Donald Trump’s Math Takes His Towers to Greater Heights
By VIVIAN YEE
NOV. 1, 2016
Of the many rivals Donald J. Trump has accumulated over four decades in business and, now, presidential politics, one of the earliest was a New York City skyscraper with the boldness to stand taller than his own.
In 1979, as Mr. Trump inspected a model of the black-and-gold Fifth Avenue high-rise that would come to serve as his home, office, fortress and personal monument, he could find only one flaw to spoil the moment: the General Motors building, which, in real life, was 41 feet higher and a few blocks away from the future Trump Tower.
“My building looks a little small,” he said, according to Norman Brosterman, the model maker’s assistant at the time. Assured the scale was accurate, Mr. Trump had an inspiration on his next visit to the architectural workshop.
“Can you make my building taller?” Mr. Trump asked. No, he was told. “Well, can you make the G.M. building shorter?”
Mr. Trump marked the G.M. building at his preferred height with a pencil. Mr. Brosterman sawed off the top third, leaving Trump Tower — in the one-thirty-second-scale model, at least — the tallest in the neighborhood.
“Trump said, ‘Great,’ and left,” Mr. Brosterman recalled recently.
In real life, Trump Tower could not be elongated. But Trump Arithmetic found a way.
Though the tower was built with 58 floors, Mr. Trump later explained to The New York Times that because there was a soaring pink marble atrium and 19 commercial floors at the bottom, he could see no good reason not to list the first residential floor as the 30th floor. The pinnacle became the 68th — the height that appears in marketing materials, online search results and news articles to this day.
