Business tycoon Donald Trump and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel are involved in a war of words that could turn legal over a massive 20-foot-tall sign along the billionaire’s skyscraper that spells out his last name, “T-R-U-M-P.”
Mr. Emanuel says the sign is “architecturally tasteless” and ought to be torn down, while Mr. Trump says he has no such plans, The Associated Press reported.
“If the sign was in Atlantic City or Las Vegas, nobody would care — but it is in Chicago, and in a part of Chicago full of great buildings from the 1920s to the 1960s and onward,” said Blair Kamin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning architectural critic for the Chicago Tribune, who’s written extensively about the tiff. “None of the other towers have signs on them.”
Most of the city’s tallest buildings have signs that are on the ground, or near ground level. Trump International Hotel & Tower, however, boasts a banner high above the street.
Mr. Trump has cast blame on Mr. Kamin, saying he’s a “third-rate architecture critic” who’s stirred up trouble about the sign — even though the City Council gave permission to mount it, he said, AP reported.
“We got full approval,” Mr. Trump said, AP reported.
But a spokesman for Mr. Emanuel said the mayor “believes this is an architecturally tasteful building scarred by an architecturally tasteless sign,” AP said.
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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