Trump International Hotel and Tower (New York City)

The Trump International Hotel and Tower is at 1 Central Park West, along the northern side of Columbus Circle, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. The building is abutted by 15 Central Park West to the north, Central Park to the east, and Deutsche Bank Center (formerly Time Warner Center) to the south. In addition, it is across Columbus Circle from 2 Columbus Circle and 240 Central Park South to the south. The block had contained Durland's Riding Academy in the early 20th century, The lot was purchased in 1911 by magazine magnate William Randolph Hearst. The plot was developed with the two-story American Circle Building, The building, known as the American International Building, had a superstructure that could support the weight of a 30-story tower, though the additional stories were never built. Hearst had envisioned the creation of a large Midtown headquarters for his company near Columbus Circle, in the belief that the area would become the city's next large entertainment district. However, the proposal collapsed in the Great Depression and only the Hearst Magazine Building, three blocks south, was built. Hearst's low-rise building on the north side of Columbus Circle remained standing until the 1960s, with a prominent Coca-Cola sign displaying time and temperature. ==Architecture==

The Trump International Hotel and Tower was originally the Gulf and Western Building, designed by Thomas E. Stanley and constructed in the late 1960s. It was built by HRH Construction. From 1995 to 1997, Philip Johnson and Costas Kondylis renovated the building into the current Trump International Hotel and Tower. Cantor Seinuk served as the structural engineers for the renovation. The 44-story building is tall and is designed with . The tower is managed by the Trump Organization, a company run by developer and later U.S. president Donald Trump. The hotel units are owned by the General Electric (GE) Pension Trust and Galbreath & Company, who partnered with Trump in the 1990s residential conversion. The Trump Organization owns one of the condominiums, the parking garage, the restaurant space, the room-service kitchens, and the bathrooms in the lobby. The building and hotel are managed by the Trump Organization. The building's board of directors is composed of six residential owners, two hotel owners, and the president of the Trump Organization (who is Donald Trump Jr.). Plaza The Gulf and Western Building was initially surrounded by a public plaza slightly above the sidewalk. The Central Park West frontage was raised two steps above the sidewalk there. The only aboveground portion of the theater was a cylinder in diameter, which had an LED sign, a ticket booth, and an entrance to the theater. A stair and escalators led from ground level to the theater. The stairs were illuminated by theatrical lighting and were somewhat similar to the staircases designed by Wallace Harrison for the Metropolitan Opera House. There was also a building entrance in the sunken portion of the plaza. The sunken plaza had been added at the suggestion of by the Urban Design Group, which believed Broadway would be redeveloped significantly following the development of Lincoln Center several blocks north. The globe is inspired by the Unisphere in Queens, the New York City borough where Trump had grown up. The globe was to include the words "Trump International" in letters, but the letters were not installed because city officials objected to the idea. When the globe was installed in 1997, nearby office workers complained that it was causing too much glare. The original plan had been to coat the globe in a golden surface, which would have reduced the glare, but Trump's feng shui consultants had recommended against it. Facade Thomas Stanley had intended the Gulf and Western Building to "provide a nice transition from Central Park", though the design was widely criticized upon the building's completion. The facade panels had become misaligned by the early 1990s, which necessitated the caulking of loose facade panels, as well as the installation of mullions and large pins to secure the panels. When the building was renovated in the mid-1990s, the facade was re-clad in dark glass and steel. As such, the windows between the columns were originally designed as flat windows, before Johnson considered designing the openings with projecting two-sided windows instead. The final design was similar to Johnson's One PPG Place in Pittsburgh. Johnson attributed the gold color to Trump's preference. Trump had originally wanted the facade to be bright gold, but he decided to use a matte finish instead after hiring a feng shui consultant, who told him to change it to reflect the clouds in the sky. Johnson had suggested removing the glass spandrels between floors to reduce costs, but Trump declined, saying the spandrels "sparkle like a diamond". Structural features The Gulf and Western Building was erected with a mechanical core at its center. According to structural engineer Ysrael Seinuk, the building would sway as much as laterally because of the lack of other tall buildings nearby to absorb the wind loads. When the building was renovated in the mid-1990s, Seinuk added two concrete-and-steel shear walls in a cruciform arrangement. Interior The building has a total area of . The floor numbering of the upper stories is offset by seven, so an apartment on floor 27 is actually on the 20th story. When residents buy a condominium, they sign a document that tells them about the floor-numbering discrepancy. According to Trump, the building was equivalent to a standard 60-story apartment structure, It had either 532 The top floor contained a restaurant called Top of the Park. The restaurant had wallpaper and frosted-glass partitions with animal and plant decorations, decorated by Ellen Lehman McCluskey as an allusion to animals and plants in Central Park and the Central Park Zoo. In 1988, Top of the Park was converted to a banquet space with a 200-person main dining room, as well as four smaller rooms fitting between 10 and 75 people. Jean-Georges, a Michelin-starred restaurant, serves New French cuisine. The Jean-Georges restaurant space was designed by Adam Tihany, who arranged the space with both a cafe and a main dining room. Also within the hotel is a fitness center, a spa, as well as a business center and a 15-seat boardroom. The lower portion of the tower, below the 17th story, is used for hotel rooms. A New York Times critic described the original decor as "not exactly homey" but "highly effective" for a one-night stay. After a renovation in 2010, each room was upgraded with an HDTV. Costas Kondylis designed the layout of the residences. one of these, a four-bedroom unit on floor 48, has a separate foyer, living room, dining room, and library. Trump was highly involved in selecting materials for the interior, choosing different woods for each of the three lobbies and picking the marble in the master bathrooms. ==History==

Columbus Circle was redeveloped in the late 1950s and the 1960s. The renewal of Columbus Circle had been spurred by the development of the New York Coliseum in 1956. The developments had included the construction of 2 Columbus Circle; renovation of storefronts at 240 Central Park South; and new buildings on Broadway between 59th and 68th Streets, just north of Columbus Circle. Gulf and Western Building Planning and construction In March 1965, developers Hyman R. and Irving J. Shapiro of the company Forteyn announced their intention to develop a building at 1 Central Park West, The building would have contained , with on each floor, supported by the original foundations of the low-rise structure there. The Shapiros also relocated four existing tenants of 1 Central Park West into a nearby building they owned. Demolition of the site was completed in early 1966. Architectural critic Ada Louise Huxtable regarded the plans as "ludicrous", regarding it as a cross between bow-shaped structures like the Phoenix Life Insurance Company Building in Hartford, Connecticut, and circular towers such as Marina City in Chicago. According to Huxtable, "The reasoning here seems to be that ... New York can go two cities one better by building both, one on top of the other". Forteyn was unable to proceed with construction because it could not get financing for the project. Gulf and Western planned to take the top portion of the new building; it also planned to expand into the lower stories in the future. At that time, Gulf and Western increased its space requirements in the new building from 13 to 22 stories. Construction was almost completed by late 1969, but the elevators had not been installed. The elevator-installation workers went on strike in June 1969 and continued their strike for at least four months. As a result, other workers were forced to walk up to their respective floors, leading the city to halt work because workers would not be able to evacuate quickly in an emergency. with the Paramount Theater opening in the basement that June. the tower's first lessees included accounting firm Seidman and Seidman. During the early 1970s, an awning flew off during a high wind, and a man shot out windows in the Top of the Park restaurant, though no one was killed or seriously injured in either case. A rooftop antenna was installed at the Gulf and Western Building in 1975 to test the Westar satellite system for satellite television. The tower was also damaged in a February 1977 bombing committed by the Puerto Rican nationalist group Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña (FALN), but no one was killed or injured. The Gulf and Western Building was owned by billionaire businessman John D. MacArthur at the time of his death in 1978. In 1980, the skyscraper's management was transferred from Louis Feil to Cushman & Wakefield. At the time, the tower was owned by Bankers Life, which in turn was operated by the MacArthur Foundation. By 1982, the Gulf and Western Building swayed so much in the wind that its core walls and stairwells had developed cracks and workers had complained of nausea. The swaying also disrupted elevator service. Some marble in the lower stories had cracked and was covered in plywood. The following year, the MacArthur Foundation sold the Gulf and Western Building and 17 other properties to First Winthrop as part of a transaction worth over $400 million. First Winthrop also received a $330 million mortgage from the General Electric (GE) Pension Trust and sold a $336 million ownership stake. First Winthrop and GE tried to refinance the tower in the late 1980s. However, because the building had included asbestos in its construction, a large insurer would not give a loan, as the presence of asbestos was too risky for the insurer. The refinancing was canceled for an unrelated reason. Restaurant Associates announced in 1988 that it would convert the Top of the Park restaurant into a private banquet facility designed by Adam Tihany. The same year, the Gulf and Western Building's basement was flooded in a water main break. The building was renamed 15 Columbus Circle in January 1989 when Gulf and Western was renamed Paramount Communications. By the early 1990s, Paramount occupied 85 percent of the space, taking floors 2–5 and 13–44, while BDO Seidman occupied another 12 percent. Paramount was scheduled to relocate when its lease expired in April 1995, leaving the space 85 percent vacant. The cost of repairing the windows, removing asbestos, and fixing the structural issues made the building particularly difficult to market; by 1993, no one had made an offer for the structure. Renovation In March 1994, GE hired businessman and developer Donald Trump, as well as Galbreath, to renovate the tower with residential units on the upper stories. Trump considered Philip Johnson, Frank Gehry, and Robert A. M. Stern as possible architects for the conversion. Ricker said the building would have to be deconstructed so its steel frame could be repaired. The renovation was to take two years and cost $230 million, with the building being rebranded as the Trump International Hotel and Tower. The work could not begin until Paramount moved out. Just before the beginning of the renovation, Trump replaced the scaffolding that had surrounded 15 Columbus Circle for several years. The renovations began in June 1995, after Paramount moved out. Barbara Corcoran and Louise Sunshine were hired as the sales and marketing directors. Corcoran predicted that many of the units would be purchased by Asian investors. In February 1996, Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Bob Giraldi signed a lease for the ground-floor restaurant space at the Trump International Hotel and Tower. Opening and early years The residential units of Trump International Tower opened in April 1996, at which point sales commenced on the hotel units. Marketing brochures advertised the tower as having "the most important new address in the world". This was in part due to what one real-estate agent described as the popularity of Trump's name among international buyers. Trump and his family decided to occupy the penthouse unit of 1 Central Park West. Trump operated a sales office for the tower on Central Park South, with a replica of the tower as well as an eight-minute promotional film. After divorcing his wife Marla Maples, Trump rented out the penthouse in 1998, and Italian producer Vittorio Cecchi Gori then purchased the unit. The hotel started accepting guests the following month. According to New York magazine, only one guest checked in on the first day of the hotel's operation. Though the Trump International Hotel was the first hotel to open around Columbus Circle in several decades, its completion spurred the construction of other nearby hotels like the Mandarin Oriental, New York, in the then-under-construction Time Warner Center. The tower's conversion, as a whole, also influenced the development of other projects around Columbus Circle and in the western portion of Midtown Manhattan. 21st century While Trump did not own the building, he received a large payment from GE Pension Trust for its development, as well as a portion of profits from the sale of the condos. Despite his name being on the building, he only operated the restaurant, stores, and rooftop. By 2005, the Trump International Hotel and Tower had the city's most expensive rental apartment, a four-bedroom unit offered at $55,000 per month. Among the units sold at the tower was an apartment that, in 2007, was sold for $18 million and resold on the same day for $21 million. In mid-2009, the tower's penthouse was sold at auction for $18 million as part of a foreclosure proceeding against Cecchi Gori; at the time, it was the largest foreclosure auction in Manhattan. The Trump family announced in November 2009 that it would renovate the 167 hotel rooms over the following year. The work was to be conducted in two phases: half of units would be renovated from January to April while the other half would be renovated from June to September. The Jean-Georges restaurant was renovated the same year to designs by Thomas Juul-Hansen. Following that, Juul-Hansen designed a renovation for Nougatine in 2012. After the 2016 United States presidential election, in which Trump was first elected U.S. president, the hotel became the site of occasional protests against his administration. By the late 2010s, residential units at the Trump International Tower were selling for over , less than units in newer skyscrapers on nearby Billionaires' Row such as 432 Park Avenue and One57. In June 2019, several condo owners demanded that the property be known simply by its address because the Trump name was diminishing the value of the building. While the condo board ultimately voted to keep the "Trump International" name for the residences, they also agreed to renovate the marquee on the Central Park West side of the building. As a compromise proposed by Trump's son Donald Trump Jr., the sign on the marquee was changed to display Trump's name on the left and the building's address on the right. An analysis, publicized in February 2024, found that the average per-square-foot cost of a condominium at the Trump International Hotel and Tower had declined since 2016, although Trump's son Eric Trump disputed the findings. == Critical reception ==

When the Gulf and Western Building was completed, its design was much criticized. Mervyn Rothstein, in The New York Times, wrote that many critics regarded the tower as "too tall, the wrong shape for its site and completely out of context". Robert A. M. Stern said the Gulf and Western Building "was at once a behemoth and a banality, and its contribution to the skyline was notable only as a memorial to lost opportunity". Herbert Muschamp wrote that the original design "neither holds the circle's perimeter edge nor respects the lower scale of the Central Park West buildings beyond". When the hotel and residential conversion was announced, a writer for Architecture magazine said the gilded design "overpowers the circle" and the statue of Christopher Columbus at its center. Writing for The New York Times in 1995, Muschamp said the design was an "undeniable improvement over the dull dark box that has loomed over this privileged location for the last 25 years", but he found issue with what he called "the symbolic stridency with which its golden skin proclaims the triumph of private enterprise in such a publicly conspicuous place". Trump even met Muschamp at the Museum of Modern Art to discuss the review. Upon the renovation's completion, the New York Daily News said that, even with the redesign by Johnson, it had received only "mixed" reception. ==See also==