Trump Wanted His Name Across the Earth. New York City Said No.

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There is at least one conspicuous object owned by Donald J. Trump in New York City that never carried his name.

The enormous silvery globe at the Trump International Hotel and Tower on Columbus Circle in Manhattan — a homage to the Unisphere in Mr. Trump’s home borough of Queens — was originally intended to be girdled by the words “Trump International,” in letters about three feet high.

Instead, the 30-foot-wide sculpture simply shows the world’s land masses silhouetted on a spherical framework of latitudinal and longitudinal struts. Like the original 120-foot Unisphere, built for the 1964-65 World’s Fair, the Trump globe is encircled by three orbital rings.

As such, it is an aesthetic understatement in the Trump canon.

But the understatement, it turns out, was enforced.

A 20-year-old City Planning Department memorandum, provided this month to The New York Times, shows that agency officials viewed any lettering on the globe as illegal.

The case has newfound relevance with the Trump brand seemingly under fire or in retreat in some quarters.

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Before 1996, Mr. Trump had put his name on just about anything he wanted.

When it came to Columbus Circle, however, officials in the administration of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who is currently an ardent supporter of Mr. Trump’s presidential candidacy on the Republican ticket, all but said: Enough is enough.

“There is no question that the globe with lettering is a sign and is not a permitted obstruction,” Richard Barth and Douglas Woodward wrote to the director and the executive director of the City Planning Department on Oct. 23, 1996.

At the time, Mr. Barth was the director of the department’s Manhattan planning office. Mr. Woodward was an urban designer responsible for the many redevelopment projects occurring around Columbus Circle, including the redesign of the circle itself.

They had just met with Charles Reiss, a senior vice president of the Trump Organization, who tried to persuade them that a Trump-branded globe would fall within the definition of “ornamental fountains or statuary,” which are permitted by law to obstruct some views at public plazas.

Mr. Barth and Mr. Woodward were not buying it — any of it.

“Setting aside the issue of whether the globe is a permitted obstruction,” they wrote, “we believe that the scale of the globe is so enormous, it would detract from the overall streetscape plan we are designing for the circle.”

In the end, the only words on the globe were “Brandell Miami,” on a small plaque mounted on the cylindrical base. Kim Brandell was the sculptor and designer. He had earlier crafted a globe for the short-lived Trump World’s Fair casino in Atlantic City. That mini-Unisphere carried Mr. Trump’s name prominently — looking like the Universal Pictures logo of the 1930s and ’40s.

Neither Brandell Studios nor the Trump Organization responded on Tuesday to requests by email for comment.

So it was left to Jerold S. Kayden, the founder and president of Advocates for Privately Owned Public Space, to sum up the case:

“Slapping one’s name on a work of art doesn’t make the name part of the artwork.”