Decode the Deco.

The Golden Age of Midtown's Hidden Details

On the morning of October 23, 1929 — six days before Black Tuesday — architect William Van Alen made one of the most audacious moves in the history of New York City construction. Standing atop the Chrysler Building at 405 Lexington Avenue, his crew raised a 185-foot stainless steel spire through the roof in under 90 minutes. Van Alen had secretly assembled the spire inside the building to prevent competitors from measuring it and building taller at the last moment. For eleven months, the Chrysler Building stood as the tallest structure in the world. The eagles that jut from its 61st floor are not decorations — they are replicas of the 1929 Chrysler hood ornament, a marketing coup disguised as architecture. Most people walking down Lexington Avenue never look up far enough to see them properly.

Three blocks away, a more political secret is embedded in the lobby of 30 Rockefeller Plaza. In 1933, Diego Rivera was commissioned to paint a mural titled "Man at the Crossroads" in the grand lobby. When Rivera incorporated a portrait of Vladimir Lenin into the composition, Nelson Rockefeller had the mural plastered over and eventually destroyed. The massive fresco that replaced it, "American Progress" by José María Sert, still hangs in the lobby today — a sanitized alternative painted in sepia tones. Rivera later recreated his original mural in Mexico City's Palacio de Bellas Artes, where it remains. At Radio City Music Hall, 1260 Avenue of the Americas, the Grand Foyer contains a 24-karat gold-leaf ceiling and the longest chandeliers ever manufactured — each weighing two tons — custom-built for the 1932 opening. The men's lounge on the mezzanine level contains a mural by Ezra Winter so detailed that it took an entire year to complete.

A StoryHunt through NYC's Art Deco corridor sends you hunting through Midtown's hidden lobbies — many of which are open to the public but unmarked on any tourist map. The Chanin Building at 122 East 42nd Street has bronze grillwork around its lobby base depicting the story of evolution in bas-relief. The General Electric Building at 570 Lexington Avenue has a crown of stylized lightning bolts that glow at night. The Daily News Building at 220 East 42nd has a revolving globe twenty feet in diameter embedded in its black marble floor, surrounded by compass readings and meteorological data. These are the clues StoryHunt was built to decode: real objects, real history, real details hiding in plain sight across the city.