in major cities. Van Alen expanded the Chrysler Building's height to , prompting Severance to increase the height of 40 Wall Street to in April 1929. Construction of 40 Wall Street began that May and was completed twelve months later.


title: Chrysler Building

text: In response, Van Alen obtained permission for a spire and had it secretly constructed inside the frame of his building. The spire was delivered to the site in four different sections. On October 23, 1929, one week after surpassing the Woolworth Building's height and one day before the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the spire was assembled. According to one account, "the bottom section of the spire was hoisted to the top of the building's dome and lowered into the 66th floor of the building." Then, within 90 minutes the rest of the spire's pieces were raised and riveted in sequence, raising the tower to 1,046 feet. Van Alen, who witnessed the process from the street along with its engineers and Walter Chrysler, compared the experience to watching a butterfly leaving its cocoon. In the October 1930 edition of "Architectural Forum", Van Alen explained the design and construction of the crown and needle:


title: Chrysler Building

text: The steel tip brought the Chrysler Building to a height of , greatly exceeding 40 Wall Street's height. Contemporary news media did not write of the spire's erection, nor were there any press releases celebrating the spire's erection. Even the "New York Herald Tribune", which had virtually continuous coverage of the tower's construction, did not report on the spire's installation until days after the spire had been raised.


title: Chrysler Building

text: Chrysler realized that his tower's height would exceed the Empire State Building's as well, having ordered Van Alen to change the Chrysler's original roof from a stubby Romanesque dome to the narrow steel spire. However, the Empire State's developer John J. Raskob reviewed the plans and realized that he could add five more floors and a spire of his own to his 80-story building and acquired additional plots to support that building's height extension. Two days later, the Empire State Building's co-developer, former governor Al Smith, announced the updated plans for that skyscraper, with an observation deck on the 86th-floor roof at a height of , higher than the Chrysler's 71st-floor observation deck at .


title: Chrysler Building

text: In January 1930, it was announced that the Chrysler Corporation would maintain offices in the Chrysler Building during Automobile Show Week, and the first leases by outside tenants were announced in April 1930, before the building was officially completed. The building was formally opened on May 27, 1930, in a ceremony that coincided with the 42nd Street Property Owners and Merchants Association's meeting that year. In the lobby of the building, a bronze plaque that read "in recognition of Mr. Chrysler's contribution to civic advancement" was unveiled. Former Governor Smith, former Assemblyman Martin G. McCue, and 42nd Street Association president George W. Sweeney were among those in attendance. By June, it was reported that 65% of the available space had been leased. By August, the building was declared complete, but the New York City Department of Construction did not mark it as finished until February 1932.


title: Chrysler Building

text: The added height of the spire allowed the Chrysler Building to surpass 40 Wall Street as the tallest building in the world and the Eiffel Tower as the tallest structure. The Chrysler Building was thus the first man-made structure to be taller than ; and as one newspaper noted, the tower was also taller than the highest points of five states. The Chrysler Building was appraised at $14 million, but was exempt from city taxes per an 1859 law that gave tax exemptions to sites owned by the Cooper Union. The city had attempted to repeal the tax exemption, but Cooper Union had opposed that measure. Because the Chrysler Building retains the tax exemption, it has paid Cooper Union for the use of their land since opening. While the Chrysler Corporation was a tenant, it was not involved in the construction or ownership of the Chrysler Building; rather, the tower was a project of Walter P. Chrysler for his children. In his autobiography, Chrysler wrote that he wanted to erect the building "so that his sons would have something to be responsible for".


title: Chrysler Building

text: Van Alen's satisfaction at these accomplishments was likely muted by Walter Chrysler's later refusal to pay the balance of his architectural fee. Chrysler alleged that Van Alen had received bribes from suppliers, and Van Alen had not signed any contracts with Walter Chrysler when he took over the project. Van Alen sued and the courts ruled in his favor, requiring Chrysler to pay Van Alen $840,000, or six percent of the total budget of the building. However, the lawsuit against Chrysler markedly diminished Van Alen's reputation as an architect, which, along with the effects of the Great Depression and negative criticism, ended up ruining his career. Van Alen ended his career as professor of sculpture at the nearby Beaux-Arts Institute of Design and died in 1954. According to author Neal Bascomb, "The Chrysler Building was his greatest accomplishment, and the one that guaranteed his obscurity."


title: Chrysler Building

text: The Chrysler Building's distinction as the world's tallest building was short-lived. John Raskob realized the 1,050-foot Empire State Building would only be taller than the Chrysler Building, and Raskob was afraid that Walter Chrysler might try to "pull a trick like hiding a rod in the spire and then sticking it up at the last minute." Another revision brought the Empire State Building's roof to , making it the tallest building in the world by far when it opened on May 1, 1931. However, the Chrysler Building is still the world's tallest steel-supported brick building. The Chrysler Building fared better commercially than the Empire State Building did: by 1935, the Chrysler had already rented 70 percent of its floor area. By contrast, Empire State had only leased 23 percent of its space and was popularly derided as the "Empty State Building".


title: Chrysler Building

text: The Chrysler family inherited the property after the death of Walter Chrysler in 1940, with the property being under the ownership of W.P. Chrysler Building Corporation. In 1944, the corporation filed plans to build a 38-story annex to the east of the building, at 666 Third Avenue. In 1949, this was revised to a 32-story annex costing $9 million. The annex building, designed by Reinhard, Hofmeister & Walquist, had a facade similar to that of the original Chrysler Building. The stone for the original building was no longer manufactured, and had to be specially replicated. Construction started on the annex in June 1950, and the first tenants started leasing in June 1951. The building itself was completed by 1952, and a sky bridge connecting the two buildings' seventh floors was built in 1959.


title: Chrysler Building

text: The family sold the building in 1953 to William Zeckendorf for its assessed price of $18 million. The 1953 deal included the annex and the nearby Graybar Building, which, along with the Chrysler Building, sold for a combined $52 million. The new owners were Zeckendorf's company Webb and Knapp, who held a 75% interest in the sale, and the Graysler Corporation, who held a 25% stake. At the time, it was reported to be the largest real estate sale in New York City's history. In 1957, the Chrysler Building, its annex, and the Graybar Building were sold for $66 million to Lawrence Wien's realty syndicate, setting a new record for the largest sale in the city.


title: Chrysler Building

text: In 1960, the complex was purchased by Sol Goldman and Alex DiLorenzo, who received a mortgage from the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company. The next year, the building's stainless steel elements, including the needle, crown, gargoyles, and entrance doors, were polished for the first time. A group of ten workers steam-cleaned the facade below the 30th floor, and manually cleaned the portion of the tower above the 30th floor, for a cost of about $200,000. Under Goldman and DiLorenzo's operation, the building began to develop leaks and cracked walls, and about of garbage piled up in the basement. The scale of the deterioration led one observer to say that the Chrysler Building was being operated "like a tenement in the South Bronx". The Chrysler Building remained profitable until 1974, when the owners faced increasing taxes and fuel costs.


title: Chrysler Building

text: Foreclosure proceedings against the building began in August 1975, when Goldman and DiLorenzo defaulted on the $29 million first mortgage and a $15 million second mortgage. The building was about 17 percent vacant at the time. Massachusetts Mutual acquired the Chrysler Building for $35 million, purchasing all the outstanding debt on the building via several transactions. The next year, the Chrysler Building was designated as a National Historic Landmark. Texaco, one of the building's major tenants, was relocating to Westchester County, New York, by then, vacating hundreds of thousands of square feet at the Chrysler Building. In early 1978, Mass Mutual devised plans to renovate the facade, heating, ventilation, air‐conditioning, elevators, lobby murals, and Cloud Club headquarters for $23 million. At a press conference announcing the renovation, mayor Ed Koch proclaimed that "the steel eagles and the gargoyles of the Chrysler Building are all shouting the renaissance of New York". Massachusetts Mutual had hired Josephine Sokolski, who had proposed modifying Van Alen's original lobby design substantially.


title: Chrysler Building

text: After the renovation was announced, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) considered designating the Chrysler Building as a city landmark. Though Mass Mutual had proclaimed "sensitivity and respect" for the building's architecture, it had opposed the city landmark designation, concerned that the designation would hinder leasing. At the time, the building had of vacant floor space, representing 40% of the total floor area. The owners hired the Edward S. Gordon Company as the building's leasing agent, and the firm leased of vacant space within five years. The LPC designated the lobby and facade as city landmarks in September 1978. Massachusetts Mutual had hired Josephine Sokolski to renovate the lobby, but the LPC objected that many aspects of Sokolski's planned redesign had deviated too much from Van Alen's original design. As a result of these disputes, the renovation of the lobby was delayed.


title: Chrysler Building

text: The building was sold again in August 1979, this time to entrepreneur and Washington Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke, in a deal that also transferred ownership of the Los Angeles Kings and Lakers to Jerry Buss. At the time, the building was 96 percent occupied. The new owners hired Kenneth Kleiman of Descon Interiors to redesign the lobby and elevator cabs in a style that was much more closer to Van Alen's original design. Cooke also oversaw the completion of a lighting scheme at the pinnacle, which had been part of the original design but was never completed. The lighting system, consisting of 580 fluorescent tubes installed within the triangular windows of the top stories, was first illuminated in September 1981.


title: Chrysler Building

text: Cooke next hired Hoffman Architects to restore the exterior and spire from 1995 to 1996. The joints in the now-closed observation deck were polished, and the facade restored, as part of a $1.5 million project. Some damaged steel strips of the needle were replaced and several parts of the gargoyles were re-welded together. The cleaning received the New York Landmarks Conservancy's Lucy G. Moses Preservation Award for 1997. Cooke died in April 1997, and his mortgage lender Fuji Bank moved to foreclose on the building the next month. Shortly after Fuji announced its intent to foreclose, several developers and companies announced that they were interested in buying the building. Ultimately, 20 potential buyers submitted bids to buy the Chrysler Building and several adjacent buildings.


title: Chrysler Building

text: Tishman Speyer Properties and the Travelers Insurance Group won the right to buy the building in November 1997, having submitted a bid for about $220 million (equal to $ million in ). Tishman Speyer had negotiated a 150-year lease from the Cooper Union, which continued to own the land under the Chrysler Building. In 1998, Tishman Speyer announced that it had hired Beyer Blinder Belle to renovate the building and incorporate it into a commercial complex known as the Chrysler Center. As part of this project, EverGreene Architectural Arts restored the "Transport and Human Endeavor" mural in the lobby, which had been covered up during the late-1970s renovation. The renovation cost $100 million.


title: Chrysler Building

text: In 2001, a 75 percent stake in the building was sold, for US$300 million (equal to $ million in ), to TMW, the German arm of an Atlanta-based investment fund. In June 2008, it was reported that the Abu Dhabi Investment Council was in negotiations to buy TMW's 75 percent ownership stake, Tishman Speyer's 15 percent stake, and a share of the Trylons retail structure next door for US$800 million. In July 2008, it was announced that the transaction had been completed, and that the Abu Dhabi Investment Council now owned a 90 percent stake in the building, with Tishman Speyer retaining 10 percent.


title: Chrysler Building

text: From 2010 to 2011, the building's energy, plumbing, and waste management systems were renovated. This resulted in a 21 percent decrease in the building's total energy consumption and 64 percent decrease in water consumption. In addition, 81 percent of waste was recycled. In 2012, the building received a LEED Gold accreditation from the U.S. Green Building Council, which recognized the building's environmental sustainability and energy efficiency.


title: Chrysler Building

text: The Abu Dhabi Investment Council and Tishman Speyer put the Chrysler Building on sale again in January 2019. That March, the media reported that Aby Rosen's RFR Holding LLC, in a joint venture with the Austrian SIGNA Group, had reached an agreement to purchase the Chrysler Building at a steeply discounted US$150 million. Rosen had initially planned to convert the building into a hotel, but he dropped these plans in April 2019, citing difficulties with the ground lease. Rosen then announced plans for an observation deck on the 61st-story setback, which the LPC approved in May 2020. Rosen also sought to renegotiate the terms of his ground lease with Cooper Union, and he evicted storeowners from all of the shops in the building's lobby. To attract tenants following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City in 2020, Rosen spent $200 million converting the Chrysler Building's ground-floor space into a tenant amenity center.


title: Chrysler Building

text: Chrysler Center is the name of the building complex consisting of the Chrysler Building to the west, Chrysler Building East to the east, and the Chrysler Trylons commercial pavilion in the middle. After Tishman Speyer had acquired the entire complex, the firm renovated it completely from 1998 to 2000.


title: Chrysler Building

text: The structure at 666 Third Avenue, known as the Kent Building at the time, was renovated and renamed Chrysler Building East. This International Style building, built in 1952, is high and has 32 floors. The mechanical systems were modernized and the interior was modified. Postmodern architect Philip Johnson designed a new facade of dark-blue glass, which was placed about in front of the Kent Building's existing facade. The structure did not resemble its western neighbor; Johnson explained that he did not "even like the architecture" of the Chrysler Building, despite acknowledging it as "the most loved building in New York". His design also included a extension. which surrounded the elevator core on the western end of the original Kent Building. The expansion utilized of unused air rights above the buildings in the middle of the block. The Kent Building was not a New York City designated landmark, unlike the Chrysler Building, so its renovation did not require the LPC's approval. After the addition, the total area of the Kent building was .


title: Chrysler Building

text: A new building, also designed by Philip Johnson, was built between the original skyscraper and the annex. This became the Chrysler Trylons, a commercial pavilion three stories high with a retail area of . Its design consists of three triangular glass "trylons" measuring , , and tall; each is slanted in a different direction. The trylons are supported by vertical steel mullions measuring wide; between the mullions are 535 panes of reflective gray glass. The retail structures themselves are placed on either side of the trylons. Due to the complexity of the structural work, structural engineer Severud Associates built a replica at Rimouski, Quebec. Johnson designed the Chrysler Trylons as "a monument for 42nd Street [...] to give you the top of the Chrysler Building at street level."


title: Chrysler Building

text: After these modifications, the total leasable area of the complex was . The total cost of this project was about one hundred million dollars. This renovation has won several awards and commendations, including an Energy Star rating from the Environmental Protection Agency; a LEED Gold designation; and the Skyscraper Museum Outstanding Renovation Award of 2001.


title: Chrysler Building

text: The Chrysler Corporation moved into the building as an anchor tenant in 1930. In addition to the Chrysler Salon on the first and second floors, parts of the building had the Chrysler Corporation's offices, as well as a lounge and a theater for showing films of Chrysler products. Other original large tenants included Time, Inc. and Texaco oil. Needing more office space, Time moved to Rockefeller Center in 1937. Texaco relocated to a more suburban workplace in Purchase, New York, in 1977. In addition, the offices of Shaw Walker and J. S. Bache & Company were immediately atop the Chrysler Salon, while A. B. Dick, Pan American World Airways, Adams Hats, Schrafft's, and Florsheim Shoes also had offices in the building.


title: Chrysler Building

text: The completed Chrysler Building garnered mixed reviews in the press. Van Alen was hailed as the "Doctor of Altitude" by "Architect" magazine, while architect Kenneth Murchison called Van Alen the "Ziegfeld of his profession", comparing him to popular Broadway producer Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. The building was praised for being "an expression of the intense activity and vibrant life of our day", and for "teem[ing] with the spirit of modernism, ... the epitome of modern business life, stand[ing] for progress in architecture and in modern building methods." An anonymous critic wrote in "Architectural Forum" October 1930 issue: "The Chrysler...stands by itself, something apart and alone. It is simply the realization, the fulfillment in metal and masonry, of a one-man dream, a dream of such ambitions and such magnitude as to defy the comprehension and the criticism of ordinary men or by ordinary standards."


title: Chrysler Building

text: The journalist George S. Chappell called the Chrysler's design "distinctly a stunt design, evolved to make the man in the street look up". Douglas Haskell stated that the building "embodies no compelling, organic idea", and alleged that Van Alen had abandoned "some of his best innovations in behalf of stunts and new 'effects'". Others compared the Chrysler Building to "an upended swordfish", or claimed it had a "Little Nemo"-like design. Lewis Mumford, a supporter of the International Style and one of the foremost architectural critics of the United States at the time, despised the building for its "inane romanticism, meaningless voluptuousness, [and] void symbolism". The public also had mixed reviews of the Chrysler Building, as Murchison wrote: "Some think it's a freak; some think it's a stunt."


title: Chrysler Building

text: Later reviews were more positive. Architect Robert A. M. Stern wrote that the Chrysler Building was "the most extreme example of the [1920s and 1930s] period's stylistic experimentation", as contrasted with 40 Wall Street and its "thin" detailing. George H. Douglas wrote in 2004 that the Chrysler Building "remains one of the most appealing and awe-inspiring of skyscrapers". Architect Le Corbusier called the building "hot jazz in stone and steel". Architectural critic Ada Louise Huxtable stated that the building had "a wonderful, decorative, evocative aesthetic", while Paul Goldberger noted the "compressed, intense energy" of the lobby, the "magnificent" elevators, and the "magical" view from the crown. Anthony W. Robins said the Chrysler Building was "one-of-a-kind, staggering, romantic, soaring, the embodiment of 1920s skyscraper pizzazz, the great symbol of Art Deco New York".


title: Chrysler Building

text: The LPC said that the tower "embodies the romantic essence of the New York City skyscraper". The travel guide "Frommer's" gave the building an "exceptional" recommendation, with author Pauline Frommer writing, "In the Chrysler Building we see the roaring-twenties version of what Alan Greenspan called 'irrational exuberance'—a last burst of corporate headquarter building before stocks succumbed to the thudding crash of 1929."


title: Chrysler Building

text: The Chrysler Building appears in several films set in New York and is widely considered one of the most positively acclaimed buildings in the city. A 1996 survey of New York architects revealed it as their favorite, and "The New York Times" described it in 2005 as "the single most important emblem of architectural imagery on the New York skyline". In mid-2005, the Skyscraper Museum in Lower Manhattan asked 100 architects, builders, critics, engineers, historians, and scholars, among others, to choose their 10 favorites among 25 of the city's towers. The Chrysler Building came in first place, with 90 respondents placing it on their ballots. In 2007, the building ranked ninth among 150 buildings in the AIA's "List of America's Favorite Architecture".


title: Chrysler Building

text: The Chrysler Building is widely heralded as an Art Deco icon. "Fodor's New York City 2010" described the building as being "one of the great art deco masterpieces" which "wins many a New Yorker's vote for the city's most iconic and beloved skyscraper". "Frommer's" states that the Chrysler was "one of the most impressive Art Deco buildings ever constructed". "Insight Guides" 2016 edition maintains that the Chrysler Building is considered among the city's "most beautiful" buildings. Its distinctive profile has inspired similar skyscrapers worldwide, including One Liberty Place in Philadelphia, Two Prudential Plaza in Chicago, and the Al Kazim Towers in Dubai. In addition, the New York-New York Hotel and Casino in Paradise, Nevada, contains the "Chrysler Tower", a replica of the Chrysler Building measuring 35 or 40 stories tall. A portion of the hotel's interior was also designed to resemble the Chrysler Building's interior.


title: Chrysler Building

text: While seen in many films, the Chrysler Building almost never appears as a main setting in them, prompting architect and author James Sanders to quip it should win "the Award for Best Supporting Skyscraper". The building was supposed to be featured in the 1933 film "King Kong", but only makes a cameo at the end thanks to its producers opting for the Empire State Building in a central role. The Chrysler Building notably appears in the background of "The Wiz" (1978); as the setting of much of "Q - The Winged Serpent" (1982); in the initial credits of "The Shadow of the Witness" (1987); and during or after apocalyptic events in "Independence Day" (1996), "Armageddon" (1998), "Deep Impact" (1998), "Godzilla" (1998), and "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" (2001). The building also appears in other films, such as "Spider-Man" (2002), "" (2007), "Two Weeks Notice" (2002), "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" (2010), "The Avengers" (2012) and "Men in Black 3" (2012).


title: Chrysler Building

text: In addition to films, the building is mentioned in the number "It's the Hard Knock Life" for the musical "Annie". In the Squaresoft video game "Parasite Eve", the building is the setting for the post-game content.


title: Chrysler Building

text: The Chrysler Building is frequently a subject of photographs. In December 1929, Walter Chrysler hired Margaret Bourke-White to take publicity images from a scaffold high. Bourke-White worked in a 61st-floor studio designed by John Vassos until she was evicted in 1934. According to one account, Bourke-White wanted to live in the building for the duration of the photo shoot, but the only person able to do so was the janitor, so she was instead relegated to co-leasing a studio with Time Inc. In 1930, several of her photographs were used in a special report on skyscrapers in the then-new "Fortune" magazine. In 1934, Bourke-White's partner Oscar Graubner took a famous photo called "Margaret Bourke-White atop the Chrysler Building", which depicts her taking a photo of the city's skyline while sitting on one of the 61st-floor eagle ornaments. On October 5, 1998, Christie's auctioned the photograph for $96,000. In addition, during a January 1931 dance organized by the Society of Beaux-Arts, six architects, including Van Alen, were photographed while wearing costumes resembling the buildings that each architect designed.


title: Insane Clown Posse

text: Insane Clown Posse, often abbreviated as ICP, is an American hip hop duo. Formed in Detroit in 1989 as a gangsta rap group, ICP's best known lineup consists of rappers Violent J (Joseph Bruce) and Shaggy 2 Dope (originally 2 Dope; Joseph Utsler). Insane Clown Posse is known for its elaborate live performances and theatrical horror-inspired lyrics. The duo has earned two platinum and five gold albums. According to Nielsen SoundScan, the entire catalog of the group had sold 6.5 million units in the United States and Canada . The group has established a dedicated following called Juggalos numbering in the "tens of thousands".


title: Insane Clown Posse

text: Originally known as "JJ Boyz" and "Inner City Posse", the group introduced supernatural and horror-themed lyrics as a means of distinguishing itself stylistically. The duo founded the independent record label Psychopathic Records with Alex Abbiss as manager, and produced and starred in the feature films "Big Money Hustlas" and "Big Money Rustlas". They formed their own professional wrestling promotion, Juggalo Championship Wrestling, and have collaborated with many hip hop and rock musicians.


title: Insane Clown Posse

text: The songs of Insane Clown Posse center thematically on the mythology of the Dark Carnival, a metaphoric limbo in which the lives of the dead are judged by one of several entities. The Dark Carnival is elaborated through a series of stories called Joker's Cards, each of which offers a specific lesson designed to change the "evil ways" of listeners before "the end consumes us all".


title: Insane Clown Posse

text: Joseph Bruce (Violent J) and Joseph Utsler (Shaggy 2 Dope) met in Oak Park, a suburb on the north border of Detroit, Michigan. Along with Utsler's brother, John, and friend, Lacy, they wrestled in backyard rings that they had built themselves. They also listened to hip hop music, including 3rd Bass, Beastie Boys, N.W.A and local rappers like Awesome Dre. In 1989, Joseph Bruce as Jagged Joe, Joseph Utsler as Kangol Joe and John Utsler as Master J, released the single titled "Party at the Top of the Hill" under the name of JJ Boys, but the group did not pursue a serious career in music. Poverty and a difficult home life drove Bruce to move in with Rudy "The Rude Boy" Hill in River Rouge, a city near the industrial southwest side of Detroit.


title: Insane Clown Posse

text: Feeling a sense of home and belonging, Bruce formed a gang called Inner City Posse, which was composed of Joseph Utsler, Rudy Hill, other friends of Bruce, and a number of other connections he had made in Southwest Detroit. Bruce was jailed for ninety days in 1989–1990 for death threats, robbery, and violating probation; this experience convinced him to reduce his involvement in gang life. Bruce began his professional wrestling career after getting out of jail, and it was at his first show that he met Rob Van Dam and Sabu, two other first-timers with whom he became very good friends. During this time Bruce brought Utsler backstage with him, and all four became close friends.


title: Insane Clown Posse

text: Bruce became frustrated with the backstage politics of the wrestling business and began searching for another career. Back on the streets, Bruce, Utsler and Utsler's brother John performed hip hop music at local night clubs, using the stage names Violent J, 2 Dope, and John Kickjazz, under the name of their gang, Inner City Posse. Seeing a need for a manager, Bruce's brother Robert recommended his friend and record store owner Alex Abbiss, who established the Psychopathic Records record label with the group in 1991. Later that year the group released the self-produced EP entitled "Dog Beats".


title: Insane Clown Posse

text: Local radio broadcasters were reluctant to play the EP's single, "Dog Beats", because Inner City Posse's members were white. While trying to get stations to play the single, Bruce learned that one of the stations he and Abbiss visited would be interviewing local rapper Esham, who Bruce considered to be a "superstar"; Bruce had recently begun to collect Esham's albums, as he had done with other local rappers; by the time he had discovered Esham, the rapper had released two full-length albums and three EPs. Bruce met Esham for the first time at the station and praised him. Esham wished Bruce well and Bruce gave the rapper a copy of "Dog Beats"; this began the friendship and professional relationship between Psychopathic Records and Esham's label, Reel Life Productions. Growing popularity in the local music scene turned negative for the group's gang, which became the target of growing violence. After receiving jail sentences, the group members abandoned gang life.


title: Insane Clown Posse

text: In late 1991, the group had the problem of having spent more money on production than was covered by returns. The group decided that its gangsta rap style was the cause: most emcees at the time used similar styles, making it difficult for Inner City Posse to distinguish itself stylistically. Referring to local rapper Esham's horrorcore style, Bruce suggested the band adapt this genre, in a bid to have Detroit represent acid rap, much as Los Angeles represented gangsta rap. The group agreed, but not to copying the style of Esham closely. Instead, they suggested using horror-themed lyrics as an emotional outlet for all their negative life experiences. They were also unanimous in deciding not to rap openly about Satan, which Esham often did.


title: Insane Clown Posse

text: After the change in musical style, the group decided it needed a new name. Utsler suggested keeping the "I.C.P." initials to inform the community that Inner City Posse was not defunct. Several names were considered before Bruce recalled his dream of a clown running around in Delray, which became the inspiration for the group's new name: Insane Clown Posse. The group decided they would all don face paint due to the success of their former clown-painted hype man. Upon returning home that night, Bruce says he had a dream in which "spirits in a traveling carnival appeared to him"—an image that would become the basis for the Dark Carnival mythology detailed in the group's Joker's Cards series.


title: Insane Clown Posse

text: The group began recording their debut album, "Carnival of Carnage", with producer Chuck Miller. After recording only three songs for $6,000 with Miller, Alex Abbiss made his first major managerial move by finding another producer, Mike E. Clark. The group finished recording the album with Clark, who continued to work with them throughout their career. The album featured appearances from local rappers, including Esham and Kid Rock. Just weeks prior to the release of their album, John left the group because he felt that it was "taking up too much of [his] life". When Bruce and Utsler attempted to call a meeting to talk about the issues, John did not attend.


title: Insane Clown Posse

text: "Carnival of Carnage" was released on October 18, 1992, with distribution within a radius of Detroit. Allmusic reviewer Stephen Thomas Erlewine compared the group's performance on the album to "a third-rate Beastie Boys supported by a cut-rate Faith No More, all tempered with the sensibility that made Gwar cult heroes—only with...more sexism and jokes that...wind up sounding racist". The follow-up EP, "Beverly Kills 50187", sold well and gained a larger audience. "Beverly Kills 50187" featured Greez-E, a fan that the ICP met earlier that year, as a replacement for John Kickjazz. During a live performance of the song "The Juggla", Bruce addressed the audience as "Juggalos", and the positive response resulted in the group using the word thereafter. Greez-E left the band after the EP was released. The word has been the subject of criticism from both Ben Sisario of "Rolling Stone" and Allmusic's Erlewine, who suggested the term is similar to the racial slur "jigaboo."


title: Insane Clown Posse

text: The group's second studio album, "Ringmaster", was released on March 8, 1994, and its popularity enabled the group to sell out larger nightclubs across Detroit. Because Bruce and Utsler made reference to the Detroit-produced soft drink Faygo in their songs, they "figured it would be cool to have some on stage with [them]". During a concert in 1993, Bruce threw an open bottle of Faygo at a row of concertgoers who were giving them the finger. After receiving a positive response, Bruce and Utsler have since continued to spray Faygo onto audiences. A subsequent national tour increased sales of the album, earning "Ringmaster" a gold certification. The group's second EP, "The Terror Wheel", was released on August 5, 1994. One of the songs from the EP, "Dead Body Man", received considerable local radio play. The same year marked their first "Hallowicked" concert, which has since continued annually on Halloween night in Detroit.


title: Insane Clown Posse

text: In 1995, Bruce and Utsler attempted to obtain a contract with a major record label. The duo eventually signed a contract with the short-lived Jive Records sub-label Battery Records, which released the group's third studio album, "Riddle Box", on October 10, 1995. After Battery/Jive Records showed little interest in promoting the album, Insane Clown Posse funded the promotion of "Riddle Box" independently. This effort led the group to Dallas, Texas, where it persuaded several music retail stores to stock the album. Sales averaged 1,500 copies per week as a result.


title: Insane Clown Posse

text: Manager Alex Abbiss negotiated a contract with the Disney-owned label Hollywood Records, which reportedly paid $1 million to purchase the Insane Clown Posse contract from Battery/Jive/BMG Records. The group started recording its fourth studio album, "The Great Milenko", in 1996, during which Disney requested that the tracks "The Neden Game", "Under the Moon", and "Boogie Woogie Wu" be removed. Disney also asked that the lyrics of other tracks be changed, threatening to not release the album otherwise. Bruce and Utsler complied with Disney's requests, and planned to go on a national tour with House of Krazees and Myzery as their opening acts.


title: Insane Clown Posse

text: During a music store autograph signing, Insane Clown Posse was notified that Hollywood Records had recalled the album within hours of its release, despite having sold 18,000 copies and reaching No.63 on the "Billboard" 200. The group was also informed that its in-store signings and nationwide tour had been canceled, commercials for the album and the music video for "Halls of Illusions" (which had reached No. 1 on The Box video request channel) were pulled from television, and that the group was dropped from the label. It was later revealed that Disney was being criticized by the Southern Baptist Convention at the time because of Disney's promotion of "Gay Days" at Disneyland, in addition to presiding over the gay-themed television sitcom "Ellen". The Convention accused Disney of turning its back on "family values". Although Abbiss told the press that Disney had stopped production of "The Great Milenko" to avoid further controversy, Disney claimed instead that the release of the album was an oversight by their review board, and that the album "did not fit the Disney image" because of its "inappropriate" lyrics, which they claimed were offensive to women.


title: Insane Clown Posse

text: After the termination of the Hollywood Records contract, Insane Clown Posse signed a new contract with Island/PolyGram Records, which agreed to release the album as intended. "Entertainment Weekly" music critic David Browne gave the record a C-minus rating: "[With] its puerile humor and intentionally ugly metal-rap tunes, the album feels oddly dated". "The Great Milenko" was certified platinum with over 1.7 million copies sold. One of the group's first projects with Island Records was an hour-long documentary titled "Shockumentary", which aired on MTV. The station initially refused to play the documentary, but Island Records persuaded them to air it as a personal favor. "Shockumentary" helped increase album sales from 17,000 to 50,000 copies per week. Island also rereleased the group's first two albums, as well as a 2-CD compilation album composed of rare songs and demos titled ""Forgotten Freshness Vol. 1"".


title: Insane Clown Posse

text: Two days after the Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) program, Insane Clown Posse began its rescheduled nationwide tour with House of Krazees and Myzery. Their first concert, held in Orlando, Florida, was hand-picked by Insane Clown Posse and free to the public. Halfway through the tour, Brian Jones of House of Krazees had a falling out with his band members. Jones left the group, forcing House of Krazees to quit the tour. The success of the tour enabled Bruce and Utsler to purchase new houses both for each other and for their families. Bruce even told his mother to quit her job because he would pay her expenses.