Soon none will say “Trump.” On Friday, the board of one tower, 220 Riverside Blvd., notified residents that it will remove the Trump lettering from above its front door.
This decision comes one day after the only other remaining “Trump Place” building, 120 Riverside Blvd., said it planned to remove the name.
In doing so, both towers — 220 and 120 — join the four other neighboring buildings in the complex that have, since 2016, each moved to wipe the president’s name from their facades, erasing Trump from the pocket of Manhattan he once imagined would be his own eponymous city.
“I am just glad they’re coming down — and him along with it hopefully,” said Mary Stanton, 72, as she shopped in Jubilee Marketplace inside 180 Riverside Blvd., another building formerly known as Trump. The Trump name has no place there, she said.
On Friday, at least one resident popped out of 220 to take photographs of the glittery letters still on the building before they disappear.
The news of the latest removal came in an email from the condominium board of 220, sent out on Feb. 22, and first reported by The Washington Post, which said that 83 percent of the building had voted on the issue.
“Of the 83 percent [that] voted, 74.7 percent voted to remove the signage, and 25.3 percent voted not to remove the signage,” The Post quoted the email as saying. “Over the next several weeks, we will select a company to carry out the required work” to remove the name.
The day before, the condo board of 120 Riverside Blvd. made a similar emailed announcement, but the decision was by a smaller majority — 55 percent, according to The Post, which also broke the news of that decision.
Despite the name, the complex is not owned by Trump, and the various buildings are run by distinct entities. 180, 160 and 140 Riverside Blvd. are rental buildings owned by Equity Residential, a Chicago-based company that acquired them for $809 million in 2005, and contracted with the Trump Organization to use the Trump name. The three others, 120, 200 and 220, are condominiums. 200 paid Trump $1 to use his name on the building, according to reports.
In 2016, hundreds of tenants at 180, 160 and 140 Riverside Blvd. signed a petition to Dump the Trump Name, and it was removed three weeks before he took office. At the time, Equity said it was not a political move: the contract with Trump to use his name on the buildings had simply run out.
When 200 Riverside Blvd. tried to follow suit, the condo board went to the state Supreme Court to determine if it had the right to remove the name, which the Trump Organization said was inviolable. Judge Eileen Bransten ruled in the board’s favor, saying the letters could be stripped from the 46-story building, pending a vote by the tenants.
The last holdout, 220, hung on, not because of any fealty to the president, but because they feared litigation, according to a resident who asked that her name not be used because she did not want to anger her neighbors by discussing internal building politics.
“When 200 did it, it set a precedent; we saw what was possible,” she said. “Most people were like-minded in wanting it to come down, but there was a little bit of fear of what is going to happen, what sort of backlash there would be.”
“We lived here well before we ever dreamed he would be president, but in the last two years it’s been really awkward,” the 220 resident added. “When a cab pulls up in front our building, the cabdriver always says, ‘Ugh, Trump!'”
The boards of the two buildings that announced the removals this week could not be reached. The Trump Organization did not respond to an email requesting comment.
Prices in the city’s Trump-branded buildings took a hit after the election, and have not fully recovered. A few weeks ago, Mike Kim, 33, who works in importing and exporting, looked at an apartment in 120 Riverside Blvd., which still has the gleaming “Trump Place” sign above the entrance. “It was kind of cheap, so I was interested,” he said. “But my girlfriend said, “Oh, it’s a Trump building? I don’t know.'”
The complex joins a host of other residential buildings and hotels, both in New York and elsewhere, that have ridded themselves of the Trump name. In SoHo, after customers, including NBA stars, avoided the Trump SoHo hotel, the Trump Organization came to an agreement to exit from its involvement with the property. It is now The Dominick.
About two years ago, a petition to the board of managers of 220 Riverside Blvd. popped up on Change.Org, by an anonymous “concerned resident,” asking to keep the Trump name. “It is a part of his legacy, and it is not right to erase this legacy (and erase history) simply because one disagrees with some of his policies,” it reads.
Nevertheless, today on the Upper West Side, there appears to be only one mention of Trump’s name not on its way out. At 79th Street and the West Side Highway, there is a little, blue “adopt-a-highway” sign.
It still says Donald J. Trump.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.