Trump International Hotel and Tower (New York City)

In the mid-1990s, a joint venture composed of the General Electric Pension Fund, Galbreath Company, and developer Donald Trump renovated the building into a hotel and residential tower.[11][14] Hearst's low-rise building on the north side of Columbus Circle remained standing until the 1960s,[12] with a prominent Coca-Cola sign displaying time and temperature.[15] The Trump International Hotel and Tower was originally the Gulf and Western Building, designed by Thomas E. Stanley and constructed in the late 1960s.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 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 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.[41] 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.[24] 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).[20] According to Trump, the building was equivalent to a standard 60-story apartment structure,[36] leading The New York Times to write: "Seen this way, measuring the converted tower at 52 floors was an act of altitudinal restraint.[29][49] 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".Each unit has a kitchen and large closets; originally, the rooms were all equipped with electronics like a VCR, CD player, fax machine, and TV.[80] During the early 1970s, an awning flew off during a high wind,[81] and a man shot out windows in the Top of the Park restaurant, though no one was killed or seriously injured in either case.[84] The tower was also damaged in a February 1977 bombing committed by the Puerto Rican nationalist group Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña (FALN), but no one was killed or injured.[89] By 1982, the Gulf and Western Building swayed so much in the wind that its core walls and stairwells had developed cracks and workers had complained of nausea.[92] The following year, the MacArthur Foundation sold the Gulf and Western Building and 17 other properties to First Winthrop as part of a transaction worth over $400 million.[38] Concurrently, GE had hired real estate firm Galbreath Company to conduct a feasibility study for the building's future use.[103] 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.[18][36] To avoid having to demolish existing stories under zoning law, Trump split the building into permanent residential and short-term hotel components.[112] 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.[117] After divorcing his wife Marla Maples, Trump rented out the penthouse in 1998,[66][118] and Italian producer Vittorio Cecchi Gori then purchased the unit.[125] While Trump did not own the building, he received a large payment from GE Pension Trust for its development, as well as a portion of profits from the sale of the condos.[118] A Russian family bought the penthouse but reneged after learning of the cost to renovate the apartment, and it was ultimately sold in late 2010 for $31 million.[25] By that August, Trump International's condominium board was considering rebranding the residential section as "One Central Park West" as part of a larger-scale renovation of the building.[139][140] While the condo board ultimately voted to keep the "Trump International" name for the residences, they also agreed to renovate the marquee on the Central Park West side of the building.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".[145] 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".[146] 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".[147] 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.[148] 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".[114] 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.