“True luxury has always been a rare commodity in Manhattan,” architecture critic Paul Goldberger wrote in a 1985 New York Times article, “Defining Luxury in New York’s New Apartments.” Even in the 1920s, he claimed–the decade during which Rosario Candela was defining Art Deco grandeur on the Upper East Side–there were apartment towers bad enough to make Lewis Mumford grumble. The quality of glamorous dwelling had finally reached rock-bottom in the mid-1970s, when “luxury housing” meant nothing except cheaply built, boxy high-rises on Second and Third Avenues, buildings with tiny rooms, thin walls, and low ceilings,” the Times writer deplored.
By the 1980s, Goldberger thought things were looking up. Architecture was finally becoming a selling point in residential real estate. It wasn’t all exceptional, but he felt that a significant portion of the new work “represented a degree of architectural ambition.” For him, one such building was Trump Plaza at 61st Street and Third Avenue, a 39-story limestone-and-glass tower, designed by New York architect Philip Birnbaum. Th…