On Thursday, Mayor Rahm Emanuel belatedly jumped into the fray after a public campaign against the sign on Chicago's second-tallest building spearheaded by the Chicago Tribune’s Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic Blair Kamin.
“Mayor Emanuel believes this is an architecturally tasteful building scarred by an architecturally tasteless sign,” Kelley Quinn, the mayor’s newly-appointed communications director, said in an emailed statement.
— politics.suntimes.com
Trump responds in his typical classy style...
Before I bought the site, the Sun Times had the biggest, ugliest sign Chicago has ever seen. Mine is magnificent and popular.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2014
10 Comments
I hate to say it but I think Trump is on the right side of this issue.
How is this sign any less tasteful than the Hollywood sign, the New Yorker sign in Manhattan, the Coca-Cola Sign in Long Island City or the Kentile sign in Gowanus?
This is low hanging fruit for Kamin. It says a lot about so called critics and the fights they are picking. It's a lot easier to get attention on twitter picking fights about signage, of course Trump signage, than review buildings. Ditto to all of the architectelligencia who are suddenly, conveniently, graphic design/interface design critics/feminists.
@darvid .... those are in hollywood and new york, this is chicago, we don't do this in Chicago. 90% of the buildings have small signs and usually just over the entrances. It's tacky and unnecessary, Trump is clearly compensating for a shortcoming by plastering his name all over his generic or tacky buildings.
i'm with wstall. it's odd you would want to compare chicago with new york.
the trump sign is a serif font too. did you consider that?
also, by 'coca cola' sign, do you mean 'pepsi cola'?
Yeah, the font is wrong for that building. A properly proportioned sans serif font would be way less agitating.
Trump should do the thing where he spells "T R U M P" in lighted window letters at night down each facade just to bug the hell out of everybody.
Yes it's tacky. But it's Donald Trump. What do you expect? His apartment in NY looks like Versailles threw up all over it. But to each his own. The situation is like in the book Dracula - if you invite the vampire into your house, you can't make him leave. So it is with Trump. He's there. He paid. Tough tooties. Does he own any buildings that don't have his name in giant letters? Of course he doesn't. He's Donald Trump.
How "odd" is it really that I've compared Chicago with New York?
The Hotel Lincoln and Chicago Theater signs come to mind. So does the giant frog (or is it a lizard curtkram?) thats sits on the Rainforest Cafe downtown across from a giant McDonalds with building scaled double arches.
Its all very "tacky and unnecessary", but history has shown that our opinions about large scale signage evolve. Nostalgia is a powerful force in architecture. Can you point to an example where public approval of a building-scaled signage has not grown over time?
Calling Trump tasteless is like saying "grass is green" or "the sky is blue". Either way it ignores the real issue of rapacious private development at public expense.
The prince of bankruptcy defaulted on a $640m loan here to force renegotiation at reduced rates. He routinely files for bankruptcy on his projects, forcing other investors out and picking up their interest for pennies on the dollar, or forcing baks to lower rates and extend deals. It's not clear exactly what incentive the City of Chicago gave Trump for the development. NYC has given him public subsides and decades worth of tax exemptions worth tens of millions of dollars.
The Trump Rule: If you owe the bank a couple of million, you're in big trouble. If you owe the bank a couple of hundred million, the bank is in big trouble.
i would go with frog
i can't help but think you're just trying to reinforce the point that chicago uses sans-serif fonts, while new york uses serif?
it's like, some people like good pizza. others just want a bit of ketchup squirted on a piece of cardboard.
I agree with Miles Jaffe that the history of extra large signage is certainly intertwined with the history of "rapacious private development"
TASTE THE TRUMP!
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