Architects, who have both intuition and training on their side, have some very good reasons for loving the Chrysler Building. The rest of us love it beyond reason, for its streamlined majesty and its inherent sense of optimism and promise for the future, but mostly for its shimmery, welcoming beauty -- a beauty that speaks of humor and elegance in equal measures, like a Noel Coward play.

How can a mere building make so many people so happy -- particularly so many ornery New Yorkers, who often pretend, as part of their act, not to like anything? There may be New Yorkers who dislike the Chrysler Building, but they rarely step forward in public. To do so would only invite derision and disbelief. The Chrysler Building is shorter than its fellow art deco triumph, the Empire State Building (which took its place as the tallest building in the world only a few months after the Chrysler's completion), but it looks so much more significant. The Chrysler Building is indisputably the gem of the city's skyline. In his small and wonderful book "The Look of Architecture," critic Witold Rybczynski calls the exterior of the Empire State Building "the architectural equivalent of a gray flannel suit." The Empire State Building has its own charms -- but it doesn't sing to us as the Chrysler Building does.

The Chrysler Building, on Lexington Avenue at 42nd Street, was completed in the spring of 1930, but the most significant triumph in its construction had occurred several months before. The building was originally commissioned by developer William J. Reynolds, who hired William Van Alen as his architect. New York was caught up in a rush to put up the world's tallest building, although several potential record-breaking skyscrapers that were in the planning stages never panned out. The Chrysler Corporation took the project over from Reynolds; the company's chairman, Walter P. Chrysler, wanted the prestige of claiming credit for the world's tallest building. Chrysler didn't demand drastic changes to Van Alen's original design, but the building's most significant embellishments came about as the result of Chrysler's involvement -- most notably the famous hood-ornament eagles, whose sleek heads extend majestically from eight corner points at the building's 61st floor.

As it turned out, Van Alen found himself in competition with his former partner, H. Craig Severance, who was building what he claimed would be the world's tallest building, the Bank of Manhattan, at 40 Wall Street. In the fall of 1929, word came to Van Alen that Severance had added a flagpole to the top of his edifice that would beat out Van Alen's project by 2 feet. Not to be outdone, Van Alen hatched a secret plan. In November 1929, over a period of just 90 minutes, a crew of construction workers assembled and erected the Chrysler Building's 180-foot spire, which had previously been constructed in parts, secretly, inside the building. With the addition of that spire, the Chrysler Building stretched 1,046 feet into the air, leaving Severance's building not in the dust but at least a few feet lower in the clouds, and surpassing even the Eiffel Tower's 1,024 feet. For a few months, until the completion of the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building held the honor of being the tallest building in the world.

At the time, though, that wasn't as much of an honor as you might think. As all new constructions do, the Chrysler Building fell under the close scrutiny of critics. It was viewed as a folly, a vanity project. The architecture critic Kenneth Murchison called Van Alen "the Ziegfeld of his profession," and while Murchison may have meant it as a compliment, there were plenty of others who thought of Van Alen as little more than a flashy showman. What's more, after the stock market crash, the skyscrapers of the '20s were seen as showy and somewhat unpleasant reminders of more prosperous times.

But that's only one way of looking at it. You could also look at Van Alen's erection of that spire in November 1929, less than a month after the stock market took its horrifying plummet, as a brashly hopeful gesture.

Looking at the Chrysler Building now, though, it's hard to argue against its stylish ebullience, or its special brand of sophisticated cheerfulness. It has often been noted that the building's design was influenced by German expressionism, and it does look like something out of Fritz Lang's "Metropolis." But the Chrysler Building isn't nearly dour enough to have been dreamed up by a true German expressionist. Particularly at night, the crown's triangular windows -- lit up, fanned out and stacked high into the sky -- suggest a sense of movement that has more in common with dance than with architecture: Those rows of windows are as joyous and seductive as a chorus line of Jazz Age cuties, a bit of sexy night life rising up boldly from an otherwise businesslike skyline.