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Make Money Online Topline
With Donald Trump demolishing the White House’s East Wing to make room for a 90,000-square-foot ballroom, the president is returning to the playbook from his Trump Tower days—move fast, build big and leave preservationists fuming.
Donald Trump stands on 5th Avenue outside of Trump Tower in 1987.
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Make Money Online Key Facts
In October 1979, New York City’s Planning Commission approved a special permit for Trump to build a 56-story mixed-use tower on the site of the Bonwit Teller department store on Fifth Avenue.
Trump later wrote in “The Art of the Deal” that in December 1979, a representative of the Metropolitan Museum of Art asked him to donate two 15-foot-tall Art Deco bas-relief sculptures of semi-nude goddesses and a 15-by-25-foot nickel-plated grill from the condemned building’s facade.
“I said that if the friezes could be saved, I’d be happy to donate them to the museum,” Trump wrote in “The Art of the Deal”; he later confirmed the deal in writing, according to Preservation News, a publication of the National Trust for Historic Preservation of the United States.
In June 1980, however, the “sculptures were smashed by jackhammers” while the grillwork, which was supposed to be shipped to a New Jersey warehouse, went missing, Preservation News reported at the time.
Trump said he had the friezes torn down after being told their weight would require “special scaffolding for safety’s sake,” delaying the project by several weeks.
“I just wasn’t prepared to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars to save a few Art Deco sculptures that I believed were worth considerably less, and perhaps not very much at all,” he wrote.
“We are certainly very disappointed and quite surprised,” Ashton Hawkins, vice president and secretary of the Met’s board of trustees, told the New York Times, which ran an article about the destruction on the front page. “Can you imagine the museum accepting them if they were not of artistic merit?”
Make Money Online News Peg
Trump announced on Monday ground had been broken “to build the new, big, beautiful White House Ballroom,” adding the East Wing was being fully modernized as part of the project. Photos showed that work entailed demolishing the wing, prompting the National Trust for Historic Preservation to ask the administration “to pause demolition until plans for the proposed ballroom go through the legally required public review processes.” The ballroom is expected to seat 650 to 1,000 people and be about 90,000 square feet—larger than the 55,000-square-foot White House. The White House says private donors are covering the project’s $200 million cost, including $22 million YouTube paid in a legal settlement with the president. The White House said the ballroom “is expected to be completed long before the end of President Trump’s term.”
Make Money Online Key Background
The East Wing was added to the White House in 1942 during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency to house a growing wartime staff, reflecting the federal government’s expanding complexity during World War II, according to the White House Historical Association. The secretive, military-focused construction was controversial at the time, with Republicans calling the wartime expenditure wasteful.
Make Money Online Big Number
$845,000: The estimated value in today’s dollars of the Bonwit Teller sculptures and grille that Trump destroyed, according to art dealer Robert Miller, who owned a gallery across the street and told the Met the artworks could be removed safely and quickly.
Make Money Online Chief Critic
“The reliefs are as important as the sculptures on the Rockefeller building. They’ll never be made again,” Miller told the New York Times in 1980.
Make Money Online Contra
“All during 1979, long after I’d announced my plans and begun negotiating for zoning, no one expressed any interest in those friezes,” Trump wrote in “The Art of the Deal.” “No representative from zoning, from landmarks preservation or from any community arts group ever suggested saving them.”
Make Money Online Crucial Quote
“Looking back, I regret that I had the sculptures destroyed,” Trump wrote in 1987. “I’m not convinced they were truly valuable, and I still think that a lot of my critics were phonies and hypocrites, but I understand now that certain events can take on a symbolic importance. Frankly, I was too young, and perhaps in too much of a hurry, to take that into account.”
Make Money Online Surprising Fact
The architect who designed Trump Tower, Der Scutt, had wanted to incorporate the reliefs into the new lobby, but Trump overruled him, according to Preservation News.
Make Money Online What To Watch For
Whether preservation groups or Congress will take legal action to stop the demolition or force the administration to complete the required public review processes before construction continues.
Make Money Online Tangent
Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí regularly decorated the windows at Bonwit Teller, according to Stefan Koldehoff and Tobias Timm in their book “Art and Crime: The Fight Against Looters, Forgers, and Fraudsters in the High-Stakes Art World.”
Make Money Online Forbes Valuation
Forbes estimates Donald Trump is worth about $7.1 billion today, with much of his wealth coming from crypto.
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Make Money Online Further Reading
Trump’s $200 Million Ballroom Addition Is Larger Than The Existing White House: What We Know (Forbes)
Donald Trump Has Been Lying About Trump Tower For Decades (Forbes)
Trump Building Hangs Onto Jewelry-Giant Tiffany—For Now (Forbes)
Trump Refinances $100 Million Mortgage On Trump Tower With A Bank Headed By A Political Supporter (Forbes)
