July 8, 2020 | 10:38pm
The lettering will stretch between 56th and 57th streets right in front of Trump’s Midtown high-rise.
Matthew McDermott
New York City will begin painting a large Black Lives Matter mural along Fifth Avenue outside Trump Tower on Thursday, sources told The Post.
Mayor Bill de Blasio plans to attend the project at some point as well, the sources said. The lettering will stretch between 56th and 57th streets right in front of Trump’s Manhattan high-rise.
The mayor had planned to start work on the mural last week but postponed the painting a day after President Trump condemned the idea as a “symbol of hate.”
“NYC is cutting Police $’s by ONE BILLION DOLLARS, and yet the @NYCMayor is going to paint a big, expensive, yellow Black Lives Matter sign on Fifth Avenue, denigrating this luxury Avenue,” Trump wrote in a series of tweets last Wednesday morning.
“Maybe our GREAT Police, who have been neutralized and scorned by a mayor who hates & disrespects them, won’t let this symbol of hate be affixed to New York’s greatest street,” Trump went on. “Spend this money fighting crime instead!”
De Blasio pushed back later that morning, tweeting, “The fact that you see it as denigrating your street is the definition of racism.”
“Black people BUILT 5th Ave and so much of this nation,” the mayor added. “Your “luxury” came from THEIR labor, for which they have never been justly compensated. We are honoring them.”
WNBC first reported the new start date for the Trump Tower mural Wednesday night.
The mural is among several the city has committed to painting around the five boroughs and comes after identical murals were completed in Flatbush, Brooklyn, and St. George, Staten Island.
