Donald Trump had long fixed on the corner of 56th Street and Fifth Avenue, home of the Bonwit Teller flagship beside Tiffany & Co. After years of calling owner Genesco, he bought the site for about $10 million in 1979 when a new chairman needed to sell assets. He bought the air rights over Tiffany’s, traded a 50% stake in the tower to the Equitable Life Assurance Society, which owned the land, and won extra height by providing a five-story public atrium. A favorable review by New York Times critic Ada Louise Huxtable helped him past opposition. Architect Der Scutt designed a 28-sided tower in bronze and gold-tinted glass.

Trump hired Barbara Res, the first woman to run a major New York skyscraper site, imported 240 tons of Breccia Pernice marble, and took a handsaw to atrium trees he disliked. Crews jackhammered Art Deco sculptures the Metropolitan Museum of Art wanted, and a class action covered undocumented Polish workers paid $4 an hour, which Trump said he did not know about. Opened in 1983, the $200 million tower brought $300 million in condo sales and later housed The Apprentice and his 2015 campaign launch.

• The 58-story building numbers its top floor 68 because the lowest residential floor was labeled the 30th.
• Demolition workers reportedly worked 12-hour shifts without hard hats on a site containing asbestos.
• Trump and an executive sometimes posed as a spokesman called John Barron, which Trump later compared to Hemingway’s pen name.
• Johnny Carson and Steven Spielberg were among early residents.
• Campaign funds and political committees later paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent to the Trump Organization for space in the tower.