Donald Trump defends garish 20-foot sign in Chicago

Not one to ever avoid the limelight, Donald Trump is stirring up controversy in Chicago over a massive sign he recently installed on one of his skyscrapers. The eyesore, which features 20-foot high letters spelling out his last name, looms large over the Chicago River, making it hard to miss the real estate mogul's stamp on the city. Naturally, some Chicagoans are less than thrilled.
"A wart is putting it politely I think," Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin told CBS News. Mayor Rahm Emanuel said he thinks the sign is "architecturally tasteless" and is looking into ways to shrink it or take it down.
Trump, for his part, is in no mood to change it.
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"I just think that Chicago has other problems that they should be worried about. Not a sign," he said. "The fact is that people really love it and they love the building. It will become a very iconic sign. It's a very high quality, very beautiful sign that I think enhances the building greatly." --Jordan Valinsky
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Jordan Valinsky is the lead writer for Speed Reads. Before joining The Week, he wrote for New York Observer's tech blog, Betabeat, and tracked the intersection between popular culture and the internet for The Daily Dot. He graduated with a degree in online journalism from Ohio University.
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