The Chrysler Building, the Jewel of the Manhattan Skyline, Loses Its Luster

Walking into the Chrysler Building for the first time in 2018 was a “pinch-me moment” for Sophie Smith. She was there for an interview with the theater department of Creative Artists Agency, and it would be her first job out of college.

Every time Ms. Smith, who left the talent agency for another job in 2022, thinks of the Chrysler Building now, the song “It’s the Hard-Knock Life” from the musical “Annie” starts playing in her head — particularly the line that goes, “You’ll stay up ’til this dump shines like the top of the Chrysler Building.”

“Being in ‘Annie,’ that was the first show I ever did as a child, so it was a very full-circle kind of thing,” said Ms. Smith, 27. “Walking through the lobby every day was such a treat. Whenever we had guests to the office, you felt proud to work there.”

That grand, Art Deco-style lobby — with its red Moroccan marble and vast Edward Trumbull ceiling mural — evokes a sense of nostalgia and glamour. Since it opened in 1930, the Chrysler Building has remained an architectural marvel that is recognizable to people who’ve never even been to New York, with its terraced crown and countless references in pop culture. It is prominently featured in the intro sequence for “Sex and the City,” is the site where Annie Leibovitz photographed the dancer David Parsons and is the brink that Will Smith plunges from in “Men in Black 3.”

But in more recent years — amid ownership changes, the rise of bright and contemporary open-floor offices popularized by tech companies and the arrival of a new class of tourist-friendly skyscrapers in New York — the Chrysler, the jewel of the city’s skyline, has lost much of its shine.