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A presidential penthouse, far above a madding crowd

The first floor living room of Donald and Melania Trump's penthouse at Trump Tower.Sam Horine

NEW YORK — America’s next president lives on the 66th floor of a 58-story tower that bears his name.

He rode the support of white, rural, and suburban America all the way to Pennsylvania Avenue, but until he moves into the White House he’ll stay in a gilded penthouse high above the country’s most diverse and cosmopolitan metropolis — in the middle of a borough where he received only about 10 percent of the vote.

Nearly everything about President-elect Donald J. Trump’s anti-establishment campaign for the presidency bucked convention. But in the days after his election to the nation’s highest office, few such contradictions were as obvious as the simple fact of where he lays his head.

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Unlike his recent predecessors, whose accommodations at least loosely resemble the kinds of domiciles with which Americans are familiar, Trump Tower is flanked by the flagship store of Tiffany & Co., and the Gucci flagship store is inside. Bergdorf Goodman, perhaps the single toniest department store in the world, is one block over.

In the days after the election, the already crowded corners nearby were overrun. Protesters held signs bearing block-letter expletives above their heads as they pushed through throngs of tourists and looky-loos and commuters who had the misfortune of stumbling upon the melee.

Police with bullhorns shepherded the crowds along, while the more devoted demonstrators were confined to barricaded areas in the street. Five men calling themselves Blacks for Trump gave long, semi-coherent interviews to foreign journalists camped out in a separate barricade. A few times a day, the Naked Cowboy made the trek up from his usual spot in Times Square, wading into the crowd in his underpants.

Across the street, a young woman tried without success to burn an American flag in the rain.

In the middle of this mess, surrounded by a population of local residents who probably wouldn’t have voted for Trump at gunpoint, protecting the president-elect presents some obvious challenges — both for security and livability on what were already some of the busiest blocks in the country.

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“It’s a challenge. I don’t think it’s an overwhelming challenge,” New York City’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, said at a news conference this week. “Look, we’re talking about the next few months, and then Donald Trump is going to be living in the White House.”

Besides, he added, the holidays are coming: “Midtown is going to be all messed up anyway.”

Since Election Day, several massive sanitation trucks piled full of sand have lined Fifth Avenue in front of the building, arranged to prevent would-be attackers from crashing a vehicle into the building or setting off a bomb out front that would damage or even topple the tower. Nearby, 56th Street was closed entirely, and confused commuters trying to cross streets ended up jogging around several blocks only to encounter another barricade.

The sidewalk in front of the building is barricaded, though New York police officers politely allowed tourists and others through to have lunch at Trump Grill or shop inside. Officers with long guns stood outside, and none would say exactly how long this might continue. The airspace around the tower was off-limits per FAA order, indefinitely grounding some sightseeing flights that routinely pass too close for comfort.

Inside, the lobby was filled with more security, human and canine. Trump once threatened to organize a boycott of Starbucks over holiday cups that were insufficiently Christmasy, but there’s a Starbucks on a mezzanine high above the lobby.

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Below, small groups gathered for lunch at Trump Grill, makers of the famous taco salad that Trump once proclaimed the best in the world in a tweet on Cinco de Mayo (“I love Hispanics!” he added.)

Trump’s campaign office is on the fifth floor, and his business offices are on the 26th. Though records show the building is only 58 stories tall, Trump’s penthouse is on the 66th floor, the result of longstanding exaggerations of the size of several of his towers.

Other condos are filled with residents who were at least as famous as Trump until fairly recently.

Bruce Willis reportedly lives there, as does soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo when he’s in town. The former president of the Brazilian Soccer Federation, implicated in a bribery scandal, is serving his house arrest inside after he paid a hefty bail, essentially forking over $10 million for the right to pick his own jail cell.

The pink marble and gold plating and roiling chaos are, like the man himself, a far cry from Trump’s immediate predecessors.

Few details are available about the inside of President Obama’s Chicago home, in the Kenwood neighborhood. But it’s perfectly visible from the street, tucked into an upscale residential neighborhood. Before Obama’s election and during his president-elect period at the end of 2008, heightened security in the neighborhood — including road closures and checkpoints — was mildly disruptive to a nearby synagogue.

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When a couple bought the house next door and undertook a substantial remodeling project, contractors told The New York Times that they had to run plans by the White House, and workers all underwent background checks.

President George W. Bush’s frequent presence on his ranch outside Crawford, Texas, was even less disruptive during his two terms. The property was so unremarkable from the rural road that a coffee shop in town sold maps to help tourists find the place, until the Secret Service shut that down, according to USA Today.

A 2014 photo spread in Architectural Digest depicted a serene, low-slung country estate surrounded by patches of wildflowers beyond rolling swaths of high-mowed grass. Double doors and tall windows let the Texas sunshine fall on a modern white kitchen and a carpeted breezeway in which the former president spends his time hunched over an easel, working on oil portraits of world leaders and dogs.

The interior of Trump’s penthouse, which a private elevator opens into directly, is considerably less rustic. A May photo gallery in House Beautiful magazine detailed the apartment’s rococo styling, marble floors and columns, and extravagant gold plating. Melania Trump, the magazine discovered, “prefers to decorate her desk with short-stemmed yellow roses.”

But though tourists and curiosity seekers and, occasionally, journalists can talk their way into the lobby, catching a glimpse of the next president is a challenge.

On Wednesday, all that could be seen were aides making their way up and down the gold-plated elevators.

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The Blacks for Trump guys enjoyed a quiet meal in Trump Grill.

The Starbucks was temporarily closed.


Nestor Ramos can be reached at nestor.ramos@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @NestorARamos.