A man has died and several firefighters were injured after a raging fire that tore through an apartment at New York’s Trump Tower sent flames and thick, black smoke pouring from windows of the US President’s namesake skyscraper.

New York Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said the cause of the blaze on Saturday (US time) is not yet known but the apartment was “virtually entirely on fire” when firefighters arrived after 5:30pm local time.

“It was a very difficult fire, as you can imagine,” Mr Nigro told reporters outside the building on 5th Avenue in midtown Manhattan. “The apartment is quite large.”

Todd Brassner, 67, who was in the apartment, was taken to a hospital and died a short time later, the New York Police Department said.

The fire was contained to the 50th floor of the tower. It was ruled under control around 9 pm.

Six firefighters suffered injuries that are not life threatening, fire department spokeswoman Angelica Conroy told CNN.

No members of the Trump family were at the tower during the fire, Fire Commissioner Mr Nigro said.

The burned apartment was valued at US$2.5 million, according to CNN citing bankruptcy documents from 2015.

Mr Brassner reportedly had an extensive art collection, including a portrait of himself by Andy Warhol and hundreds of guitars and ukeleles, according to the bankruptcy documents.

Shortly after news of the fire broke, Donald Trump, who was in Washington, tweeted: “Fire at Trump Tower is out. Very confined (well built building). Firemen (and women) did a great job. THANK YOU!”

Fire at Trump Tower is out. Very confined (well built building). Firemen (and women) did a great job. THANK YOU!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 7, 2018

Fire sprinklers were not required in New York City high-rises when Trump Tower was completed in 1983.

Subsequent updates to the building code required commercial skyscrapers to install the sprinklers retroactively, but owners of older residential high-rises are not required to install sprinklers unless the building undergoes major renovations.

Some fire-safety advocates pushed for a requirement that older apartment buildings be retrofitted with sprinklers when New York City passed a law requiring them in new residential highrises in 1999, but officials in the administration of then-mayor Rudy Giuliani said that would be too expensive.

Mr Trump’s family has an apartment on the top floors of the 58-storey building, but he has spent little time in New York since taking office. The headquarters of the Trump Organisation is on the 26th floor.

Mr Nigro said firefighters and Secret Service members checked on the condition of Mr Trump’s apartment. About 200 firefighters and emergency medical service workers responded to the fire, he said.

Some residents said they didn’t get any notification from building management to evacuate.

Lalitha Masson, a 76-year-old resident, called it “a very, very terrifying experience”.

Ms Masson told The New York Times that she did not receive any announcement about leaving, and that when she called the front desk no one answered.

“When I saw the television, I thought we were finished,” said Ms Masson, who lives on the 36th floor with her husband, Narinder, who is 79 and has Parkinson’s disease.

“I called my oldest son and said goodbye to him because the way it looked everything was falling out of the window, and it reminded me of 9/11.”

–with AAP