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Harold Craig Severance (July 1, 1879 – September 2, 1941) was an American architect who designed a number of well-known buildings in New York City, including the Coca-Cola Building, Nelson Tower and most prominently, 40 Wall Street.
The building was designed by lead architect H. Craig Severance, associate architect Yasuo Matsui, and consulting architects Shreve & Lamb. Moran & Proctor were consulting engineers for the foundation, the Starrett Corporation was the builder, and Purdy and Henderson were the structural engineers.
40 Wall Street’s magnificent Art Deco style and signature spire are highly coveted making this landmark property one of the most recognized anywhere in the world. Designed by architects H. Craig Severance and Yasui Matsui, 40 Wall Street towers over the city as a reminder of New York’s global standing.
May 26, 2005 · He soon went into practice with another young architect, H. Craig Severance, his polar opposite in style and personality. Severance was a handsome charmer who loved nights out at the...
- At The Starting Line
- On Your Mark
- Changing Course
- Gaining Altitude
- At The Finish Line
- Aftermath
A decade before William Van Alen ever dreamed about a skyscraper on 42nd St., all that stood at the current site of the Chrysler Building was a five-story structure with a cigar store at ground level. But World War I had just ended, and New York was growing. Elevators andmass steel production—two necessary components of tall buildings—were becoming...
While Van Alen was at work uptown, Severance had been commissioned to design a tower on Wall Street for the Manhattan Company, a bank founded in 1799 by politician Aaron Burr. The building had several investors, and one of them had been trying to persuade the company itshould be the one to construct the world’s tallest building. The height to beat ...
"Lunch Atop a Skyscraper," the famous picture of a construction crew on an I-beam, looks whimsical, even serene. But constructing skyscrapers took courage. Safety measures in the 1920s were lacking, to say the least. Workers did not even wear hardhats. Cold was colder hundreds of feet up. Rainfall made the metal beams slippery, and for the riveting...
Severance heard a rumor: A little birdie told him Van Alen had an idea, one that would take the Chrysler Building far higher than reported. No one knew just how high Van Alen planned to reach or what his final design would look like. But the leaders of the project on Wall Street worried that they’d be lapped. As the Manhattan Company Building’s con...
Chrysler made no announcements as the Manhattan Company Building inched closer to topping out. His building’s true height was immeasurable with the naked eye, and he wanted the opposing tower to end at a shorter altitude. On Wall Street, as the world tried to comprehend what was happening to the economy, the Manhattan Company Building finished its ...
In 1976, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission wrote that the Chrysler Building “embodies the romantic essence of the Art Deco skyscraper in New York City, with its dramatic effects, elegant materials, and vivid ornamental details.” After the building topped out in 1929, the spire and the overlapping arches were coated in Nirosta stee...
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May 27, 2020 · Van Alen's former design partner, architect H. Craig Severance, was commissioned at the same time to design a tower for the Manhattan Company on Wall Street. When Severance caught wind of Van...
by H. Craig Severance. Nelson Tower at 450 Seventh Avenue (1931) 40 Wall Street (1930) 400 Madison Avenue (1929) Montague-Court Building at 16 Court Street (Brooklyn) (1928) Taft Hotel a.k.a. The Michelangelo at 152 West 51st Street (1926) Bank of the U.S. at 535 5th Avenue (1926) by H. Craig Severance and William van Alen
