Trump's trumpery

Six years of Donald Trump in the White House, and likely two more. But we made it through, kudos in part to the Blue Wave that will (hopefully) check and balance his power.

Forty-three years of the Trump Tower on 5th Avenue. But this Blue Wave still doesn't make it in my book, bold as it may look.

That was how it shanghaied me from a New York exhibit on Frank Lloyd Wright—to whose daintily wrought Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, this trumpery extravaganza of blue tinted-glass tomfoolery and pink-marble pomp can't hold a candle. But since its namesake added the Oval Office (and its proposed ballroom) to his real estate holdings, the Trump Tower became a more desired destination than it had been upon its 1983 inauguration. And its curtain wall's corner-office zigzaggery seems to scream even more for attention, with the panache of the Prez himself.

Trump Tower, New York, looking up. Photo by Bin im Garten.

Jerry Lewis thought Trump would make a good president for being a good "showman." The Trump Tower tries to be just that, with all the marks of its moniker: style without substance, pizzazz without purpose, air without art, artifice without architecture (without good architecture, that is), Trump without Triumph.

Price Tower, Bartlesville, Okla. (1956, Frank Lloyd Wright)
Photo by John from Tulsa, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Compare the Trump Tower to the Price Tower. Described by its designer as "the tree that escaped the crowded forest," the Price Tower certainly challenges all skyscraper stereotypes and conventions in its carefully massed columns of pine-like projections and forest-green hues, with a rich variety of patterns, textures, alternations and variations to keep the eye involved, and to even want to take the elevator upward to one or more of the units to venture inside them. 

And the upward soar of each of its parts, expressing and differentiating individual service cores and stacks of luxury units during their skyward ascents, calls to mind the growth of a tree, as a crowning example of Wright's organic architecture, derived from nature rather than imposed on it. 

Trump Tower tree terraces. Photo by Kidfly182.

The Trump Tower, however, is a mere geometric playbook, catching the eye for the dramatic immediacy of its showmanship, the in-your-face affluence of its interior finishes, and its use of trees on terraces as ornamental display rather than the ecological complement of design. (I'm told that the Trump Organization put those treed terraces on the zigzag setbacks in exchange for more floor square footage inside. Typical Trump real estate bargaining for a density bonus, not unlike what he's doing with his White House ballroom.)

Trump Tower atrium. Photo by Sebastian Bergmann.

Oddly enough, Trump Tower was one of my mother's favorite buildings in New York. Built long before a Trump presidency could be imagined, it was the tourist attraction she could never wait to take a taxi to, due mainly to the cascading marble fountain in its atrium, which takes the form of a sculptural abstraction of a waterfall as it trickles and splashes down to the pool below, leading the eye up and down the stacks of mezzanines, cantilevers, gardens, stores, restaurants and bars, forcing us to gawk at its multilevel marble and glass and its skylight's soar.

Fountain in Trump Tower atrium. Photo by Alistair McMillan.

Admittedly, the 60-foot-tall waterfall is the best part of the building. Its stacked aggregate of marble cubes, sparked with accent lighting, creates a splashfest that muffles the noise in the atrium and forges a calming environment for lunch, coffee or drinks. It also provides a stunning spectacle for shoppers from the suspended walkway and six balconies overlooking it. 

Der Scutt, the tower's architect, was at his most imaginative here, but the real kudos is thought to go to Ivana Trump, who is said to have had a major say in the selection of Breccia Pernice marble. Quarried in in the Monte Pastello and Volargne stoneworking regions of Verona, Italy, it is eye-catching for its angular ivory, cream and white fragments set in a warm peachy-rose, honey, sienna, or red field, as an explosion of rich colors.

Trump Tower Atrium. Photo by Fletcher6.

But the rest of the building's interior feels just like a typical 1980s shopping mall, where marble, glass, brass, mirrors and gold were heavily slathered on to "Make Shopping Great Again," as an attractive upscale antidote to the Victor Gruen ho-hum of the '50s-'60s malls that were wearing thin after several decades.

Top-down view of Trump Tower atrium.
Photo by Julian Stallabrass.

In spite of that, the tower and its atrium got a smorgasbord of bad reviews, all deserved. William E. Geist of The New York Times deemed it a "Xanadu of conspicuous consumption" that was "preposterously lavish" and "showy, even pretentious." (Sound familiar?) Architect Gregory Stanford called the atrium "pretty horrible." (Sorry, Mom.) The fifth edition of the AIA Guide to New York City called the tower "a fantasyland for the affluent shopper" concealed by "folded glass." Fodor's New York City 2010 guide and Insight Guides were right on the money: Fodors said the "ostentatious atrium" exemplified the "unbridled luxury" of the 1980s, with its "expensive boutiques and gaudy brass everywhere," and Insight Guides said Trump Tower was "worth stopping by for a glimpse of the opulence synonymous with Manhattan in the 1980s." (Which made it timely with the conspicuous consumption and unbridled capitalism of the Reagan era, as if it was an advance preparation for Trump's coast to Washington on the Gipper's coattails.)

Bonwit Teller, c.1930s, demolished for the Trump Tower.

Yes, commerce trumps design here, filling our eyeballs with the ostentatious display of wealth we can't even hope to be able to afford, as a precursor to the sententious showmanship and the Mar-a-Lago monstrosity we got from its developer when he attained the White House (twice). But my partiality against the Trump Tower is mainly due to his totaling of the historic 1929 Art Deco Bonwit Teller store that stood on its site (designed by Warren & Wetmore, architects of Grand Central Terminal), after he promised to preserve and donate the building's Art Deco aluminum-bronze friezes of dancing female figures and bronze grillework to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This was yet another harbinger of the lies, broken promises, and deception that would characterize his presidencies.

"If Bonwit’s signified impeccable style and taste, Trump Tower was everything garish and tacky," said blogger Sally Edelstein. "Like the real estate developer himself." I couldn't agree more.

Thank you for visiting. I welcome your comments!

Sources:

"Breccia Pernice," Architectural Surfaces, https://arcsurfaces.com/live-inventory/breccia-pernice/119477/

de Monchaux, Thomas, "Seeing Trump in Trump Tower," The New Yorker, October 6, 2016, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/seeing-trump-in-trump-tower

Edelstein, Sally, "The Travesty of Trump Tower and Bonwit Teller," Envisioning the American Dream, October 22, 2025, https://envisioningtheamericandream.com/2025/10/22/the-travesty-of-trump-tower-and-bonwit-teller-2/

Geist, William E., "The Expanding Empire of Donald Trump," The New York Times, April 8, 1984, https://www.nytimes.com/1984/04/08/magazine/the-expanding-empire-of-donald-trump.html

Lisicky, Michael, "How Donald Trump Took Down Bonwit Teller, A Fifth Avenue Landmark," Forbes, October 3, 2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaellisicky/2020/10/03/how-donald-trump-took-down-bonwit-teller-a-fifth-avenue-landmark/

"The Bonwit Teller Building," lostarchitecture, Instagram, 2025, https://www.instagram.com/p/DUAi9K7CAjz/?img_index=1

"Trump Tower," Wikipedia,  last edited on 14 October 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Tower

"2cm Breccia Pernice Honed 78" x 115"," Royal Stone, 2024, https://www.royalstonela.com/blog/breccia-pernice-italian-marble-honed/