Chrysler Building Chrysler eventually built and paid for the building's subway entrance. Work on the new entrance started in March 1930 and it opened along with the Chrysler Building two months later. The basement also had a "hydrozone water bottling unit" that would filter tap water into drinkable water for the building's tenants. The drinkable water would then be bottled and shipped to higher floors. The private Cloud Club formerly occupied the 66th through 68th floors. It opened in July 1930 with some three hundred members, all wealthy males who formed the city's elite. Its creation was spurred by Texaco's wish for
Audiffred Building waterfront in the mid-twentieth century, the Seven Seas Club for homeless sailors moved into the building in 1946, and bohemian artists and writers including Elmer Bischoff, Howard Hack, Frank Lobdell, Hassel Smith, Martin Snipper, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti occupied lofts and studios on the two upper floors, which had no electricity, until they were condemned as unsafe in 1955. In 1978 a gas fire gutted the building, and it was to have been demolished; it was saved by public demand and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. It was designated San Francisco City Landmark number 7