This article forms part of the Decorative and Applied Arts Encyclopedia, a master reference hub providing a structured overview of design history, materials, movements, and practitioners.
William Van Alen (1883 – 1954) was an American architect who was born in Brooklyn, New York, and was professionally active in New York.
Education
He studied at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and, in 1908, under Victor-A.-F. Laloux at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
Biography
He was an office boy in Clarence True’s architecture office in New York. He worked for architecture firms Copeland and Dole and Clinton and Russell. He became a H. Craig Severance partner and is known for distinctive multi-storey commercial buildings that abandon traditional base, shaft, and capital arrangement. From cl 925, he practised alone.
His architecture included the 1926 Child’s Restaurant Building, 1928 Reynolds Building, both in New York.
Chrysler Building
Van Alen was best known for his 1928-31 Chrysler Building, 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue, New York. Its distinctive features included the decorative brickwork frieze of automobile wheels and radiator caps and stainless-steel gargoyles at the 31st-floor level, with other notable work on the 63rd-floor facade. The decoration was derived from the 1929 Chrysler automobile hood ornamentation. The building’s lobby was one of the most striking examples of Art Deco in the USA and incorporated dramatic murals, beige and red marble walls, and other walls and elevator doors inlaid with African woods based on floral abstraction.
Sources
Byars, M., & Riley, T. (2004). The design encyclopedia. Laurence King Publishing.
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