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chairman Donald Trump’s sabotage of the white house The East Wing is extremely unpopular with many Americans– But this is not the first time that the former real estate mogul has bulldozed a historic site to make way for new construction.
President’s decision to demolish the historic East Wing Build a giant ballroom worth $250 million This comes decades after he made an enemy new york city‘S Metropolitan Museum of Art During one of its early developments.
In 1979, Trump received approval from the city to purchase the Bonwit Teller Building. art Deco The mainstay on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, which will eventually be demolished to make way for the 68-story, mixed-use property now known as trump tower, forbes Informed.
Trump recalled in his 1987 book, “The Art of the Deal”, that the Metropolitan Museum of Art asked him to donate several fridges from the 1929 building before it was demolished.
The real estate developer agreed to rescue two, 15-foot Art Deco statues of nearly nude gods and goddesses from the front of the condemned building, as well as a 15-foot by 25-foot, nickel-plated grill.
“I said that if the friezes could be saved, I would be happy to donate them to the museum,” Trump wrote.
However, a year later, “the statues were smashed by jackhammers” and the grillwork disappeared, according to Preservation News, a publication of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Reported in 1980.
Trump claimed at the time that he had dismantled the friezes when he was told that their heavy weight would require “special scaffolding for safety”, thus delaying his project by several weeks.
Trump later wrote, “I was not willing to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars to save some Art Deco statues that I believed were worth much less, and perhaps not at all.” “The Art of the Deal.”
At the time, this decision angered the Metropolitan Museum of Art, leading the board of trustees to new York Times: “Can you imagine if the museum would accept them if they were not of artistic merit?”
According to Forbes, the Bonwit Taylor statues and grills destroyed by Trump have an estimated value of $845,00 today.
The Bonwit Teller department store worked with world-renowned artists, including Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí, who regularly decorated the windows, and Andy Warhol, before his career began. Artnet.
architect According to Preservation News, Derr Scutt, who designed Trump Tower, had hoped to incorporate the Art Deco design into the new lobby, but Trump overruled him.
According to the outlet, snubbing the Met caused serious damage to Trump’s reputation in New York intellectual circles. He expressed regret over his decision to destroy the artifacts years later.
“Looking back, I regret that I destroyed statues,” Trump wrote in “The Art of the Deal.”
He added: “I’m not sure they were really valuable, and I still think a lot of my critics were hypocrites and hypocrites, but now I understand that certain events can take on symbolic significance. To be honest, I was too young, and probably too early, to consider this.”
A new York Times Trump was quoted in a 1980 article about the incident. He told the newspaper at the time, “There’s nothing I’d like to do more than give something to a museum… I’ve always been interested in art.”
many times Note that Trump’s Manhattan office contained no artwork other than A depiction of Trump Tower, hanging on one of the walls.
“If that’s not art, I don’t know what is,” Trump said at the time.
Construction of the 90,000-square-foot White House Ballroom began earlier this week, featuring significant demolition and heavy machinery in the East Wing.
Trump had previously said that the new ballroom would be connected to the main White House residence with what he described as a “knockout panel” in the East Room.
But on Wednesday he had an update. “To do this properly, we have to dismantle the existing structure,” the president said.
Trump administration officials also reported that the entire East Wing was set to be demolished “within days”. NBC News.
The 90,000-square-foot ballroom will cost an estimated $300 million – $100 million more than what Trump had initially said.
“Nobody has really seen anything like this,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that works to save historic sites, has requested the Trump administration “to halt demolition until plans for the proposed ballroom pass the legally required public review process.”
While new construction of federal buildings must be scrutinized by the National Capital Planning Commission board, the head of that panel, appointed by Trump, said in September that demolition work is outside the board’s jurisdiction and can proceed without the need for approval.
According to recent polling, the ballroom plans have not gone down well with many Americans. A YouGov voting The poll conducted on Tuesday showed that 53 percent of people disapproved of demolishing part of the East Wing for renovation.