New York, New York, USA

Demolished 1980

The Disappointed Tourist: Bonwit-Teller, Ellen Harvey, 2021. Oil and acrylic on Gessoboard, 24 x 18″ (61 x 46 cm). Photograph: Etienne Frossard.

Bonwit-Teller was a luxury department store founded by Paul Bonwit in 1895. From 1930 onwards, its flagship store (designed by Whitney Warren & Charles Wetmore) was located on 5th Avenue and 56th Street in Manhattan. The building was purchased and subsequently demolished in 1980 by Donald Trump who replaced it with Trump Tower. Trump had the limestone reliefs of women dancing jack hammered off the building and destroyed the Art Deco grillwork, despite having promised to donate both to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I don’t know who took the old photograph on which the painting was based.

Once a vandal, always a vandal. Anon

Also requested by BRD.