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Found! A piece of the Bonwit Teller bas reliefs destroyed on Trump's orders.
Retweeted by David Fahrenthold: https://twitter.com/Fahrenthold
Found! A piece of the Bonwit Teller bas reliefs destroyed on Trump's orders. How about the Kahn grille? Let us know!
Link to tweet
Trump, defender of ‘history and culture’ after Charlottesville, wasn’t always so keen on preservation
By Frances Stead Sellers August 22 at 1:15 PM
Last week, as Baltimore and other places took steps to avoid Charlottesville-style confrontations by removing Confederate monuments, President Trump took to Twitter to express his indignation at the “history and culture of our great country being ripped apart.” ... “The beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed,” the former real estate mogul tweeted, “and never able to be comparably replaced!”
....
In 1980, the brash 33-year-old developer instructed workers to destroy two giant Art Deco bas-relief friezes of nearly naked dancing figures and to remove a 20-by-30-foot geometric grille built into the doorway of the Bonwit Teller building, which Trump was razing to construct his namesake tower.
View of the Bonwit Teller department store in New York City. (Associated Press)
Trump bought the building in 1979 and could do what he liked with the pieces, Res noted. ... But that didn’t stop outrage in the art world. The works were “extremely significant,” recalled Penelope Hunter-Stiebel, an expert in the history of design who said she negotiated with Trump's representative, Louise Sunshine, and met with Trump himself to acquire them for the Metropolitan Museum of Art before watching in disbelief as the sculptures were “jackhammered to smithereens.”
The bas-reliefs were prime examples of French Art Deco, she said. The metalwork grille, designed by architect Ely Jacques Kahn, represented a new American model, which was more modernistic, abstract and geometric. Together they represented a “stylistic shift,” Hunter-Stiebel said, that would echo in architectural design across the country.
....
The Bonwit Teller building, at 721 Fifth Avenue in New York City, on July 18, 1956. (Associated Press)
....
Frances Stead Sellers is a senior writer at The Washington Post, currently covering the 2016 campaign. She was editor of the Style section from 2011-2014 and prior to that ran the newsroom’s health, science and environmental coverage. Follow @FrancesSSellers
By Frances Stead Sellers August 22 at 1:15 PM
Last week, as Baltimore and other places took steps to avoid Charlottesville-style confrontations by removing Confederate monuments, President Trump took to Twitter to express his indignation at the “history and culture of our great country being ripped apart.” ... “The beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed,” the former real estate mogul tweeted, “and never able to be comparably replaced!”
....
In 1980, the brash 33-year-old developer instructed workers to destroy two giant Art Deco bas-relief friezes of nearly naked dancing figures and to remove a 20-by-30-foot geometric grille built into the doorway of the Bonwit Teller building, which Trump was razing to construct his namesake tower.
View of the Bonwit Teller department store in New York City. (Associated Press)
Trump bought the building in 1979 and could do what he liked with the pieces, Res noted. ... But that didn’t stop outrage in the art world. The works were “extremely significant,” recalled Penelope Hunter-Stiebel, an expert in the history of design who said she negotiated with Trump's representative, Louise Sunshine, and met with Trump himself to acquire them for the Metropolitan Museum of Art before watching in disbelief as the sculptures were “jackhammered to smithereens.”
The bas-reliefs were prime examples of French Art Deco, she said. The metalwork grille, designed by architect Ely Jacques Kahn, represented a new American model, which was more modernistic, abstract and geometric. Together they represented a “stylistic shift,” Hunter-Stiebel said, that would echo in architectural design across the country.
....
The Bonwit Teller building, at 721 Fifth Avenue in New York City, on July 18, 1956. (Associated Press)
....
Frances Stead Sellers is a senior writer at The Washington Post, currently covering the 2016 campaign. She was editor of the Style section from 2011-2014 and prior to that ran the newsroom’s health, science and environmental coverage. Follow @FrancesSSellers
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