THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY8, 2021 15
of AIDS, I realized that the strategies
the activists during the antiwar move-
ment were using, to use the streets as
a way to communicate, could work
in terms of the AIDS pandemic.” Street
art needed to work on two levels, he
said. “The ‘Silence = Death’ and the
pink triangle are quite bold—you need
to be able to read it from a moving ve-
hicle. But then the text”—visible up
close—“is meant to stimulate, to dis-
rupt.” This public-art series would do
the same.
On the sidewalk, a masked New
Yorker named Dean Manchand, in a
knit hat that said “American Pool,” stared
at the dollar bill. “Is the artist here?” he
asked. Ballistic waved. “Thank you,”
Manchand said. Covid had dominated
Manchand’s recent weeks: his parents
had had it and recovered; his uncle had
just died; his aunt was in the hospital.
“Up to this point, I was, like, you know,
Donald Trump is a clown,” Manchand
said. “But because of him it’s hit my
family, too. And seeing this today, my
first good day to actually return back to
work, was, like, wow.” He held up his
phone, showing a photo of his uncle
and aunt, smiling on a ski slope in an-
imal-print jumpsuits. “That’s Leopard
Man and Zebra Gypsy,” he said. “They
should be in Utah right now, skiing.
They’re legends out in Utah.” He was
on his way to the hospital, with a mor-
tuary-release form for his aunt to sign.
Last Friday, Ballistic crossed out “399,053”
and wrote “427,626.”
—Sarah Larson
1
LEGACIES
WRECKINGBALL
O
n February 17th, the Trump Plaza
Hotel and Casino, in Atlantic City,
is to be demolished by implosion. Shut-
tered since 2014, the thirty-seven-year-
old building has already been stripped
of most of its concrete façade, falling
chunks of which began crashing onto
the boardwalk last year. Never an archi-
tectural treasure, it now resembles the
shaky remainders of a truck bombing.
Donald Trump hasn’t even owned it
since 2009, and in 2016 his residual ties
were severed in bankruptcy court. Yet a
moot question must be raised: Might
this building have merited preservation
as a site for future generations to con-
template the forces and passions that
shaped the forty-fifth President? If
Abraham Lincoln or Theodore Roos-
evelt—or even Grover Cleveland—had
owned a casino, wouldn’t it be cool if it
were still standing and you could play
a few slots?
Trump properties provide a lot of
fodder for people who worry about sav-
ing America’s architectural heritage. His
name is attached not to a log cabin or
even a sprawling plantation but to doz-
ens of hotels, apartment blocks, office
buildings, and golf courses. But the focus
of future Trump-related preservation
battles is likely to be Trump Tower, argu-
ably the most iconic, if loathed, piece of
Presidential real estate since Monticello.
Plenty of unloved modern buildings
have excited preservationists’ passions,
including brutalist piles such as Paul
Rudolph’s Orange County Government
Center and wacky one-offs like Edward
Durell Stone’s Lollipop Building, at 2
Columbus Circle—structures scorned
by the public but cherished by small
bands of knowing devotees.
Although the architect of Trump
Tower, Der Scutt, worked for both Ru-
dolph and Stone, the ex-President’s bev-
elled, mirrored monolith, in midtown,
provokes more of a meh from experts.
“It’s another glass tower,” Laurie Beck-
elman, a former chair of the city’s Land-
marks Preservation Commission, said.
“It’s just real estate.” She suggested that,
rather than landmark it, the city might
install a discreet plaque: “What the hell.
You say, ‘Here’s where he lived.’”
Trump Tower opened in 1983, as one
can tell by looking at it. “With its glass
and brass, it is an example of the styles
and materials of its time, sort of like
shoulder pads,” Daria Pizzetta, a prin-
cipal architect at the firm H3, which has
renovated many historic buildings, in-
cluding some at Lincoln Center, said.
“But will it be considered beautiful or
significant in fifty years? No. ”
Sarah M. Whiting, the dean of Har-
vard’s Graduate School of Design, had
a different perspective. Trump Tower
should endure, she said, “as a reminder
that we all knew what we were in for.”
A genuinely positive assessment came
from Robert A. M. Stern, the architect
and historian who dipped a toe in re-
lated waters when his firm designed the
George W. Bush Presidential Center, in
Dallas. “No doubt I’ll get a thousand at-
tacks,” he said, and went on to argue that
Trump Tower—a “handsome” build-
ing—deserves landmark status on both
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