Trump Tower
721 5th Avenue | also 725 5th Avenue | Midtown | built 1983
Open on the map18 entries
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1979
Donald Trump buys the Bonwit Teller flagship on Fifth Avenue, and Equitable takes half the tower project
In early 1979 the Trump Organization bought the Bonwit Teller flagship building from its parent company, Genesco, for about $10 million. Equitable Life Assurance owned the land and at first refused to sell it, so Trump bought Genesco's lease instead and Equitable swapped the land for a 50 percent stake in the project. Trump also bought the air rights over the neighboring Tiffany & Co. flagship to keep another developer from building taller next door.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1980
Barbara Res becomes the first woman to oversee a major New York construction site on the tower
HRH Construction was the tower's contractor, and in October 1980 Barbara Res, who had worked on Citigroup Center and the Grand Hyatt, was hired as the construction executive. She was the first woman given charge of a major construction site in the city. Subcontractors and suppliers new to the job often ignored her because they assumed that a man must be in charge.
“Res was the first woman assigned to oversee a major New York City construction site.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1980
Bonwit Teller's Art Deco sculptures, promised to the Metropolitan Museum, are destroyed during demolition
In December 1979 Trump agreed to donate the store's limestone relief goddesses and its large entrance grille to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The pieces came off the facade on April 16, 1980; the sculptures were destroyed on June 5, and the grille was never recovered. Trump acknowledged ordering the destruction, saying careful removal would have cost an extra $500,000 and delayed the project, and the New York Times condemned the decision.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1983
A windowpane falls from a crane and kills a pedestrian during the tower's finishing work
In May 1983, while crews were installing windows on the tower, a glass pane fell from a crane and struck two pedestrians on the street. One of them later died of a skull fracture. It was one of the few serious accidents of the build; a worker had also died during excavation after a neighboring sidewalk collapsed.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1983
The Trump Tower atrium and stores open, and nearly all the condominiums sell within four months
A grand opening for the atrium and shops was held on February 14, 1983, and the forty ground-level stores opened for business that November 30. The five-story atrium is faced in pink Breccia Pernice marble and has a 60-foot indoor waterfall. About 95 percent of the 263 condominiums sold within four months of opening, at prices from $600,000 to $12 million.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1983
Der Scutt designs a 28-sided concrete tower whose setbacks and public atrium earn extra floors
Der Scutt of Swanke Hayden Connell designed the 58-story tower with 28 sides, a shape produced by horizontal setbacks that give more windows a view. It is a reinforced-concrete structure, and at its completion it was the tallest of that type in the world, using 45,000 cubic yards of concrete. Because the tower provided a privately owned public atrium and two terraces, the special Fifth Avenue zoning district let Trump add about 105,000 square feet of floor area.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1984
Ada Louise Huxtable disowns an old quote praising the tower and calls the atrium a marble maelstrom
After a 1984 New York Times piece quoted her 1979 praise for the tower's proposed faceted shape, the paper's former architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable replied that the finished building was monumentally undistinguished. She called the atrium an awkward, narrow space and a pink marble maelstrom, and asked Trump to remove her quote from the atrium wall. Paul Goldberger had been kinder, calling the atrium potentially the most pleasant new public interior in years.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1990
New York's highest court orders the city to refund $6.2 million in tax breaks for the tower
The city under Mayor Ed Koch fought the tower's tax exemption for years. It first argued that the site had not been underused, as the 421-a program required, and the Court of Appeals rejected that in 1984. It then argued that the commercial space did not qualify, and lost again in 1988. In 1990 the court ruled that the city had to pay Trump $6.2 million in tax rebates.
“…the New York City government had to give Trump $6.2 million in tax rebates…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1991
Galeries Lafayette takes over the former Bonwit Teller space and closes within three years
Bonwit Teller kept a store in the tower until March 1990, when its parent company went bankrupt. The French department store Galeries Lafayette then signed a 25-year lease and opened in the space in September 1991 after a $13.7 million renovation. It lost $3.6 million in its first year, announced in August 1994 that it would close, and was replaced by a Niketown.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1998
Trump settles a pension lawsuit over the undocumented Polish workers who demolished the Bonwit Teller building
In summer 1980 undocumented Polish laborers tore down the Bonwit Teller building that stood on the tower's site, working 12-hour shifts with poor safety equipment for wages that their contractor paid irregularly. A class-action suit accused Trump of stiffing a union pension fund, and it ended in a settlement of about $1.4 million, signed on December 30, 1998. The terms were unsealed in 2017 when the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and Time Inc. asked the court to release them.
Source: time.com
- 2015
Donald Trump begins his presidential campaign at Trump Tower, and visitor numbers climb
After Trump began his 2016 presidential campaign at the tower in 2015, visits rose sharply, with many supporters among the crowds. Shops in the atrium sold campaign hats and other memorabilia to raise money for the campaign. Two lobby kiosks selling Trump merchandise were ordered removed by the city in 2017 as unauthorized.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2016
Donald Trump Jr. meets a Russian lawyer after a publicist promises information on Clinton
On June 9, 2016, Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner met at the tower with the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and others. The publicist Rob Goldstone had set up the meeting by promising Trump Jr. information that would incriminate Hillary Clinton. Trump Jr.'s spokesperson later said the talk was mainly about the Magnitsky Act and Russian adoptions, and Goldstone testified that Trump Jr. grew impatient and cut the lawyer off. The Senate Judiciary Committee released transcripts of the testimony in May 2018.
Source: cbsnews.com
- 2016
A 19-year-old scales the glass facade with suction cups until police pull him through a window
On August 10, 2016, Stephen Rogata, 19, of Great Falls, Virginia, spent about three hours working his way up the tower's glass front with large suction cups until he reached the 21st floor. Just after 6:30 p.m., officers grabbed him and hauled him in through an open window. The day before, he had posted a video calling himself a researcher seeking a private audience with Donald Trump, and he was charged with reckless endangerment and criminal trespass.
Source: pbs.org
- 2016
The city fines the Trump Organization $14,000 over sales counters in the public passage
The tower's public passageway inside the Fifth Avenue entrance is meant to have seating. Before 2008 the Trump Organization removed the bench and put in a counter selling Trump-branded goods, and was fined $2,500 in 2008 but left it. A second counter appeared by 2015. In 2016 the company was fined $14,000 and ordered to take out both counters and put the bench back.
“In 2016, the Trump Organization was fined $14,000 and ordered to remove the sales counters and reinstall the bench.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 2017
President-elect Trump holds his first full news conference since July in the lobby
On January 11, 2017, the marble lobby was standing-room only for Donald Trump's first full news conference since July, with every seat claimed two hours ahead and crews from the major U.S. networks and the BBC. He stepped out of a rear elevator with his children and aides including Reince Priebus, then called on reporters himself rather than working from a press secretary's list. The exchange included his rebuff of CNN's Jim Acosta.
Source: pbs.org
- 2018
A fire on the 50th floor kills art dealer Todd Brassner
A fire tore through a 50th-floor apartment on Saturday, April 7, 2018, and firefighters reached it after 5:30 p.m. Todd Brassner, 67, an art dealer who had owned the unit since 1996, died at a hospital, and four firefighters had minor injuries. Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said the residential floors had no sprinklers, which were not required when the tower was completed in 1983. About 200 firefighters and medical workers responded, and Donald Trump tweeted that the fire was confined.
Source: pbs.org
- 2020
The city paints a yellow Black Lives Matter mural on Fifth Avenue in front of the tower
On July 9, 2020, Mayor Bill de Blasio, his wife Chirlane McCray and the Rev. Al Sharpton helped paint Black Lives Matter on Fifth Avenue in front of the tower. Donald Trump had criticized the plan in tweets beforehand, calling it a yellow sign that would denigrate a luxury avenue. Fifth Avenue between 56th and 57th Streets stayed closed until Sunday morning so the mural could be finished, after similar murals in Harlem, Staten Island and Brooklyn.
Source: cbsnews.com
- 2023
Trial evidence puts the penthouse at 10,996 square feet, not the 30,000 on financial statements
A 1994 document signed by Donald Trump listed his Trump Tower triplex at 10,996 square feet, yet his financial statements gave banks and insurers a figure of 30,000 for years. At the October 2023 civil fraud trial, former finance chief Allen Weisselberg testified that a Forbes reporter first pointed out the gap in 2016 and called the apartment de minimis. Forbes pressed the question in 2017, and the company chose not to engage.
Source: pbs.org
Further reading
- Trump TowerWikipedia
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