New York City is a place of endless possibilities and iconic landmarks. It’s a city that resonates with and entices people from all over to call NYC home. From the towering apartment buildings in Manhattan to the sprawling greenery of Central Park, this city offers a unique mixture of history and modern-day charm.
New Yorkers are known for their resilience and spirit, evident in the city’s culture, sports fandom, and unparalleled style. Here, every street corner tells a story and every subway ride introduces a new character.
Let’s dive in a bit deeper and finally answer the question, what is New York City known for?
1. Wall St.
Wall St. is synonymous with the American financial industry. Home to the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ, this street represents power and influence in global finance. The mere mention of Wall St. evokes images of traders bustling about, stocks being bought and sold, and fancy suits with expensive watches everywhere you look. It’s not just a street; it’s the economic engine of the city and the country.
2. Cultural melting pot
New York City is a true cultural melting pot, where people from literally every corner of the globe converge and coexist. This amalgamation shapes every aspect of city life. Walking through neighborhoods like Chinatown, Little Italy, or Jackson Heights is akin to taking a global tour without the need for a passport.
3. The five boroughs
The five boroughs—Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, and Staten Island—each have their own distinct identity and charm. Manhattan boasts the skyline; Brooklyn offers arts and innovation; Queens is the king of diversity; The Bronx is the birthplace of hip-hop; Staten Island provides a slower pace with its green spaces and suburban feel. Together, they form a complex and comprehensive portrait of New York City life.
4. Broadway
Broadway is the pinnacle of American theater. It’s the heartbeat of New York City’s performing arts scene, attracting millions of visitors each year. From groundbreaking musicals with Hollywood stars to intense dramas that launch careers, Broadway shows are a vital part of the city, reflecting both the contemporary and the classic.
5. The Yankees
The New York Yankees are more than just a baseball team; they are an institution. With a legacy of 27 World Series championships, they embody the competitive spirit of the city. Yankees Stadium, a landmark in itself, draws crowds for games and concerts in the warmer months.
6. Stand-up comedy
New York City is a hub for stand-up comedy, with numerous clubs that have launched the careers of many acclaimed comedians. Places like the Comedy Cellar or Gotham Comedy Club are where performers cut their teeth and create their style. To put it simply, In NYC, laughter is serious business.
7. Central Park
Arguably the most famous public park in the world, New York City is known for Central Park, an oasis amidst the concrete jungle. This sprawling green space, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, offers a refuge to residents and tourists alike.
8. Dollar slices
The concept of dollar pizza slices captures the essence of New York City’s fast-paced and accessible food scene. These quick, cheap eats are available at countless pizzerias around the city, showcasing NYC’s ability to offer something for everyone. Whether you’re rushing to a meeting or wandering home after a night out, a dollar slice is never far away.
9. The Met
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, known as The Met, is one of the world’s largest and most esteemed cultural institutions. Located along the edge of Central Park, it houses over two million works of art spanning 5,000 years of history. The Met is not just a museum; it’s a gateway to the world, offering visitors a dizzying selection of artifacts, from ancient Egyptian sculptures to American contemporary paintings.
10. NYC Skyline
The New York City skyline is perhaps the most iconic urban vista in the world, instantly recognizable with its mix of historic architectural feats and sleek modern towers. From the art deco spire of the Empire State Building to the gleaming surfaces of the One World Trade Center, the skyline tells the story of a city that has continually reached toward the sky.
Architect Louis Naidorf had a disastrous 80th birthday cake. In 2008, Naidorf, who designed the Capitol Records building in Hollywood, was presented with a celebration cake that had been custom-baked in the shape of his iconic cylindrical building. But the pastry soon reflected the rather substantial difference between concrete and flour.
“When the cake was brought out, it gently collapsed, and everyone applauded,” Naidorf says, laughing over the phone from his home in Santa Rosa. “It was like in one of the movies where the Capitol Records building was destroyed.” Thankfully the cake for his 95th birthday, which he celebrated last month, was more structurally sound.
Designated a historic-cultural monument in 2006, the building has long been a favorite Los Angeles landmark to demolish on film — especially for filmmaker Roland Emmerich, who blew it up with an alien spaceship in “Independence Day” and slammed it with twisters in “The Day After Tomorrow.” Yet no movie can ever write the building out of a central place in popular music history. The tower is synonymous with the illustrious Capitol Records, home of Nat King Coleand Frank Sinatra, and the American record label of Pink Floyd and the Beatles, with the latter’s stars lining the Hollywood Walk of Fame right in front of the building.
Over the last several years, the building has been illuminated in support of various sociopolitical causes. In 2020, it was lighted red to support independent music venues. Last year, during their performance in Hollywood, Duran Duran lighted the Capitol Records building blue and yellow in solidarity with Ukraine. “I think that’s excellent,” Naidorf says. “Anything that vigorously engages the public on the right side of good causes transcends other issues. I’m flattered they use the Capitol Records building. It means it has enough cachet to merit being chosen to do that.”
Like the famous landmark he designed, Louis Naidorf has of late been experiencing his own brush with stardom, with postcards from autograph seekers arriving at his door. He is flattered but doesn’t take the attention too seriously.
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“It’s obvious that if someone asks me for four signatures I’m part of trading baseball cards or something,” he says. “They are going to trade four Lou Naidorfs for one Joe Smith.”
Still, he’s surprised and somewhat baffled by the sudden burst of recognition after all these years. “I guess my name ended up on a list or something,” he shrugs.
Naidorf was just 24 years old when he designed the Capitol Records building, in 1953. It was the world’s first circular office building.
Though it was 70 years ago, he vividly recalls how he felt when he received the assignment for his first solo project. “At one level, I felt enormous anxiety that if I didn’t get a solution, very, very quickly, something terrible would happen,” he says. “On the other hand, I felt a total confidence that I could do it. So it was a crazy contradiction.”
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Naidorf notes the building’s porcelain enamel sunshades with carefully spaced gaps to play with light and shadow. These cause spiral lines to appear on the building, drawing the eye into a rhythm rather than straight up and down. “You can see Capitol Records from quite a distance and you get a first impression of its basic form and character. You have a reading of it as complete,” he says. “But the building is designed so that the closer you get to the building, you discover more details.”
What about the long-standing myth that its round shape was designed to look like a stack of records with a rooftop antenna resembling a phonograph needle? As hard as it might be to believe, the legendary story about the building is just a coincidence — an urban legend that Naidorf has tried to debunk for decades.
In fact, when his boss, Welton Becket, tasked him with the assignment, the building was simply referred to as Project X. Shrouded in secrecy, Naidorf was given little guidance for the project other than being asked to design a 13-story building on a sloped side street in Hollywood that had to be kept as cool as possible and had smaller than usual floor space. He also didn’t know for whom he was designing it. Naidorf says it was common for clients’ identities to be kept confidential during the initial planning stages of a project.
However, Naidorf relished the creative latitude. The absence of information left him unburdened by preconceived ideas. “I knew the door was open for something special. It urged me so strongly,” he says earnestly. “I felt, and I think all architects feel this way … there’s a drive to translate the mundane bare requirements that clients come in with into something that has some poetic qualities about it.”
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Naidorf then had an epiphany: The project’s requirements were “eerily resonant” with a series of circular buildings he had designed for his master’s thesis in college. “The round shape is a very efficient enclosure of space,” he says. “You get more bang for your buck.”
Not everyone agreed with his approach. Naidorf says that Capitol Records co-founder and President Glenn Wallichs became irate when Naidorf presented him with a model and drawings of a round building, and “violently rejected” the design. “He thought it was a cheap stunt designed by a young guy to make the building look like a stack of records,” Naidorf says, laughing.
Wallichs insisted that Naidorf replace the round design with plans for a rectangular building. But when both rectangular and circular designs were presented to the insurance company financing the land, Naidorf says that Wallichs was urged to proceed with the round design.
Soon after, when talk of the building housing a radio station (that never came to fruition) was raised, Naidorf fretted when he was asked to design an antenna. He was worried that it would look like a phonograph needle and cement the idea that the building was designed to look like a stack of records.
Owing to his nagging concern, Naidorf positioned the rooftop spire asymmetrically, poised to appear as if it touches the roof delicately, like “a ballerina en pointe.” He calls it the building’s “grace note.” Still, the stack-of-vinyl myth persists. Laughing, Naidorf says, “It’s the most enduring myth of all.”
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Despite his good humor, it leaves him conflicted. “The building was not designed as a cartoon or a giggle. To have it trivialized with the stack-of-records myth is annoying and dismaying,” he says. “There’s not a thing on the building that doesn’t have a solid purpose to it.”
Naidorf’s ingenuity has been especially impressive to Los Angeles-based architect Lorcan O’Herlihy, who says he has “often responded strongly to the fact and admired that here was this interesting architect [Naidorf] who was combining science and art, or artistry and technology. Welton Becket [& Associates], very much to their credit, were at a period where modernism was at its heyday and they had to come up with ideas that were new and fresh and they did it, and Lou was certainly instrumental in that. His work is extraordinary.”
Naidorf was born in Los Angeles in 1928. His father owned a shop where he made and sold women’s clothing, with Naidorf’s mother lining the garments. Owing to his father’s lack of accounting skills and business acumen, however, the business often collapsed, forcing his parents to work at a garment factory until debts could be paid off to reopen the store.
Throughout his childhood, Naidorf’s family struggled financially as they moved around, living mostly in Silver Lake and Los Feliz. With only enough money to rent studio apartments, Naidorf’s parents slept on a Murphy bed while Naidorf spent his nights on a mattress on the floor.
As a little boy, Naidorf felt drawn to buildings. When his third-grade teacher decorated the classroom with a Hawaiian vacation theme, his fascination morphed into a calling. “I asked my teacher who made the drawings and she said, ‘Naval architects.’ And then I asked her who draws the plans for houses and she said, ‘Architects.’ She told me to ask my mother to show me the floor plans that were published in the real estate section of the Sunday edition of the newspaper.
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“When I saw them, I was a goner,” he swoons. “I now knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to be an architect.”
Naidorf remembers, at age 8, designing a three-bedroom house, using a card table as a makeshift drafting table. Soon after, he began designing small towns. “It wasn’t anything brilliant, but I was learning to draw, learning to scale and learning to think in spatial terms,” he says. When he was 12 years old, Naidorf got a part-time job at a bookstore, where he spent his first two paychecks on architecture books, absorbing them until they were threadbare.
Beyond literature, Naidorf amassed a growing collection of architectural materials (T-square, rectangles, instruments for ink drawings), thanks to his bar mitzvah presents, and decided he was ready to get to work. Sanford Kent, a young architect who had just graduated from USC, hired a tenacious 13-year-old Naidorf, paying him out of his own pocket.
Naidorf says tackling the abstract problems Kent gave him at once stimulated his mind and were instrumental in forming his long-standing ethos. “It got me thinking about architecture in terms of its effect on human emotions. The key issue is, ‘How do people respond to your work, whether from a distance or by living it?’” he says.
He continued to soak up whatever he could about architecture, gearing his junior and high school classes toward studying architecture in university. He attended UC Berkeley instead of the privately funded USC, not only to leave home and expand his horizons but also because of its affordability.
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Even still, Naidorf couldn’t afford all of the program’s required materials. He borrowed airbrushes from his fellow students, who would also give him their pencil stubs instead of tossing them out. Naidorf submitted his assignments on pebble board, which was not only cheaper than illustration board but allowed him to draw on one side, flip it over and draw on the other.
In 1950, Naidorf graduated at the top of his class and got his master of architecture degree a year early. He skipped his graduation ceremony because he had a job interview the next day at Welton Becket & Associates, where he was promptly hired. Among his earliest design assignments: a tray slide for a hospital cafeteria, a clothes closet and a “Please Wait to Be Seated” sign for a restaurant.
Three years into his employment, he began working on the Capitol Records building. Naidorf says he would design it the exact same way if he were given the assignment today.
Andrew Slater, former Capitol Records president and chief executive (2001-07), attests to the building’s distinctive charm. “When you go to work every day in that building it’s like you’re going into a piece of art, and it informs your attitude … to do something with that mindset, which is great,” he says. “Even though working in the music industry is, in a sense, an industrial endeavor, you never felt like you were doing anything industrial when you walked into that building.”
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Still, Naidorf fears being perceived as a “Johnny One Note,” as he puts it. Noting the plaque bearing his name outside the building’s main entrance, he expresses gratitude but wariness “that this one modest project has to carry my whole reputation on it.”
It’s a fair point, given the magnitude of Naidorf’s notable oeuvre. It’s earned him 17 regional honor and merit awards and AIA California’s Lifetime Achievement Award (2009). His work also has been featured at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
“I know Capitol Records is always the first one people talk about and it’s a splendid, iconic building that fuses artistry and functionalism, but he’s also produced other projects over the years,” says fellow architect O’Herlihy. “The Santa Monica Civic Auditorium is brilliant.”
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Naidorf designed the 3,000-seat capacity Santa Monica Civic Auditorium on the heels of the Capitol Records building, in the late 1950s. Essentially two buildings in one, it was a challenge to design a locale that functioned at once as a performance space with a sloped floor and an exhibit hall with a flat floor for sports events, banquets and trade shows.
He transformed the floor from flat to tilted using a hydraulic system that was hailed for its innovation. “I don’t think you’ll find any place that has a symphony on a Friday night and a gem show, or some kind of hobby show, on Saturday,” he says.
Formerly home to the Santa Monica Symphony Orchestrabut currently sitting vacant, the Civic Auditorium opened its doors to the public in 1958. From 1961 to 1968, it hosted the Academy Awards. It also was the site of live recordings including George Carlin’s comedy record “Class Clown” and the Eagles’ “Eagles Live,” a double LP recorded during their three-night run at the venue. It also hosted “The T.A.M.I. Show” in 1964.
In the meantime, while the Civic was still under construction, Naidorf designed the 15,000-seat capacity Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, the biggest arena in Los Angeles when it opened in 1959. (The arena was demolished in 2016 to make way for the Banc of California Stadium, now called BMO Stadium.)
Naidorf says the Sports Arena, home to various Los Angeles sports teams including the NBA’s Lakers (1960-67) and Clippers (1984-1999) and the NHL’s Kings (1967-68), was built to attract sports teams to Los Angeles, but uncertainty about whether they’d catch on meant the facility had to be viable for other purposes.
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In 1960, a year after it opened its doors, the Sports Arena hosted the first Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, where John F. Kennedy became the presidential nominee. Muhammad Ali (then known as Cassius Clay) won a boxing match there in 1962. It also hosted rallies by Martin Luther King Jr. and the Dalai Lama, and saw concerts by legendary rock acts including the Grateful Dead.
Bruce Springsteen played the venue’s final concerts before the building was demolished, a three-night stint during which he dedicated his song “Wrecking Ball” to the building lovingly nicknamed “The Dump That Still Jumps.” “Well, it was pretty dumpy by the end,” Naidorf says, laughing. “Not all architecture is permanent,” he continues. “I’d rather it was demolished and some useful purpose made of the site than having it sit there old, shabby and neglected as it was.”
Naidorf’s credits also include the Beverly Hilton Hotel, the Beverly Center and the Reagan State Office Building downtown. Outside of Los Angeles, Naidorf helmed the restoration of the California State Capitol Building in Sacramento, a six-year undertaking and then the largest-ever restoration undertaken in the U.S., and he designed President Gerald Ford’s house in Rancho Mirage.
The tallest building in Arizona, the Valley National Bank building (now Chase Tower) in Phoenix, also was designed by Naidorf, as well as the Hyatt Regency Dallas and adjacent Reunion Tower, the most recognizable landmark of the city’s skyline.
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He details these and his other high-profile projects in his 2018 book “More Humane: An Architectural Memoir”, filled with photos, backstories and personal anecdotes. Flipping through its pages, one learns that Naidorf not only took risks designing his projects but even risked his job on occasion.
He writes in his memoir that in 1958, when he was designing the Humble Oil (now Exxon) headquarters in Houston, he refused to design separate locker rooms and drinking fountains for Black and white people, as the company asked him to. When he went home on that Friday night, he describes not knowing if he’d have a job the following Monday. Not only did Naidorf not lose his job, he says, but the company ceased segregating its locker rooms and drinking fountains after that.
“I realized architects have access to some of the most powerful people in the world and it is our job to bring up issues that represent social issues rather than just architectural design,” he says. “The only thing for evil to triumph is for good people to remain silent. Architects should not remain silent.”
Naidorf also understood that sometimes he was designing projects where people don’t want to be, like the Naval Medical Center in San Diego, which opened in 1988. “I felt that there were two emotions we had to contend with,” he says. “One was to lay the sense that this would be welcoming and have a more personal quality. But if you go to a hospital you want a quite contradictory thing. You want to have a sense that it’s state-of-the-art, that whatever powerful forces can cure you, they’re there.”
Instead of one medical building, which he felt would seem ominous, he designed several structures and a series of outdoor walkways to make the facility feel warm and comforting. The treatment and diagnostic part of the facility was bold, with an abundance of steel and glass. Walkways were lined with floor-to-ceiling glass to allow patients to see the outdoor courtyard, grass, trees, sky and distant views of a golf course “based on the primitive feeling you have in the hospital, which is to get out of the damn place,” he says.
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When he was out shopping a few months ago, Naidorf met a woman who mentioned that she had been in the Navy, forcing her to move around a lot when her son was battling childhood leukemia. Without knowing she was talking to the Naval Medical Center’s designer himself, she told Naidorf that it was the only hospital that didn’t scare her ill 6-year-old son, who has since made a full recovery.
“What kind of an architect…,” Naidorf says, overcome with emotion and his voice breaking, “do you have to be not to hold that as better than any design award?”
Though Naidorf had risen through Welton Becket & Associates’ ranks to become vice president, director of research and director of design, he grew increasingly unhappy after the firm’s merger with Ellerbe Associates (it was renamed Ellerbe Becket). He moved into academia full-time in 1990, spending just one day a week at the firm.
Naidorf became dean of the School of Architecture and Design at Woodbury University, earning numerous distinctions, including teacher, faculty member and administrator of the year. He was also a guest professor at UCLA, USC, Cal Poly Pomona and SCI-Arc. At his retirement ceremony in 2000, he was awarded an honorary doctorate, marking not only the end of his academic career but also his time in Los Angeles.
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Charmed by the beauty of Northern California, Naidorf moved up the coast to Santa Rosa. For the next 15 years, he continued working with Woodbury University as campus architect, designing and remodeling some of its buildings, and was invited to be a board member.
When he parted ways with Woodbury at 87 years old, it was not with the goal of taking it easy. Naidorf had other pursuits in mind, including his work with City Vision Santa Rosa revitalizing the city’s downtown area.
He also helped his close friend, Mike Harkins (who edited Naidorf’s memoir), design his new house free of charge after the 2017 Tubbs Fire burned Harkins’ home to the ground and he and his wife lost 99% of their belongings.
“Lou offered without solicitation: ‘I’d like to design your house,’” Harkins says. “To me or anyone else who knows him, it was a heartfelt offer that of course he would make, and yet so much more. One analogy might be if Eric Clapton said, ‘I’d like to play at your wedding.’ The knowledge and sensibility that comes along with a Naidorf design offering is huge, just like his heart.”
Most recently, Naidorf has been experimenting with plans for a project to help people who are unhoused.
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Naidorf has made the most of his architecture license over the last 71 years. His voice fills with pride when he reveals that he holds the earliest issued active architecture license in the state of California, obtained in 1952.
“It’s something I wanted to be since I was a little kid. My architecture license was so hard to come by. I don’t want to give it up,” he says with palpable emotion. “I don’t want to be retired. I want to be an architect until I fall over. I plan to be buried as a licensed architect.”
Of recently turning 95, he jokes that he feels like a bad vaudeville performer who soon will be pulled offstage by a hook. But Naidorf remains in remarkably good health after surviving both prostate and esophageal cancer in his 80s.
To keep his brain sharp, he does exercises including counting backward from 100 by sevens and taking IQ tests online.
As a nonagenarian, he says there is no key to living a long life. He suggests, though, that it helps to try to use it well. “It’s not how big the steak is but how tasty it is,” he says. “I think you have to seek a calling, listen for it and search for it. Find something in your life that is really yours. … Get engaged with something that’s going to scare you, something where the problems are hard. And take risks. There is no failure.”
He also notes the importance of adaptability. “I have had four marriages. I’d better be resilient,” he quips. Twice divorced and twice widowed, Naidorf has a daughter from his first marriage, four stepchildren (who call him “Dad”) from his fourth marriage, 11 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. An intensely private man, he’s reticent to speak publicly about his relationships and family, preferring to focus on his work.
“I remain so fascinated with architecture,” he says. “I cannot even walk past a store where somebody is putting in an electrical outlet without stopping to look in and watch it.”
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The chatty Naidorf turns summarily succinct, saying, “I certainly have had a good run.”
Former President Donald Trump has not made his real estate great again.
Trump has dominated the headlines recently, as he announced his intention to run for office again and then became the first former commander in chief to face criminal charges. But the polarizing politician and reality TV star is first, and perhaps foremost, a real estate mogul. And the past few years have not been kind to his sprawling residential real estate portfolio.
While home prices across America generally rose quickly during the “pandemic pump” housing market, sale prices at the properties listed on the Trump Organization’s website have either declined or appreciated at a slower pace than the local markets they’re in.
To be sure, the COVID-19-era real estate market will be one for the history books, defined initially by ultracheap mortgages, the liberation of newly mobile Americans who could pursue “remote work” away from their abandoned offices, and a continued housing shortage that all pushed home prices up in dramatic ways. The price gains have begun to correct in some areas, but in large part, historically high prices appear to have stuck.
But Trump’s real estate brand hasn’t benefited as much from the favorable housing market. Price appreciation for condos in properties listed on the Trump Organization’s website has been lower both in the luxury real estate and overall housing markets.
For example, the median condominium sale price in the U.S. rose 38% between 2019 and 2022, according to CoreLogic data. But over the same period, the median sale price at Trump Organization properties declined 14%. (The properties Realtor.com® analyzed were all condos.)
And while the price changes varied around the country, his condos didn’t outperform any of the local markets where they’re located.
Some local experts believe the price declines are related to the former president’s controversial politics, especially since most of his properties are in Democratic-leaning areas. Since he ran for office, his name has been pulled off some of his prime real estate holdings in major cities.
“A lot of people have said the buildings are great,” says Dan Neiditch, the president of River 2 River Realty in New York. “But when they have the Trump name on the buildings, it’s all about branding. And when that’s the case, you live and die by your brand, by your name.”
Trump was recently charged with 34 felony counts related to hush money payments made to an adult film star, is under investigation for election interference in Georgia, and is facing multiple lawsuits. That could also affect his real estate holdings, especially in places where the former president isn’t popular.
To come up with our findings, we pulled home sale records from CoreLogic, a real estate transaction data provider, for properties listed on the Trump Organization’s website. Then we compared them with condo sale prices for the counties where those properties are located. Because the CoreLogic data is not perfect, we also excluded transactions that appear to have erroneously high and low transaction amounts recorded (likely data entry mistakes).
While all of the Trump Organization’s condo projects were included in the national numbers, Trump real estate markets with fewer residential units (including Connecticut, Hawaii, and Westchester, NY) are not detailed in the pull-out sections below.
We used 2019—the year before pandemic fluctuations roiled U.S. housing—as a starting point/benchmark for our calculations.
Note: It’s unclear if every property listed on the Trump Organization’s website is owned by the organization. The Trump Organization is a privately held corporation, so it isn’t required to disclose the specifics of its real estate holdings to the public. And even though the Trump name might prominently grace a building, it doesn’t mean that the organization owns the property. The former president licenses his name for a host of different things, including real estate and consumer products.
The Trump Organization did not respond to a request for comment.
For decades, Donald Trump made a name for himself as a New York City real estate celebrity and tabloid fixture. The Big Apple was his launching pad, where the Trump Organization began developing residential properties in the early 1980s. And it’s still where his company has the most buildings.
He announced his first run for the presidency, in 2015, in his iconic Trump Tower on 5th Avenue, where he rode down a golden escalator.
But in the past few years, the organization’s Manhattan properties have fallen behind the competitive Manhattan condo market.
In 2022, the median sale price for all of the organization’s New York City properties combined was about $1.75 million. Within the past 10 years, that figure hit a high point in 2015, at $2.3 million, and a low in 2020, at around $1.4 million.
Since just before the COVID-19 pandemic, the Trump Organization’s prices are down about 16%—far behind the roughly 11% price growth for all condos in Manhattan over the same period.
The list of Manhattan buildings listed on the organization’s website includes the Trump Tower, in Midtown, and Trump Parc, on the southern edge of Central Park. On the Upper West Side, the organization has six buildings that make up Trump Place, situated along the Hudson River. Three are apartment buildings, which were not included in this analysis, and three are condominium buildings. Residents voted to remove the Trump name from the buildings in 2019. There is also Trump International Hotel & Tower, on Central Park West. In Midtown East, the organization owns Trump World Tower, looking onto the East River, just across the street from the United Nations headquarters. And on the Upper East Side, the organization owns Trump Park Avenue, Trump Palace, and 610 Park Avenue.
Despite the successful efforts to remove the Trump branding from several of his New York properties, much of the Trump residential real estate is still highly valued among certain buyers.
According to luxury real estate broker Dolly Lenz, the properties themselves and their management are second to none.
“The management of the properties—whether it’s Trump Tower, Trump International, Trump World Tower—are some of the best-run buildings in New York,” she says. “They choose the best doormen, the best concierges, so the service is top quality.”
But many of the Trump Organization’s properties are older and have trouble competing with the newer buildings, which offer more modern designs, layouts, and amenities. Trump Tower opened in 1983—40 years ago.
For some local experts, it’s politics that have caused the lagging prices.
“New York and New Jersey are majority-Democrat states. I believe the prices of Trump’s properties take a hit just because of the politics of the people in the area,” says Neiditch, of River 2 River Realty. “We’ve had people who lived there, who said, ‘Hey, we want to sell. We don’t want to live in a building where that name’s on the outside.’”
Access to Trump Tower, which was more restricted during Trump’s presidency due to heightened security and Secret Service activity, also likely affected the value of the units in the bellwether building, says one real estate expert, who asked not to be named.
Fed up with the backlash against him and his politics, Trump officially left New York. Since 2019, the former president has called the purple state of Florida home. He now resides in his oceanside Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach.
The Trump Organization has residential properties in and around Miami, including Trump Grande, Trump Tower Sunny Isles, and Trump Hollywood.
The Trump-branded properties in Florida’s Miami-Dade and Broward Counties appreciated by about 15% between 2019 and 2022, after first dipping in 2020, the biggest price gains of any location analyzed.
But prices shot up much higher in Florida during the pandemic as the Sunshine State saw an influx of companies and new residents. In the Miami-Dade and Broward markets where Trump properties are located, the median condo sale price has increased by more than 50%, going from just under $200,000 in 2019 to just above $300,000 in 2022.
And for the luxury condo segment in the same area (the upper 10% of sales by price), which is closer to the price range of the organization’s properties, prices grew by more than 60% over the same period.
Trump International Hotel & Tower’s opening in Las Vegas in 2008 marked the organization’s first expansion into the western U.S. But condo sale prices in the building have substantially lagged behind overall Las Vegas condo price appreciation.
The median sale price at Trump International Hotel & Tower took a significant hit in 2020, dropping from $305,000 to $214,500. Since then, the prices rose but were still down about 8% below pre-pandemic prices.
Meanwhile, in Clark County, which includes Las Vegas and the surrounding cities, the median condo sale price rose by more than 50% from 2019 to 2022.
June Stark, a real estate agent and broker at The Stark Team–Elite Realty, in Las Vegas, blamed pandemic restrictions as one of the reasons that Trump property prices dropped. Reduced tourism affected the building, which is a combined hotel and condo tower.
“The building itself is beautiful, probably the best-maintained hotel and condo tower in the city,” Stark says, noting that she was among the first agents to sell the residences.
Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago looms large in the city, with its height, distinctive style, and prime location, but the sale prices have taken a dive.
At 98 stories and reaching 1,388 feet, it’s the seventh-tallest building in the nation and second in Chicago (behind the Willis Tower, formerly known as the Sears Tower). The building’s off-centered, tapering spire is hard to mistake, but it’s the 20-foot-tall and 141-foot-wide “TRUMP” sign on the building on the northern bank of the Chicago River that informs anyone who passes by who owns the building.
But while the building’s prominence is unquestionable, the median sale price for residences there dropped by almost half in 2020 alone—going from just below $1.5 million the year before to $750,000. Since then, prices have come back some, but at $1 million in 2022, the median sale price is still down more than 30% compared with before the pandemic.
During the same three-year period, 2019–22, the median condo sale price in Cook County, which includes most of the Chicago area, rose about 12%. But for additional context, condos priced closer to Trump International Hotel & Tower in Chicago, those within the top 10% of sales by price for Cook County, also saw a big drop in prices in 2020, and an overall price decline greater than the Trump Organization’s building.
Across the Hudson River from the Trump Organization’s Manhattan properties is 88 Morgan Street Condominiums, formerly known as Trump Plaza Residences, in downtown Jersey City. The 55-story building, developed by the organization in the late 1980s, provides a sweeping view of the Manhattan skyline and the Upper Bay.
But 88 Morgan Street has not seen the same price gains as condos nearby. The median condo price in Hudson County, NJ, which includes everything from Bayonne to North Bergen and from the Hudson River across the Hackensack River to Kearny and Harrison to the west, saw modest appreciation during the pandemic, rising by about 14% from 2019 to 2022.
In Jersey City, condo sale prices at 88 Morgan Street rose only 4%.
“I know in those buildings in New Jersey, there have been fights about taking his name off,” says Neiditch, of River 2 River Realty, “but that’s been going on since back in 2016.”
In the early aughts, director Peter Jackson adapted J.R.R. Tolkien’s beloved fantasy epic, “The Lord of the Rings,” into an acclaimed film series. The high-fantasy saga followed Frodo and the Fellowship of the Ring’s quest to destroy the One Ring. In the mid-2010s, “The Hobbit” film series took viewers back to before the events of the first trilogy, showing how the One Ring came into the possession of Bilbo Baggins.
Now, fans can once again return to Middle-earth with the highly-anticipated premiere of “The Rings of Power.” Released on Sept. 2, 2022, on Amazon Prime, it takes place during the Second Age of Middle-Earth, thousands of years before “The Hobbit.” The series shows viewers how the Rings of Power and the Dark Lord Sauron came about, among other plotlines.
One of the best parts of seeing Tolkien’s work brought to life on the silver screen (and now at-home TV) is the locations and settings. The films and TV show have been famously filmed in New Zealand, set against the country’s stunning natural landscapes. If you can’t hop on a plane to New Zealand to visit the “Lord of the Rings” locations in person, these cities around the U.S. feel like places right out of Middle-Earth.
For this list, we used some locations from the original films and others from the new series. We chose these cities based on their appearance or resemblance to their Middle-earth counterparts. Mild spoilers ahead.
Misty Mountains, Rocky Mountains. Potato, po-tah-to. If one would like to live in a place that feels like the enchanted, Elven refuge of Rivendell, look no further than Aspen. Depictions of Rivendell show towering mountains, lush forests and a thriving yet peaceful city dwarfed by the majesty of nature. Aspen is similarly a mere speck against the giant Colorado Rockies. While waterfalls flow through the Elven city, you’ll need to head into the surrounding valleys and peaks to find them in Aspen, though.
Both are sanctuaries from the outside world, places to rest and be at one with nature. In addition to their abundant outdoorsy pursuits, you’ll also find abundant dining, gracious hosts and robust arts and crafts scenes, as well.
2. Missoula, MT, is the Shire and Hobbiton
One of the most beloved places in Middle-Earth is the bucolic green hills and cozy hillside homes of the Shire. As we all know, it’s the home of the Hobbits. With mountains on the horizon, it’s a place of peace and prosperity where families live happily. The Hobbit residents spend time outdoors enjoying their unspoiled natural surroundings. Its real-world counterpart is definitely Missoula.
Surrounded by rolling green hills with a mountainous backdrop, Missoula bears a striking resemblance to the Shire. The city itself is also dotted with trees and lush greenery. Locals love Missoula for its laidback, relaxed quality of life, which Hobbits also prized. But it’s also a very outdoorsy, vibrant town with great dining and higher education. One doesn’t need to look far to find a lovely hike, walk or activity. It also has a very close-knit community. Sounds very Shire-like to us.
“The Rings of Power” introduces viewers to the Southlands. This idyllic region features green hills, plains and forests set against snowcapped mountains. This realm of Men calls to mind the mountainous landscapes around the rugged, outdoorsy town of Jackson Hole. The wooden barns and historic settler buildings of the area also have a similar look to the Southland villages.
But, those who have read Tolkien’s books know that the Southlands will one day become Mordor. Yep, the dark, lifeless plain and evil lands of Lord Sauron in the original films. The series will likely show how this comes to pass. But Jackson Hole could one day share a similar fate thanks to the nearby Yellowstone Caldera supervolcano.
If you haven’t read “The Silmarillion,” Eregion will likely be new to you. During “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings,” the cities of Eregion were ancient ruins. But, in the “Rings of Power,” Eregion is a prosperous, thriving Elven kingdom. A sweeping aerial shot in the second episode shows a forested city full of grand towers, nestled against a body of water. Immense, green mountains surround the city. This brings to mind Anchorage’s scenic location.
Not only that, but Eregion is close to the Dwarven city of Khazad-dûm and the Mines of Moria. The show hints that Eregion will be the location of the mighty forge that created the “Rings of Power.” Building such a forge requires the crude natural resources, craftsmanship and extractive skills of the Dwarf kingdom. Alaska is also a place of extreme natural beauty, mined for its natural resources.
It may lack the dramatic mountain backing of Minas Tirith. But the gleaming white and grey towers and spires of the City that Never Sleeps mimic the grandeur and colossal scale of Gondor’s capital city. From the multi-tiered building levels to the crowing spire of the Empire State Building, these two great cities look very similar. But, they’re also alike in terms of their importance in their respective realms.
As Gondor was the main realm of Men in Middle-earth, so is New York City, one of modern man’s great centers of living. It’s here that business, art, culture, politics and key historical events all converge, as in Minas Tirith.
Who can forget the enchanting, moss-laden Fangorn Forest? It was here that Merry and Pippin first encountered the Ents in “The Twin Towers?” Located at the base of the southeastern Misty Mountains, this deep, dark woodland is the last remnant of a sweeping forest dating from the First Age of Middle-earth.
With its lush, dense city parks like Forest Park and Washington Park, Portland captures that same, magical feeling. Portland is often hailed as one of the greenest cities in the U.S. Along with its many parks, Portland’s eccentric and fantastical districts boast their own urban forest. So, even if you’re not hiking in Forest Park, you still feel surrounded by nature. Not only that, but Portland locals love the great outdoors. It’s common to spend most of your time outside, and locals also respect nature. The city’s famously weird atmosphere also dovetails with LOTR’s fantasy genre.
And, with Bigfoot said to roam the forests and mountains of the Pacific Northwest, who’s to say there isn’t an Ent or two out there, as well?
With its stately trees, undulating forested mountains and tranquil aura, the Blue Ridge Mountains of the southeastern United States feel similar to Lothlórien. This realm of sky-scraping trees and mystical cities is the fairest of all the Elven realms. Anyone who explores the Blue Ridge Mountains can’t deny its majesty and beauty.
For many reasons, the mountain city of Asheville in the heart of North Carolina‘s Blue Ridge Mountains feels like it would fit right into place in Lothlórien. Its historic and stately architecture, like the Biltmore Estate, and wealth of architectural styles from Gothic to Beaux Arts reflect the elegant dwellings of the Elves. Asheville is renowned for its arts scene and makers culture, and the Elves of LOTR are master craftsmen, as well. Finally, the beautiful outdoors in and outside the city feel like the timeless forests of Tolkien’s fantasy realm.
Why watch Middle Earth when you could live in it?
It’s all well and good to watch the films and TV shows or read the books and imagine yourself living in Middle-Earth. But, in these “Lord of the Rings” cities and regions, it’s like you’re actually there. So, why not go on an adventure and try living in a new city that feels like something out of a fantasy world?
Zoe Baillargeon is an award-winning writer and journalist based in Portland, Oregon, where she covers a variety of beats including travel, food and drink, lifestyle and culture for outlets like Apartment Guide, Rent., AFAR.com, Fodor’s, The Manual, Matador Network and more. In her free time, she enjoys traveling, hiking, reading and spoiling her cat.
In the news recently, ioTium was chosen by SPIRE Realty Group, a Dallas-based commercial real estate services company, to charge up the company’s cloud-based visibility into building performance and third-party access. A key member of the team working to better enable SPIRE’s security and building performance, Jordan Crow is the company’s VP of Information Technology (IT). We recently caught up with Jordan for the lowdown on SPIRE’s latest move into the PropTech space.
RealtyBiz: What led to you choosing ioTium to power your building automation network?
Jordan Crow: I chose ioTium due to the structure of the platform, and the ease of adding additional users. Before deploying ioTium, we essentially had to create a bastion host inside of the network with GoToMyPC installed on it. This was an okay solution, but it did not scale for my larger buildings.
RealtyBiz: Is this SPIRE’s first leap into IoT security and building automation?
Jordan Crow: This is not SPIRE’s first venture into IoT and building automation. We have been using it for some time now – ioTium was just the best answer on how to securely access all of our building resources remotely.
RealtyBiz: How important is this move for satisfying your clients and third parties?
Jordan Crow: Deploying ioTium has allowed SPIRE to react more quickly to tenant issues. Instead of a building engineer or vendor having to physically travel to a building to resolve an issue, they can log in remotely and make changes. I have peace of mind because it is done securely.
RealtyBiz: Can you briefly describe the nature of automated systems across your network for readers who might be unfamiliar?
Jordan Crow: While no building is the same, we are in the process of automating our energy management systems to react to conditions within the building with very little to no engineer involvement. We are also discussing other building automation projects that are in preliminary stages.
My take: Back in March, Ron Victor, founder and CEO, ioTium said SPIRE and other leading edge companies are leading the charge for modernizing an industry that’s been shackled to legacy infrastructures. More and more we are seeting unique cloud-managed infrastructure solutions and other IoT innovations come to the forefront to bolster efficiency, which in turn cuts costs. It will be interesting to see how quickly competitors and other segment players adapt to this new environment of change.
Phil Butler is a former engineer, contractor, and telecommunications professional who is editor of several influential online media outlets including part owner of Pamil Visions with wife Mihaela. Phil began his digital ramblings via several of the world’s most noted tech blogs, at the advent of blogging as a form of journalistic license. Phil is currently top interviewer, and journalist at Realty Biz News.