Trump Tower drawing job seekers, celebrities, media — and thousands of protesters
Anti-Trump sentiment expressed by thousands of protesters near Trump Tower.
Instead of the White House, now we have the black tower.
The 58-story Trump Tower on New York’s Fifth Avenue has become the new power center of the United States, at least until Jan. 20 when Donald Trump swears to defend the Constitution.
The president-elect lives in a penthouse crowning his eponymous building, all shiny black reflective glass with a zigzagging façade. He has a private elevator to his offices on the 26th floor. In keeping with his affection for his flagship building, Trump announced his presidential run in June 2015 in the atrium escalators.
Since the election Tuesday, the building has started to draw processions of high-level job seekers, a pack of political reporters, curiosity seekers, celebrities, self-promoters, tourists, well-wishers — and, above all, thousands and thousands of protesters.
“Trump Tower is now the most powerful place in the world,” said Robert Sandler, 25, an artist who was sketching the tower from across the street on an iPad. Although Sandler said he was not a Trump supporter, he said he couldn’t resist the lure of the building. “I’m drawn like a moth to the flame.’’
It is immensely inconvenient that the tower is smack in the middle of Manhattan, creating a logistical nightmare for the New York City police and Secret Service. The Federal Aviation Administration has ordered pilots to avoid routes near Midtown when Trump is in residence. Just before the start of the Christmas shopping season and the lighting of the famous Christmas tree at nearby Rockefeller Center, Fifth Avenue has been closed on several occasions since the election, turning Midtown Manhattan into a mass traffic snarl.
On Saturday afternoon, 5,000 protesters were roped off behind the barricades screaming. “Donald Trump, go away. Racist, sexist, anti-gay,” some yelled. Others offered a variation on a familiar protest refrain: “Hey ho, hey ho, Donald Trump has got to go.”
In New York, police had closed off the city streets for a four-block radius around the tower, leaving Burberry, Channel, Dior, Louis Vuitton behind the front lines. Adjacent to the entrance to the Trump Tower, Tiffany & Co., which was festooned with Christmas lights — was almost entirely empty.
Not that Trump isn’t a big draw. In just a few days it has become one of New York’s top tourist attractions, the place to see and be seen and to take a selfie.
Before the streets were barricaded Saturday, one of the luminaries who showed up was filmmaker Michael Moore.
“I just thought I’d see if I could get into Trump Tower and ride the famous escalator,’’ said Moore who was wearing a red 49er hat.
Holding a smartphone away from himself, apparently taking a Facebook Live video of his visit, he walked across the shiny marble floor of the atrium with reporters and photographers trailing. He got as far as the fourth floor when Secret Service agents stopped him and said he could not enter the elevators.
Moore rode back down and wrote a note for the doorman to give the president-elect: “Mr. Trump, I’m here. I want to talk to you.’’
More successful getting an audience with Trump was Nigel Farage, head of the U.K. Independence Party who pushed through Britain’s exit from the European Union.
Reporters who staked out the lobby elevators looking for potential cabinet appoints also spotted Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republic National Committee, through doors that opened momentarily. He is a leading contender for White House chief of staff.
The situation with the Trump Tower is aggravated by Trump’s unpopularity in New York. Although he is a native New Yorker, Democrat Hillary Clinton garnered 79% of the vote.
Crowds of anti-Trump New Yorkers — parents with their kids on their shoulders, actors dressed in Trump costumes, artists with a home-painted banner — filled Fifth Avenue as far as the eye could see. The demonstrations were among many that erupted around the nation Saturday, in Detroit, Los Angeles, Minneapolis and elsewhere.
“He is not our president,” said Sarah Ivey-Long, 25, a carpenter and actress from Brooklyn. “I don’t think the people will stop protesting.”
Under normal circumstances, Trump would be expected to move into the White House at inauguration on Jan. 20, relieving New York at least of the security and traffic burden.
But there are fears that he might decide to fly home on weekends, not least of the reasons being that his youngest son, Baron, is a 10-year-old who might choose to finish the school year in New York. During the campaign, reporters covering Trump were surprised that the candidate flew back from across the country almost every night to sleep at his own home.
His three-story penthouse, designed as an homage to Louis XIV, is luxurious indeed with floors, columns and walls covered with marble, crown moldings and furnishing edged with 14-karat gold and the ceilings recessed with painted tableaus from Greek and Roman mythology. Trump last year invited photographers to shoot the family seemingly relaxed at home, the boy showing off a red toy Mercedes with personalized license plates.
Even before Trump became a presidential candidate, the tower was somewhat controversial because its construction required the demolition of the beloved art deco building that had housed the Bonwit Teller department store. The real estate site Curbed listed it as one of the 15 ugliest buildings in New York and quoted a commentator saying it “screams ’80s capitalism and excess.’’ The late architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable scorned its lobby as a “pink marble maelstrom.”
On days, when the building is not barricaded, that atrium is filled with tourists, both foreign and domestic. The atrium has a Starbucks and various Trump-branded businesses, a grill, café and ice cream shop. Display cases show various Trump-branded products, including a men’s dress shirt with a label visible through the case identifying it as made in Bangladesh.
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