Trump’s TV stint, ‘golden escalator’ presidential launch and notorious guests – Trump Tower has seen it all

Donald Trump could be about to lose some of his most prized real estate assets after his lawyers revealed that he is struggling to secure the $464m bond needed for his civil fraud judgement in New York.

Last month, Judge Arthur Engoron ordered Mr Trump to pay around $355m in fines and a further $100m plus in interest for misrepresenting the value of Trump Organization assets between 2011 and 2021 in order to obtain favourable loans from banks and insurers.

The luxury property tycoon turned former Republican president now has until Monday 25 March to find the money if he wishes to appeal the ruling.

With interest ticking ever-upwards at 9 per cent or $120,000 a day, the exact total he owes at the time of writing (Friday 22 March), according to the helpful Trump Debt Counter website, has topped $467.7m.

If he fails to stump up the cash on time, New York Attorney General Letitia James can begin seizing his real estate assets.

And top of her list could be Mr Trump’s famed Trump Tower – the Fifth Avenue skyscraper that has been integral to the businessman’s glitzy personal brand for several decades.

It’s a place that has played a major role in the history of the business tycoon-turned-president-turned accused felon’s life, meaning that to lose it to a prosecutor he regards as a staunch enemy would no doubt come as a major blow to Mr Trump.

Way back in 2004, the Trump Tower boardroom and suites served as a vital backdrop to his hot shot executive act when he began hosting the NBC reality show The Apprentice.

The skyscraper was also the site from which he plotted his first presidential run in January 2015 alongside lawyer Michael Cohen and such soon-to-be-returning ghouls including Corey Lewandowski, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone.

The following June, he descended from the golden escalators with his wife Melania Trump to announce his candidacy in the blustering and provocative manner for which he has so long been known, notoriously promising a crackdown on migrants from Mexico.

Remember that awful picture of Mr Trump, Nigel Farage and the latter’s triumphant entourage of Brexiteer goons posing with oily grins and thumbs aloft? That was taken at Trump Tower’s garish marble and gold elevator in November 2016.

The former president has already hinted at how much the building’s potential loss means to him by sending out a panicky memo to supporters urging them to donate in order to stop his foes getting their “filthy hands” on his pride and joy.

New Yorkers approached at street level by The Independent were rather less moved by the prospect of him losing the keys to the front door, however.

The mixed-use property, which stands 664 feet tall and has 58 floors (despite its owner’s insistence on numbering them up to 68 to make it appear taller still), sits on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan between 56th and 57th Street, an area once principally associated with Tiffany’s celebrated jewellery store (whose bosses, incidentally, stopped renting floor space from Mr Trump in February 2021, a month after the January 6 Capitol riot).

The former president first acquired the building in 1979 after it had served for half a century as the home of the sophisticated women’s clothing store Bonwit Teller.

He hired Der Scutt of the Big Apple firm Swanke Hayden Connell Architects to realise his modernist dream for “the first super-luxury high rise property in New York to include high-end retail shops, office space and residential condominiums”, according to the property’s website.

Demolition work on the old Bonwit Teller place began in 1980 and immediately sparked controversy when a series of two-tonne limestone reliefs of dancing women decorating the exterior – which had been promised to the city’s Metropolitan Museum of Art – were destroyed under orders by Mr Trump’s construction crew, who duly “jackhammered them to bits” to save costs, according to The New York Times, with no thought for style or posterity.

Mr Trump was lambasted over the desecration by then-mayor Ed Koch, who accused him of “ignoring the interests of the city”.

The resulting construction, made from reinforced concrete and dark glass and immediately recognisable for its 28-sided jagged facade, was opened to the public on Valentine’s Day 1983, with retail and restaurant space accounting for the first 13 floors, offices on the 14th to the 29th floors and 263 plush apartments covering the 30th to the 68th floors. The latter promised views over Midtown and Central Park, as well as “white glove service” for their occupants.

Mr Trump’s penthouse, accessed by a private elevator, occupies the top three floors of Trump Tower and originally featured black lacquered walls and velvet furniture introduced by famed interior designer Angelo Donghia, before the businessman had dinner with Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi one day and was thereafter inspired to remodel by introducing Greek columns, gold leaf paint and Louis XIV-inspired furniture.

Its current look is intended “to emulate the Palace of Versailles, decked out in 24-carat gold, marble and mirrors”, according to House & Garden, which winced at the end result as “a monstrosity” and took exception to the Trumps’ taste in “extravagant rococo decoration”.

The publication also accused the tycoon of lying about the penthouse’s value and square footage, reporting in July 2020 that his claims of 33,000 square feet of floor space going for “at least $200m” were an inaccurate inflation of the truth. Instead, they said the building was about 10,996 square feet in size and closer to $64m in value.

Some celebrity former tenants of Trump Tower, according to The NYT, include Liberace, Johnny Carson, Bruce Willis, crooner Paul Anka and Michael Jackson, who rented a duplex for 10 months in 1994 and installed a mirrored dance studio.

Incredibly, Hillary Clinton, of all people, also stayed there in 2000 while running to be a junior senator, accepting an invitation from Hollywood movie director Steven Spielberg to use a Universal Studios apartment in the property. In those days, Mr Trump considered her “tough and smart” and even donated to her election campaign.

The NYT also lists a number of rather more notorious renters, including deposed Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, fraudster Jay Weinberg, Russian gambler Vadim Trincher, jailed art dealer Hillel Nahmad and Guido Lombardi, affiliated with Italy’s anti-immigrant Northern League political party.

The building’s official blurb – which, interestingly, happens to read as though written by a real estate agent hoping to sell – boasts of Trump Tower’s “dramatic, angular design covered by a singular glass curtain wall with a series of planted outdoor terraces anchoring the lower floors”, its “extraordinary five-storey atrium”, “spectacular 60-foot high waterfall” and “dramatic suspended walkway”.

Actually, thinking about it, the former president may well have composed the above himself, because who else would have added the following?

“Today Trump Tower stands as a world famous testament of Mr Trump’s grand vision and ability to achieve tremendous success with everything he touches.”

But, will the building be known as Trump Tower much longer?

After Judge Engoron’s ruling, Ms James registered the judgement from Mr Trump’s 11-week trial in New York City, starting the process of her being able to seize his assets in the city.

On 7 March, she then registered the judgement with the county clerk’s office in New York’s Westchester County, taking the first step to also repossessing the Republican presidential candidate’s Seven Springs estate and Trump National Golf Club in the area.

The prospect of other iconic Trump properties falling into her hands has the former president’s many enemies rubbing their hands with glee, relishing the schadenfreude of seeing him face losing what matters most.

Mr Trump’s ex-White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham was recently asked by CNN which of his buildings the mogul would most hate to part with and said: “I think if it were to happen, 40 Wall Street is probably the one that he would, I mean, he would hate it.

“But I think if she tried to seize Mar-a-Lago or Bedminster or Trump Tower even, I mean, those are his babies.”