While creating the final design for Trump Tower, Scutt studied the designs of other skyscrapers, almost all having a similar architectural form. This design received mixed reviews from critics: although it was widely praised as creative, many reviewers also believed the tower could be covered in masonry to blend in with neighboring buildings, or that its height should be reduced for the same reason. To make Trump Tower stand out from the “boxy” International Style buildings being erected at the time, Scutt designed the tower as a 28-faced edifice with an “inverted pyramid of cubes” at the base.
President Donald Trump
In a 1982 review of the building, New York Times architecture critic Paul Goldberger contrasted the “reflective” Trump Tower with the nearby postmodern 550 Madison Avenue building. According to Goldberger, the indoor atrium might become “the most pleasant interior public space to be completed in New York in some years” because the marble and brass made it “warm, luxurious and even exhilarating”, although it was “a bit too high and narrow” and with little room for crowds. In a later review just before the tower opened, Goldberger said the tower was “turning out to be a much more positive addition to the cityscape than the architectural oddsmakers would have had it”.
Princeton Architectural Press. Elstein, Aaron.
Wedemeyer, Dee (March 1, 1979). “60-Story Tower Sought For Bonwit-Teller Site”. Cantwell, John (May 7, 2009). “Trump, The Logo”. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. Elstein, Aaron. “Donald Trump has a secret garden”. Rubin & Mandell 1984, p. Geist, William E. (April 8, 1984). “The Expanding Empire of Donald Trump”. The New York Times. Nash, Eric (2005). Manhattan Skyscrapers. The New York Times. Crain’s New York Business. Stichweh, Dirk (2016). New York Skyscrapers.
The art dealer Robert Miller owned a gallery across Fifth Avenue from the Bonwit Teller Building. When Miller heard the building was to be demolished, he contacted Penelope Hunter-Stiebel, a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In December 1979, Stiebel and Trump agreed that the Art Deco limestone bas-relief sculptures of semi-nude goddesses on the Bonwit Teller Building’s facade, as well as the massive ornate 15 by 25 feet (4.6 by 7.6 m) grille above the store’s entrance, would be removed and donated to the Metropolitan Museum.
