The Chrysler Building, once was the world’s tallest, is distinguished by its Art Deco crown. Yet what lies inside of that crown? From 1930 to 1979, three of its seven floors held the Cloud Club, which included a futuristic main dining room with polished granite columns and etched glass sconces, a cloud mural on its high curving ceiling, and a mural of Manhattan. Walter Chrysler himself – the man who commissioned the building -- had his own private dining room in the Cloud Club, featuring an etched glass frieze of automobile workers. And there was also a private dining room for the building’s Texaco executives, dominated by a giant mural of a refinery, and equipped with what was said to be the “grandest men’s room in all of New York.” After World War II, both the Cloud Club and the Chrysler Building fell on hard times, and the last blow came when Texaco moved its executives to Westchester County. The club closed for good in 1979. I wanted to pay my own respects to the memory of the legendary Cloud Club, but could not find any fluffy clouds to gather round the Art Deco crown. So I did the next best thing – I photographed the distinctive Art Deco crown with a long telephoto lens through a rising cloud of steam coming out of a pipe on Lexington Avenue.