White House North – is Trump Tower the new West Wing?
The president-elect’s Fifth Avenue gaff has become the alt-White House, causing havoc in New York. Good news for its landlord (one D Trump), bad news for Cristiano Ronaldo
They’re calling it “White House North”, the Manhattan skyscraper that sits more than 200 miles up the road from Washington DC. “The north wing” might also apply to Trump Tower, where the president-elect – and blue-collar champion – is turning his $100m (£79m) gilded penthouse into an executive satellite. Here’s what you need to know about it.
Immigration situation
The 202-metre tower opened in 1983 and took four years to build, with the help of 200 undocumented Polish construction workers (Trump denied knowledge of their employment in a 1990 court case).
Floors in the plan
Trump’s penthouse lift goes up to floor 68, but the building only has 58 storeys. Trump justifies the maths on the basis of the large atrium on the ground floor, but he has a habit of exaggerating the size of his constructions. The nearby Trump World Tower has 90 advertised floors, and 70 real ones.
Love thy rich neighbour
Trump lives in the top three floors and ran his election campaign from his Trump Organisation headquarters on the 26th floor. Celebrities with apartments in the building include Bruce Willis and Cristiano Ronaldo. Andrew Lloyd Webber sold his two-floor apartment in 2010 for $16.5m.
Security headache
Trump’s determination to keep his family in New York, where his youngest son, Barron, goes to school, has created a security headache for the city and the secret service. A cordon around the Fifth Avenue tower will include high-speed crash barriers and permanent lane closures, while 50 traffic agents have been assigned to the address. The Federal Aviation Administration has declared the sky above the tower “national defense airspace” and the secret service is reportedly in talks to rent a whole floor as its operations base (landlord: Donald Trump).
Immigration situation #2
The tower is three miles north of 76 Forsyth Street, where, in 1885, the president-elect’s grandfather Friedrich Trump lived after arriving from Germany as a 16-year-old barber.
