In Andy Warhol’s diary, Trump Tower is both a stage for celebrity and a source of irritation. Its basement hosts a cheerleading tryout, its public spaces bring Warhol face to face with admirers, and the building’s association with the Trumps becomes inseparable from his resentment over rejected portraits and the traffic around their hotel.

Publicity and Recognition

On November 29, 1983, Warhol went to Trump Tower with a stack of Interview magazines and watched people take copies for free. One woman was shaking when she asked him for an autograph and told him, “God bless you.” His brief hope that she might be right gives the encounter a note of uncertainty: the scene offers a visible sign of admiration, but not a settled confidence in what that admiration means.

Cheerleading Tryouts

On January 15, 1984, Warhol served as a judge at the final cheerleading tryouts for the New Jersey Generals, the team Donald Trump had bought. The tryouts were held in a basement section of Trump Tower. Warhol was meant to arrive at noon but went to church first and reached the event around two, explaining that he still hated the Trumps because they had not bought his paintings of Trump Tower.

By the time he arrived, the judges had reached the fiftieth contestant, with twenty girls still to go. Another judge had been filling in, then handed Warhol his scoring pad; Warhol took over without knowing how to score. The girls did not seem special to him without a spotlight, though an occasional camera flash made one look good. The building thus frames a small spectacle in which visibility depends, quite literally, on the light falling on the contestants.

Among the other judges was LeRoy Neiman, who said he voted for anyone who could kick. Ivana voted for girls who looked like her. Warhol noticed the variety of their bodies, from broad hips and small waists to boyish builds and very skinny legs. He also observed that the cheerleaders would do the work “for fun” and would not be paid; in his account, marriage to a football player offered a possible route to material security. The tryout scene therefore turns the tower’s display of glamour into a practical, and sharply unequal, calculation about work, appearance, and reward.

Portraits, Hotels, and Traffic

Warhol’s resentment toward the Trumps recurs beyond the tryout. In a later diary entry, he again says he hates them because they never bought his Trump Tower portraits. He adds a separate complaint: cabs backing up on the upper level of their ugly Hyatt Hotel had made traffic around Grand Central so bad that his journey home took longer. The entry links an artistic slight to an everyday inconvenience, making the tower and its associated hotel a persistent point of friction in his account of the city.