7. 40 Wall Street Was Critically Loved, While the Chrysler Building Was Hated

According to Neal Bascomb, author of Higher: A Historic Race to the Sky and the Making of a City in a podcast for 99percentinvisible, “…it’s doubtful you’ve even heard of the Manhattan Company Building. This is probably because now it’s called 40 Wall Street or the Trump Building, but also because the design just never took hold in the public consciousness. This was not the case when the buildings were first completed. The Chrysler Building was universally panned and the Manhattan Company Building got great reviews from architecture critics.

W. Parker Chase, author of New York: The Wonder City, wrote in 1932, “This marvelous example of architectural and building skill is not only a credit to New York, but to all America. No building ever constructed more thoroughly typifies the American spirit of hustle than does this extraordinary structure — built in less than one year. … Words are inadequate to convey even a faint conception of the splendor or the wonder of this magnificent building.”