Christened "Trump Castle" (natch), the development would have comprised "six cylinders of varying heights with gold-leafed, coned and crenelated tops," built to a height of 60 stories, complete with a drawbridge and moat. In an interview, the chief architect for this project described Trump as "mad and wonderful," and while I can't vouch for the latter, he's far from the only one to vouch for the former. Despite initially teaming up with the Trump Organization, the owners of the site, Prudential Insurance, backed out of the project after they realized that the estimated $200 million cost would leave them with the most expensive square footage in the city. As one executive explained, "We didn't want to do a deal that depended on selling apartments for $1.5 million each to break even."

It's not all bad news, however. He eventually managed to make Trump Castle a reality ... in New Jersey. And it was truly a property fit for a king:

Back in the '90s, Trump bought the land in order to convert it into a golf course, but thanks to some pesky red tape that said rich assholes can't buy up acres of woodland for vanity projects designed to attract other rich assholes, the town where the park sits denied his request. That left Trump with a big tract of land that he couldn't do much with except his favorite thing in the world: get a tax break. He donated the land to the state of New York, netting a tax write-off estimated at $100 million.

As great as this worked for Trump, it was terrible for New York, which was left holding a big chunk of land it didn't want. They tried to make it look nice (they really did), but they could only afford $2,500 for annual upkeep, and having no full-time staff, the park soon turned into a nightmare zone of dilapidated buildings, moldy swimming pools, and other scenes that make it resemble a post-nuclear wasteland.

In 2010, the state attempted to convert the site into a dog park, but after construction unearthed asbestos in several of the buildings, they closed the park for good and left it to rot. This irritated Trump so much that he demanded the park back, to which the state told him to go screw. It's not entirely clear why he wanted the park back, knowing full well he couldn't do anything with it, but it might be due to the fact that not only does he think asbestos is perfectly safe ("It's a mob conspiracy!"), but he's also a big goddamn baby.

RealDonaldTrump/TwitterAgain, for those not up on their Trump lore, he’s got some weird opinions.

So what's the deal? Nobody knows! But there are plenty of ... suspicions. In 2005, the property was gifted to Trump for the grant total of $1 by Nazeema Carrico, a local woman who operated a photography studio specializing in "adult lingerie shoots." She deleted all of her social media profiles when reporters tried to ask her about it. You know, like all normal people do when they have nothing to hide.

According to the broker who sold the property, Igor Korbatov: "Human error is not implausible and happens all the time." That's the thing, though. These "human errors" happen an impressive amount around Trump, and always to his benefit -- or at least, that's my takeaway from the fact that the following year he sold the mansion for $9.5 million.

Interestingly, the lawyer who not only handled the shell company that initially received the property, but who also managed its sale? That'd be now-convicted criminal Michael Cohen.

Huh.

So what's a local businessman to do? If you're Trump, you reroute the deal through an associate under the guise of stopping the mob from identifying the prospective buyer. ("If Testa had known who was buying his nightclub, 'the price they asked could conceivably have been $2 million to $3 million.'") This little legal maneuver also meant it was harder to link Trump to funding the fucking mob. This was, of course, before the days of Twitter, when he'd straight-up brag about it online, then call it "fake news" when anyone reported it.

Adam Wears is on Twitter and Facebook, and has a newsletter dedicated to depressing history facts. It's not as heartbreakingly sad as it sounds, promise!

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