Trump International Hotel and Tower

Site

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, United States. It occupies a trapezoidal plot of land bounded by Broadway to the west, 61st Street to the north, and Central Park West to the east. The land lot covers 31,349 ft2 (2,912 m2), with a frontage of 261.54 ft (79.72 m) on Central Park West and a depth of 195 ft (59 m). 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. Entrances to the New York City Subway's 59th Street–Columbus Circle station, served by the 1​, A, ​B, ​C, and ​D trains, are directly outside the building.

The block had contained Durland's Riding Academy in the early 20th century, as well as a ball field. The lot was purchased in 1911 by magazine magnate William Randolph Hearst. The plot was developed with the two-story American Circle Building, designed by Charles E. Birge, by 1914. 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 583 ft (178 m) tall and is designed with 610,000 ft2 (57,000 m2). This gives the building a floor area ratio (FAR) of 18. As apartment buildings were limited to a FAR of 12, Trump divided the tower into two separate structures for zoning purposes: a 17-story hotel at the base and a 28-story residential tower above.

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 as of 2022 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. Originally, the northwest corner of the plot had a seating area surrounding a staircase to a basement movie theater, the Paramount Theater. The only aboveground portion of the theater was a cylinder 30 ft (9.1 m) 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.

The portion of the plaza at the southern tip of the plot, facing Columbus Circle, is sunken below ground level. The circular plaza includes a large staircase leading to the New York City Subway's 59th Street–Columbus Circle station. 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 Columbus Circle globe, a 30-foot-wide silver globe of the Earth by artist Kim Brandell, was installed in front of the building during its conversion into the Trump International Hotel and Tower. The globe is inspired by the Unisphere in Queens, the New York City borough where Trump had grown up. According to Trump, the globe had been installed at the suggestion of a feng shui consultant he had hired. The globe was to include the words "Trump International" in 3 ft-high (0.91 m) 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 Gulf and Western Building's facade originally had steel columns, which were clad in marble from the plaza to the fourth story. Black granite was used in the spandrels above the second-story and third-story windows, while a marble belt course ran above the fourth floor. The marble was meant to complement the New York Coliseum (later demolished for the Deutsche Bank Center) and 2 Columbus Circle. On the fifth story and above, the facade was composed of prefabricated gray-glass windows with aluminum frames, as well as extruded vertical aluminum mullions that were painted white. A red sign reading "G&W" was originally mounted atop the building. 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. Trump had requested that glass be used, despite the fact that some of Johnson's more contemporary projects like 550 Madison Avenue used stone. Johnson had initially intended to model the new design on the Seagram Building, which he had helped design in the 1950s. 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. The redesigned facade has non-reflective, slightly projecting three-sided windows.

The facade's steel is painted a gold color, a hue Trump used in several of his other projects. 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. The outer stories were reinforced with steel columns at intervals of 26 ft (7.9 m). When the skyscraper was constructed, it would sway slightly during strong winds. According to structural engineer Ysrael Seinuk, the building would sway as much as 2.5 ft (0.76 m) laterally because of the lack of other tall buildings nearby to absorb the wind loads. Additionally, winds from the north would travel more quickly down Broadway than along Central Park West, due to the presence of a collection of tall apartment structures on Central Park West. This effectively turned the Gulf and Western Building into an airfoil, which would twist in high winds.

As early as 1982, structural cracks prompted the building's owner to install a wind brace from ground level to the roof, measuring 44 by 15 ft (13.4 by 4.6 m). When the building was renovated in the mid-1990s, Seinuk added two concrete-and-steel shear walls in a cruciform arrangement. Under the original renovation plans, diagonal steel trusses would have been installed in the mechanical core from the 1st to the 14th floors. The 15th and 16th stories, which were converted to mechanical stories, would have had double-height outrigger trusses connecting the core and perimeter, as well as a belt truss with inverted "V"s at the perimeter. On the upper stories, the number of columns in the periphery would have been doubled, reducing the space between columns to 13 ft (4.0 m). This plan had been abandoned by 1995 in favor of a concrete wall through the building's center, rising to the 33rd floors.

Interior

The building has a total area of 610,000 ft2 (57,000 m2). The original layout of the building had 500,000 ft2 (46,000 m2) of usable space with about 13,000 ft2 (1,200 m2) on each floor. When the building was converted into a hotel and residences, the top story was renumbered as floor 52; it was marketed this way since the ceilings in buildings designed for office use, such as the Gulf and Western Building, are typically higher than ceilings in residential buildings. 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, leading The New York Times to write: "Seen this way, measuring the converted tower at 52 floors was an act of altitudinal restraint."

Shops and restaurants were planned on two basement levels below the plaza that surrounded the Gulf and Western Building. The Paramount Theater was in the basement underneath the northern end of the building. It had either 532 or 535 seats. When the theater opened in 1970 with its aboveground ticket booth, Architectural Forum said: "This theater is one of the handsomest non-buildings of recent years. We could use more of them." The Paramount Theater subsequently became the Loews Columbus Circle, which was closed in the mid-1990s.

The office stories had ceiling heights of 12 ft (3.7 m), which were retained in the renovation. The Gulf and Western Building originally used asbestos as insulation, a common material used in contemporary structures at the time. After the building's completion, asbestos in New York City buildings was outlawed and the city passed a law that required building renovations to include asbestos removal.

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. The space also had red walls and mirrors as decorations, which architectural critic Paul Goldberger described in 1976 as "perhaps the most conspicuous missed chance of recent years in terms of restaurant design". 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.

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

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 last undeveloped site directly adjacent to Columbus Circle. Harold M. Liebman Associates had designed a 45-story structure for the site, along with a raised plaza. The building would have contained 500,000 ft2 (46,000 m2), with 10,500 ft2 (980 m2) on each floor, supported by the original foundations of the low-rise structure there. There would have been a glass-and-aluminum facade with a marble mechanical shaft facing west. The Coca-Cola sign of the old building was dismantled starting in August 1965. 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. That June, Forteyn announced that it had revised plans for the 45-story building. Rather than being an angular structure used for offices, the new plan would have offices only on its first nine stories and restaurant on the tenth story, with the address 15 Columbus Circle. The remaining stories would be cylindrical, with residences inside, and would carry the address 1 Central Park West. 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. The site was subsequently sold to the Investors Funding Corporation of New York, which in turn leased it to the Realty Equities Corporation. In October 1967, Gulf and Western Industries officially announced it would develop the building at a cost of $20 million. 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. Realty Equities was to construct the building. A groundbreaking ceremony took place in March 1968. 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.

Trump International Hotel and Tower

GE took title to the building in early 1993, choosing that option over foreclosing on First Winthrop's loan. That year, GE conducted a $2 million renovation to stabilize the facade. Concurrently, GE had hired real estate firm Galbreath Company to conduct a feasibility study for the building's future use. Galbreath recommended that 15 Columbus Circle be converted into a mixed-use property with both residential condominiums and offices.

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. The lower stories would be converted into either a hotel or offices. According to Galbreath's CEO Peter Ricker, Trump was hired because "he has been successful with high-rise condos like no one else has". The building's address would also be changed from 15 Columbus Circle to 1 Central Park West, a more upscale address. Trump considered Philip Johnson, Frank Gehry, and Robert A. M. Stern as possible architects for the conversion. Johnson was hired as the conversion architect in May 1994.

Ricker said the building would have to be deconstructed so its steel frame could be repaired. Trump planned to have trusses and columns installed throughout the building to make the tower rigid and stable. Renovation was chosen over demolition because 1 Central Park West already exceeded the maximum size of a residential building that could be built on the site, so a new building would have been ten to twelve stories shorter. To avoid having to demolish existing stories under zoning law, Trump split the building into permanent residential and short-term hotel components. Office spaces were not included because, according to Galbreath's executive managing director, "the rents were not high enough to support new office construction or rehabilitation". The renovation was to take two years and cost $230 million, with the building being rebranded as the Trump International Hotel and Tower. For the renovation, the joint venture received a $15.9 million tax abatement.

The work could not begin until Paramount moved out. BDO Seidman moved out during July 1994, freeing up most of the space not occupied by Paramount. 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. By late 1995, foreign nationals made up half of the buyers for the condominium section. 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.

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". In 1977, architectural writer Paul Goldberger regarded all the buildings around Columbus Circle as having "no good architecture", writing of the Gulf and Western Building's "boredom" along with the Coliseum's "oppressiveness" and 2 Columbus Circle's "silliness". 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". In a 1987 New York magazine poll of "more than 100 prominent New Yorkers", the Gulf and Western Building was one of the ten most disliked structures in New York City. 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". After writing that article, Muschamp said he got angry comments imploring him to "do something" about the design. Trump, who saw Muschamp's review as negative, occasionally called the critic to ask him to review the hotel again following its opening. 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. Martin Filler, writing for The New Republic in 2000, said the design went "from bad to worse", saying: "This meretricious face-lift was more in keeping with Trump's high-roller aesthetic than with the demands of decorum in high-profile public settings."