The design, originally drawn up for building contractor William H. Reynolds, was finally sold to Walter P. Chrysler, who wanted a provocative building which would not merely scrape the sky but positively pierce it. Its 77 floors briefly made it the tallest building in the world until the Empire State Building was completed. It became, and in many peoples opinion, remains the star of the New York skyline, as today, the Chrysler Building is recognized as New York City's greatest display of Art Deco, a decorative style characterized by sharp angular or zigzag surface forms and ornaments.

At the time of its construction, the Chrysler Building was involved in a race to be the tallest building in the world. The Bank of Manhattan Building, under construction at the same time, topped out at 927 feet, two feet above the Chrysler's announced height. It appeared that the Bank of Manhattan had won, but the architect, William van Alen had a plan: the Chrysler Building's spire, a series of sunbursts punctuated by triangular windows, had been secretly assembled in the building's fire shaft. Suddenly, it was hoisted into place in one 27 ton piece, raising the Chrysler Building's height to 1046 feet, 119 feet taller than the Bank of Manhattan and even taller than the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

It was one of the first large buildings to use metal extensively on the exterior. The Chrysler Building was largely panned by critics at the time for its supposedly "frivolous" decoration, straying from strict functionalist modernism. For example it has vast silver coloured gargoyles near its summit shaped in the form of eagles. The general public, however, quickly regarded it with admiration and affection. With time it came to be regarded by many as the finest architectural expression of the boom times of the 1920s which came to an abrupt end with the crash of 1929.