The Crown Jewel
The Spire War
(Drafting Tables. Steel. Betrayal.)
You’ve heard of the Hatfields and McCoys. The Earps and Clantons. Frontier justice.
But this?
This was something a far more elegant duel.
Van Alen and Severance weren’t gunmen. They were gentlemen in waistcoats, wielding pencils sharper than any blade. Architects. Collaborators. Friends… until they weren’t. Something happened. No one says quite what. The lines on the paper grew cold. The partnership dissolved. And then—oh, then—the sky became the battlefield.
It was 1929. The world was tilting. Stocks were trembling. But in Manhattan, two men raced toward immortality.
Severance struck first with the Bank of Manhattan Building. 927 feet of precision and pride. A marvel. A crown.
But Van Alen?
He played the long game. Quiet. Clever. While Severance toasted victory, Van Alen revealed the ace up his sleeve: a spire, secretly built inside the Chrysler Building, quietly raised skyward in one final, glorious act of architectural theater. 1,046 feet. No announcement. Just awe.
In a single morning, the skyline changed forever.
There were no parades. No gunfire. Just steel. And silence.
And the knowledge that greatness sometimes comes not from the fight—but from the finish.
Adventure Built. Because some rivalries don’t end with a handshake. They end with a shadow cast 1,046 feet long.
The Spire War
(Drafting Tables. Steel. Betrayal.)
You’ve heard of the Hatfields and McCoys. The Earps and Clantons. Frontier justice.
But this?
This was something a far more elegant duel.
Van Alen and Severance weren’t gunmen. They were gentlemen in waistcoats, wielding pencils sharper than any blade. Architects. Collaborators. Friends… until they weren’t. Something happened. No one says quite what. The lines on the paper grew cold. The partnership dissolved. And then—oh, then—the sky became the battlefield.
It was 1929. The world was tilting. Stocks were trembling. But in Manhattan, two men raced toward immortality.
Severance struck first with the Bank of Manhattan Building. 927 feet of precision and pride. A marvel. A crown.
But Van Alen?
He played the long game. Quiet. Clever. While Severance toasted victory, Van Alen revealed the ace up his sleeve: a spire, secretly built inside the Chrysler Building, quietly raised skyward in one final, glorious act of architectural theater. 1,046 feet. No announcement. Just awe.
In a single morning, the skyline changed forever.
There were no parades. No gunfire. Just steel. And silence.
And the knowledge that greatness sometimes comes not from the fight—but from the finish.
Adventure Built. Because some rivalries don’t end with a handshake. They end with a shadow cast 1,046 feet long.
The Spire War
(Drafting Tables. Steel. Betrayal.)
You’ve heard of the Hatfields and McCoys. The Earps and Clantons. Frontier justice.
But this?
This was something a far more elegant duel.
Van Alen and Severance weren’t gunmen. They were gentlemen in waistcoats, wielding pencils sharper than any blade. Architects. Collaborators. Friends… until they weren’t. Something happened. No one says quite what. The lines on the paper grew cold. The partnership dissolved. And then—oh, then—the sky became the battlefield.
It was 1929. The world was tilting. Stocks were trembling. But in Manhattan, two men raced toward immortality.
Severance struck first with the Bank of Manhattan Building. 927 feet of precision and pride. A marvel. A crown.
But Van Alen?
He played the long game. Quiet. Clever. While Severance toasted victory, Van Alen revealed the ace up his sleeve: a spire, secretly built inside the Chrysler Building, quietly raised skyward in one final, glorious act of architectural theater. 1,046 feet. No announcement. Just awe.
In a single morning, the skyline changed forever.
There were no parades. No gunfire. Just steel. And silence.
And the knowledge that greatness sometimes comes not from the fight—but from the finish.
Adventure Built. Because some rivalries don’t end with a handshake. They end with a shadow cast 1,046 feet long.
All of our tiles are handmade in Texas. We use the cuenca, or arista, technique, in which the glaze colors are prevented from mingling in the firing process by raised borders molded into the clay
Because we individually press and glaze every tile there is a slight variation which lends to their handmade beauty. The size and weight of each of our tiles hearkens back to the days of true craftsmanship.