Trump Tower, the skyscraper that put the former real estate developer on the map, was steeped in controversy after the future President reneged on a promise to save valuable pieces of artwork.

The contentious tale goes back to 1980, about a year after Trump bought the Bonwit Teller building on Fifth Ave. and 56th St. in Manhattan.

That cross street is now home the 62-story Trump Tower, constructed by undocumented Polish workers and completed in 1983.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art offered to take a pair of sculptures from the 11-story Art Deco building, which Trump planned to raze to make way for his Trump Tower.

Trump reportedly promised to remove the statues, estimated to be worth several hundred thousand dollars, if it wasn’t too costly.

His demolition crews soon began chipping away at the 15-foot high sculptures without much warning.

John Baron, a Trump Organization executive who later turned out to be Trump in disguise, told the newspaper the preservation was scrapped because “the merit of these stones was not great enough to justify the effort to save them.”

And what of the Art Deco grillwork and figures? The LRB cites a Vanity Fair interview with Trump: “Who cares? Let’s say that I had given that junk to the Met. They would have just put them in their basement. I’ll never have the goodwill of the Establishment, the tastemakers of New York. Do you think, if I failed, these guys in New York would be unhappy? They would be thrilled! Because they have never tried anything on the scale that I am trying things in this city. I don’t care about their goodwill.”