What had first appeared to be a return to his hometown that would include an afternoon visit to the penthouse apartment where he lived before the White House and a few hours of meetings and motorcades through Midtown Manhattan, ended up shrinking to a blink-and-you-miss-it stop at an aircraft carrier in the Hudson River that lasted about as long as a commuter’s ride home.

But a first visit back to New York is still a first visit, and hundreds of protesters responded to a day that was, for them, weighted with meaning far beyond what actually happened. President Trump, a New York City product whose identity is as woven into the place as the steel rebar in the buildings that bear his name, was, for the first time since taking office in January, back in town.