Dubbed "the Henry Ford of the home-building industry", Fred Trump started out at age 16 building a garage for his neighbour and went on to construct a staggering 27,000 low and middle-income houses and apartments in the outer boroughs of the Big Apple, not to mention one of the world's first supermarkets. Click or scroll on to discover how the controversial property baron pulled it off – and how he taught his favourite son the tricks of the trade and kick-started the Donald's career.
Frederick Christ Trump was born on 11 October 1905 in a Victorian tenement in the heart of the Bronx. His namesake father had made a tidy sum owning and operating hotels, restaurants and brothels during Alaska's Klondike Gold Rush before marrying Elisabeth Christ in 1902 and starting a family. Fred was the couple's second child; their daughter Elizabeth arrived in 1904.
A native of the Bavarian village of Kallstadt, Fred's father had attempted to resettle in Germany after his stint in the States but was stripped of his citizenship for evading conscription. He returned to the US with his wife and young daughter in July 1905, setting up home in a tenement apartment at 539 East 177th Street (to the left of this image from around 1900), next to the IRT Third Avenue Line and opposite the Bronx Borough Hall, both of which are long gone.
As you can see, the building is still standing, though East 177th Street is now East Tremont Avenue. While hardly a slum, the tenement was built under the old zoning laws, meaning it had shared bathrooms and no hot water, so it wasn't the most salubrious of dwellings. Luckily, Frederick Sr was making decent money as a barber, nicely boosting his Gold Rush nest egg.
In 1907, the year his second son John was born, the Trump patriarch moved with his wife and kids a couple of miles south to the recently developed Woodstock neighbourhood. The family's swish, totally brand-new apartment in a fancy corner building came complete with a private bathroom and other luxurious features, including an icebox.
With New York City rapidly expanding, Frederick Sr set his sights on real estate investing. In 1908, he bought his first New York City property, a two-storey frame building on the north side of Jamaica Avenue, which is off in the distance to the right in this photo. The hustle and bustle of Jamaica Avenue proved too much, however, and after a few months the Trumps relocated to a two-storey frame house on tranquil First Street, to the south. As well as working as a barber, Frederick Sr managed the Medallion Hotel on Sixth Street for a spell, and also found time to develop his burgeoning real estate investing career.
Pretty much everything was going swimmingly for the German immigrant until the First World War broke out in 1914. Amid rising anti-German sentiment, Frederick opted to keep a low profile; having already anglicised his name, he pulled back from the property business. This family portrait was taken around 1915, with the three children surrounding their stern-looking parents. Fred is standing to the left, Elizabeth is in the middle and John is on the right.
Though the Trumps escaped the horrors of the First World War, they were not spared the ravages of the Spanish Flu epidemic. Frederick Sr became one of its early victims, dying of the disease in May 1918. Fred was 12 at the time. The immigrant from Bavaria bequeathed an impressive estate: the family’s two-storey house, five vacant lots, 14 mortgages, $4,000 in savings and life insurance and $3,600 worth of stock, according to Gwenda Blair's biography, The Trumps: Three Generations That Built an Empire. The total net value amounted to $31,359, which translates to around $632,000 (£496k) in today's money.
Later that year, Fred started at Richmond Hill High School, shown here in 1930, but – unlike his brother John, who went on to become a distinguished MIT physicist and engineer – Fred was more practical than academic. Keen to work from an early age, he had a number of jobs on the side, including delivery boy, newspaper hawker and golf caddy. Fred was also avidly interested in construction and took night classes in carpentry and reading blueprints, as well as correspondence courses in plumbing, masonry and electrical wiring. His mother, Elizabeth – who had anglicised her name from Elisabeth – carried on her late husband's real estate business in earnest, and Fred was to be her budding master builder.
The enterprising teenager threw himself into the job 100%. In 1921, at the age of 16, he completed his first real estate job, putting up a garage for a neighbour, and identified a gap in the market at a time when motorcar ownership was skyrocketing. This is the only standalone garage on 87th Avenue – so perhaps it could be Fred's handiwork. After graduating high school a year or so later, the rookie developer went full steam ahead.
After a succession of jobs, the skilled youngster became a carpenter's assistant. He also signed up for courses in engineering, estimating and other aspects of construction at Brooklyn's Pratt Institute, honing his skills and giving him an edge over the competition. Armed with the requisite know-how, Fred took the plunge. In 1924, the novice developer built his first house, a simple one-family dwelling in Woodhaven. This photo of the neighbourhood was taken around that time. The project was bankrolled by his mother to the tune of $800, which is only $14,000 (£11k) in 2023 money. It proved to be a massively lucrative move, as Fred sold the finished property for the equivalent of $122,000 (£96k) today.
Fred was riding high off his rookie success and hastily followed it up by building two dinky homes in Queens Village, before turning his attention to the up-and-coming Hollis neighbourhood next door. By 1926, the fledgling developer had constructed 19 modest albeit “beautiful English-type homes” in the area, which sold for between $3,990 and $9,950 a-piece, up to $171,000 (£134k) today.
Here's another shot of the basic but robustly built Hollis homes. The properties each boasted a spacious living room, a dining room decked out with parquet flooring and a kitchen with a breakfast nook, plus a small garage or driveway. Frederick Sr's legacy had been diminished by rampant postwar inflation and credit was hard to come by, so Fred financed the houses by selling one before it was finished, then using the proceeds to get another off the ground.
This was quite the balancing act, and Fred had to toil away 24/7 to make it work. The business had been operating as E Trump & Son and was helmed by his mother, as Fred was still a minor and couldn't sign cheques or legal documents. Elizabeth, who had a more pivotal role in its success than she has been given credit for, incorporated the company in 1927.
By this time, the Trumps had moved from First Street/87th Avenue to this Tudor-style house built by Fred on Devonshire Road in the leafy Jamaica Estates neighbourhood, just northwest of Hollis in Queens. With the business incorporated and the family happily ensconced in a handsome new home, 1927 should have been a year of celebration for the Trumps. But it was marred by one notorious incident. On 31 May 1927, 21-year-old Fred was arrested at a violent anti-Catholic Ku Klux Klan rally in Queens. According to a report in the Long Island Daily Press dug up by Vice, those in attendance were all wearing Klansman robes. That said, there is no evidence Lutheran-raised Fred was a supporter or member of the white supremacist hate group. In any case, he was released without charge.
Still, Fred would go on to be accused of blatant discrimination later on in life, as we shall discover shortly. By 1929, the fresh-faced developer had erected scores of compact middle-class homes in Hollis and elsewhere. He was going upmarket, building grander English Tudor and Georgian Colonial-style residences in stone, stucco and brick on lots he'd acquired in Jamaica Estates.
These premium five-bedroom properties sold for up to $30,000, which is $534,000 (£419k) today. But just as Fred was getting started on this luxury endeavour, the Wall Street Crash occurred, triggering the Great Depression. The bottom fell out of the real estate market as banks curbed lending and borrowers struggled to keep up with mortgage payments. Foreclosures abounded, and between 1929 and 1932 property prices in parts of New York City plummeted 67%.
Though he faltered in the early days of the economic catastrophe sweeping the US, the Great Depression turned out to be a blessing for Fred. With the housing market in dire straits, the resourceful developer diversified his business and in 1933, he opened one of New York City's first modern supermarkets in Woodhaven, inspired by the King Kullen chain, which had launched in Jamaica Estates two years prior. Here's the building today.
Instead of King Kullen's “Pile it high, sell it low” slogan, Fred went with “Serve Yourself and Save!”, but copied pretty much everything else. The innovative Trump Markets and its budget prices were a hit with hard-up locals, but Fred's heart wasn't in it. Within a few months, he had sold the store to King Kullen for a fat profit and returned to his true love, property development. Fred well and truly got his foot back in the door in 1934 when together with his partner at the time William Demm, he scooped up the mortgage arm of the J Lehrenkrauss Corporation, a Brooklyn-based banking and insurance conglomerate. The deal raised Fred's profile and made him one to watch.
In the meantime, the US government had set up the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and the agency started doling out loan subsidies in 1934 to stimulate the construction of low-income housing. Fred had been eyeing a swathe of land ripe for development in Brooklyn's East Flatbush neighbourhood that was commandeered a few weeks a year by a circus. Fred put together a killer development proposal and approached New York FHA director Thomas Grace. Grace was bowled over by the young man's professionalism and political connections and wasted no time signing off $750,000 (£632k) in mortgage insurance for 450 affordable middle-class homes. With new partner Charles O'Malley – New York City's official real estate appraiser, no less – by his side, Fred got to work.
Fred did, however, manage to squeeze getting hitched into his punishing schedule. On 11 January 1936, the budding property tycoon married Mary Anne MacLeod at the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. He had met the Scottish immigrant at a dance and was instantly smitten with her. A glittering reception at the plush Carlyle Hotel followed, but – ever eager to get back to his projects – workaholic Fred restricted the honeymoon to just one night in Atlantic City.
By the middle of 1936, the Trump Holding Company, as the family business was known at this time, had 400 workers on the East Flatbush site constructing a multitude of FHA-approved houses, which would sell for between $3,000 to $6,250 – between $65,000 (£51k) to $136,000 (£106k) in today's money.
The Tudor-style homes Fred built in East Flatbush and elsewhere in Brooklyn are highly distinctive. Resplendent in red brick, they consist of bungalows and row houses with faux gables, steel-frame casement windows and that all-important garage either at the front or out back. Fitted with all mod cons, they went down a storm with middle-class buyers.
In 1937, Mary Anne gave birth to the couple's first child, daughter Maryanne. The pair would go on to have five children – including future US president Donald, of course. Thanks to FHA support, Fred had extended the East Flatbush project, with hundreds of additional homes under construction, and was pioneering a super-efficient, cost-effective mass home-building process.
The novel method prompted the Brooklyn Daily Eagle to dub Fred “the Henry Ford of the home-building industry” in July 1938. Being wary of his expenditure certainly helped. Frugal Fred was always looking for ways to streamline costs and would try anything – from reportedly watering down paint and collecting unused nails to manufacturing his own roach spray and disinfectants – to save money.
Marketing was also at the crux of Fred's success. An adroit promoter, the switched-on developer came up with all sorts of cunning and creative ways to publicise his business. His many headline-grabbing stunts included wallpapering a model home in rent receipts to highlight the futility of renting, but the Trump Show Boat has to be the most audacious.
The 65-foot yacht caused a sensation and sparked near-riots in the summer of 1939 when it cruised Brooklyn's beaches, blasting out patriotic songs and releasing thousands of swordfish-shaped balloons, each of which was stamped with a figure ranging from $25 to $250 that could be put towards a new Trump home. Donald's knack for self-promotion was clearly inherited from his father, that's for sure.
Additional projects in Marine Park, Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, Bath Beach and Brighton Beach bolstered the business, and by the time the US entered the Second World War in December 1941, Fred had become one of Brooklyn's biggest residential developers. In fact, he had built over 2,000 family homes in the outer borough.
During the war, Fred moved with his family to Virginia Beach after winning contracts to build barracks and garden apartments for naval personnel in Pennsylvania and Virginia, which proved to be yet another major money-spinner. By 1943, the unstoppable developer had become a millionaire, according to Gwenda Blair's biography. Rolling in money, Fred seemed to have the Midas touch.
Despite his success, Fred would conceal the family's roots following the Second World War. He reportedly told people he was of Swedish descent, denying his German roots, so as not to put off Jewish clients. Bizarrely, by 1950 he was sporting a Hitler toothbrush moustache, which had understandably become a major no-no. But while his niece Mary alleges the family used antisemitic slurs, Fred actually helped finance the construction of a synagogue in Brooklyn, donated to Jewish causes and struck up a close friendship with Rabbi Israel Wagner, a Holocaust survivor.
Around 1944, the Trump family relocated to a home on Warehouse Place in Jamaica Estates, a couple of streets away from the Devonshire Road property. Fred had built the property in 1940 in his go-to English Tudor style, with five bedrooms, spacious living and dining rooms and a library. In recent years, the house was listed on Airbnb for a time and last sold in 2017 for a little over $2.1 million (£1.6m).
Donald Trump, Fred and Mary Anne's fourth child, was born in 1946. At this time, realtor extraordinaire Fred was branching out into middle-income housing for returning soldiers and their families, making the most of the subsidies available from the US government. Now, Fred's focus was on constructing large apartment blocks to meet the dire postwar housing shortage.
All the developments would be in Brooklyn, though Fred did end up also owning real estate on Staten Island. His first major postwar project, Shore Haven Apartments in Bensonhurst, commenced in 1947 and was completed in 1949. Covering 30 acres, it includes 32 six-storey buildings and a shopping centre. Fred garnered around $10.4 million in FHA funding for the development, which is $132 million (£104m) today.
Fred secured even more FHA money for his next project, Beach Haven Apartments. The administration put up $16 million in funding – $187 million (£147m) when adjusted for inflation – towards the 23-building development, which spans 40 acres in Gravesend and was done and dusted in 1951. In 1954, Fred was investigated by a Senate banking committee for profiteering from the FHA programmes by allegedly overestimating the cost of his developments. Fred was probed for profiteering again in 1966. On both occasions, the government decided against indicting him.
By this time, Fred and the family had moved into a splendid 23-room, nine-bedroom Colonial-style mansion the real estate magnate had built on a half-acre plot on Midland Parkway, behind the more modest mock Tudor house in Jamaica Estates. Fred and Mary never moved again, though Donald later gifted them an apartment in Trump Tower.
Fred pressed on, building sprawling apartment complexes in Brooklyn, with Lincoln Shore Apartments turnkey-ready in 1956, Fontainebleau Towers in 1958 and Falcon and Southampton Apartments in 1960. Next came Lawrence Gardens Apartments (pictured), Sea Isle Apartments and Park Towers, which were completed in 1961, followed by Patio Towers in 1962.
Fred's most ambitious project, and the only one to bear his name, Trump Village was completed in 1964. The government-backed complex of seven 23-storey towers on Coney Island housed a total of 37,000 units and cost $90 million, which is $883 million (£693m) today. Unsurprisingly, Fred was “making millions”, according to a news report from the time. But his luck was running out.
Fred acquired Steeplechase Park, Coney Island's last iconic amusement park, in 1965 for $2.5 million, which is $24.1 million (£18.9m) today. The real estate mogul wanted to erect luxury Miami Beach-style towers in its place but was barred from doing so, due to the site's strict zoning regulations. Fred reportedly assumed he could use his political connections to change the code.
To Fred's chagrin, New York City's newly elected mayor, John V Lindsay, was a stickler for zoning rules and conservation. Worried the new mayor would give the amusement park designated landmark status, Fred ordered its demolition and turned the whole thing into a bizarre public event. Even with the attraction gone though, the powers-that-be refused to give in to his demands and the posh development never came off.
Fred was burnt by the debacle. No longer able to get his way and with seemingly diminishing way over the politicians in charge, his large-scale developing career was over. Instead, the real estate veteran turned to quietly buying up property in Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island. In 1968, Donald joined his father's firm, with a view to making it “grander, more glamorous, and more exciting”, as he wrote in his book, The Art of the Deal.
Donald Trump became company president in 1971 and entered the luxury Manhattan real estate market while his father stuck to the outer boroughs, later re-branding the business as the Trump Organization. Scandal hit the company in 1973 when the Civil Rights Division of the US Department of Justice (DoJ) filed a lawsuit accusing the firm of allegedly flouting the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
Stories had been going around for decades about Fred's discriminatory practices. Folk singer Woody Guthrie reportedly rented a unit in Beach Haven Apartments from 1950 to 1951 and went on to write a song called Old Man Trump, which railed on his former landlord for allegedly discriminating against Black people and stirring up racial hatred.
The 1973 lawsuit was triggered after undercover investigations by the Urban League and New York City Commission on Human Rights claimed that Black applicants were being turned away from Trump-owned apartments, while white applicants were welcomed with open arms. Further evidence of alleged racial discrimination was uncovered but, in the end, both parties settled. However, the Trumps had to comply with a decree strictly prohibiting them from any infringement of the legislation, among other stipulations.
In 1982, Fred and Donald appeared on the inaugural Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans, with a combined fortune estimated at $200 million, which is $617 million (£520m) today. By this point, Donald had eclipsed his father from a business point of view, with his flashy Manhattan real estate career going from strength to strength.
Donald has repeatedly said he got the Manhattan business started with “a very small loan” from his father of around a million dollars. A 2018 investigation by the New York Times begs to differ. The exposé claims that Donald actually received the inflation-adjusted equivalent of at least $413 million (£324m) from Fred's real estate empire, allegedly via dubious tax-dodging schemes, some of which were illegal. The report also claims that this allegedly creative estate management meant that Fred and his beneficiaries could avoid paying out hundreds of millions of dollars in inheritance and other taxes. In fact, the New York Times investigators claimed that Fred and his wife transferred an estate worth over a billion dollars to their children, which should have attracted a tax bill of $550 million (£432m). The Trumps reportedly paid just $52.5 million (£41m), a paltry 5% of the total.
New York state tax authorities opened an investigation into the New York Times' claims in 2018, but no charges have been filed. Fred died on 25 June 1999 following a long battle with Alzheimer's disease. As outlined in the New York Times probe, the bulk of his legacy was made up of apartment buildings, that were allegedly grossly undervalued, which passed to his four surviving children two years before his death. The children of Fred's late son Fred Jr, who died in 1981 from a heart attack linked to his alcoholism, got nothing and claim they were swindled out of their inheritance.
Fred Jr's daughter, Mary, a psychologist who has written two explosive tell-all books on the Trump family, went on to contest the will of her grandfather. She describes Fred as a “high-functioning sociopath” and is equally scornful towards her paternal aunt Maryanne and uncles, especially Donald. Mary Trump's lawsuit accused the former president and his two siblings of defrauding her out of millions in property assets she inherited from her late father. A judge dismissed the claim in November 2022.
In 2004, Fred's four surviving children sold the properties their father passed on to them before his death for a reported $737.9 million (£579m), 16 times the figure they were valued at in 1997. The controversial developer's outer borough real estate empire was no more, but his efforts had spawned a bolder, brasher and more lucrative one that would make his son, Donald, a multibillionaire.
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