Trump Tower: Skipped Floors, Bonwit Teller's Sculptures and John Barron

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Donald Trump had long fixed on the corner of 56th Street and Fifth Avenue, home of the Bonwit Teller flagship beside Tiffany & Co. After years of calling owner Genesco, he bought the site for about $10 million in 1979 when a new chairman needed to sell assets. He bought the air rights over Tiffany's, traded a 50% stake in the tower to the Equitable Life Assurance Society, which owned the land, and won extra height by providing a five-story public atrium. A favorable review by New York Times critic Ada Louise Huxtable helped him past opposition. Architect Der Scutt designed a 28-sided tower in bronze and gold-tinted glass.

Trump hired Barbara Res, the first woman to run a major New York skyscraper site, imported 240 tons of Breccia Pernice marble, and took a handsaw to atrium trees he disliked. Crews jackhammered Art Deco sculptures the Metropolitan Museum of Art wanted, and a class action covered undocumented Polish workers paid $4 an hour, which Trump said he did not know about. Opened in 1983, the $200 million tower brought $300 million in condo sales and later housed The Apprentice and his 2015 campaign launch.

The 58-story building numbers its top floor 68 because the lowest residential floor was labeled the 30th.
Demolition workers reportedly worked 12-hour shifts without hard hats on a site containing asbestos.
Trump and an executive sometimes posed as a spokesman called John Barron, which Trump later compared to Hemingway's pen name.
Johnny Carson and Steven Spielberg were among early residents.
Campaign funds and political committees later paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent to the Trump Organization for space in the tower.

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