The Trump Files: Behold the Gigantic, Hideous Statue He Wanted to Erect In the Middle of Manhattan

Mother Jones illustration; Shutterstock

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

When Donald Trump bought the development rights to a big chunk of Manhattan’s West Side in 1985, his original plan was characteristically huge. The proposed development included thousands of apartments, a giant new headquarters for NBC, and what would have been the world’s tallest building, a skyscraper that the New Yorker’s Mark Singer described as “an exotically banal hundred-and-fifty-story phallus.”

None of that came to pass. Trump couldn’t get the city to back his plans—or give him the enormous tax breaks he wanted—and investors from Hong Kong eventually took over the site and made plans to build some less-Trumpian condo buildings there. But Trump, who was still a minor partner in the development, wasn’t done proposing over-the-top plans. In 1997, the year construction on the site got underway, he floated the idea of putting an enormous bronze statue of Christopher Columbus—”six feet taller than the Statue of Liberty,” the Guardian reported—by Russian artist Zurab Tsereteli on “his” turf.

“It’s got forty million dollars worth of bronze in it, and Zurab would like it to be at my West Side Yards development,” he told Singer at the time. “The mayor of Moscow has written a letter to Rudy Giuliani stating that they would like to make a gift of this great work.”

This latest plan didn’t work, either, and that’s probably for the best. Tsereteli had already erected another giant statue that year, building a huge monument to Peter the Great in Moscow that was so hideous that people reportedly tried to blow it up. The Columbus statue, which Tsereteli eventually built, was also notoriously ugly. The Baltimore Sun nicknamed it “From Russia With Ugh” when some local businessman tried to plant the statue there. But Baltimore, along with New York, Columbus, Ohio, and Miami, all rejected it. It wasn’t until this month, after almost 20 years of homelessness, that the statue found a taker in Puerto Rico.

Columbus statue

Lucky Puerto Rico. Rex Features/AP

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate