Real estate businessman Donald Trump would grow up to become the 45th president of the United States. How did a boy from Queens, New York, grow up to become one of the most powerful figures in the world? It began thanks to his grandfather’s early American success, which was continued by Trump’s father, Fred. Donald Trump would take their family fortune and expand it more! Learn more about Trump’s family history as we look at pictures of young Donald Trump as he grew up in New York, his time in boarding school, and his ascent to a real estate mogul.
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Donald John Trump was born on June 14, 1946, to parents Fred Trump and Mary Anne MacLeod. The pair had married 10 years earlier. Donald Trump was the fourth of five children. He was born at the Jamaica Hospital Medical Center in Queens, New York. Trump’s family originated from Germany on his father’s side and Scotland on his mother’s side. Trump’s grandfather Frederick (originally Friedrich) first immigrated to the United States in 1885. He was just 16. He did not gain citizenship until 1892. It was shortly after this that grandpa Trump began to build the Trump family fortune. He was a savvy businessman and amassed the Trump family fortune by operating “boomtown” restaurants and boarding houses in the West.
Donald Trump shared the above “Throwback Thursday” photo of himself as a child on Facebook. However, the caption for the photo states, “Who knew this innocent kid would grow into a monster?” We’re assuming he was making a joke.
2. Siblings
The Trump family gained a fortune thanks to Donald Trump’s grandfather, who operated “boomtown” restaurants and boarding houses in the Seattle area and Canada’s Klondike region during the gold rush. In 1902, Mr. Trump married Elisabeth Christ. In 1905, they resettled in New York, where they would stay the rest of their lives. That year, 1905, was also the year Donald Trump’s father, Fred, was born. Fred Trump went to work in the family real estate business when he was 15. In 1923, Fred Trump and his mother founded E. Trump & Son, which operated mostly in the Queens and Brooklyn boroughs of New York City. Fred Trump married Mary Anne MacLeod in 1936. They had five children together. From an early age, young Donald would prove to be one who followed his own rules.
Donald Trump shared the above picture of himself and his siblings to his Facebook page. Trump (far left) stands beside (from left) his older brother Fred Jr., his older sister Elizabeth Trump, his eldest sister Maryanne Trump, and his younger brother Robert Trump.
3. Sending Trump to Boarding School
4. Trump the ‘Ladies’ Man’?
5. Love of Sports
During his years of schooling at the New York Military Academy, Trump participated in numerous sports. He was, in actuality, a sturdy 6 foot, 2 inches tall. According to reports, he played football, tennis, squash, and took up golf. Photographs from the school also show him on the varsity baseball team (pictured). While most of these sports would fade away into watching hobbies for Trump, it was golf that would become a staple of his life decades later.
6. Donald Trump Loves Football
During his time at NYMA, Trump played on the football team (though he’s shown above with his soccer team); his love for the sport culminated in Trump owning his own football team in the future in his attempt to run a separate American football league to compete with the National Football League. We’ll discuss this failed venture in more detail later on.
7. Proud Parents
In this photo Trump shared to his Facebook page, he wrote, “#TBT Myself with mother and father at New York Military Academy. See, I can be very military. High rank!”
Despite boasting of being “very military,” Trump received five draft deferments from serving in the military during Vietnam. Four of the deferments were for his time during college. The fifth was for a medical diagnosis of bone spurs in his heels, which has come under renewed scrutiny in recent years. According to the daughter of the podiatrist who diagnosed Donald, the bone spurs excuse was “favor” to Fred Trump in order for the podiatrist to maintain a close relationship with Fred, who was the podiatrist’s landlord.
8. Marching to the Beat of His Own Drum
If you have even a glancing understanding of Donald Trump, you know he does things his way. Trump shared this “Throwback Thursday” picture of himself in uniform at the NYMA. Trump had previously made the claim that being in the uniform made him “very military,” though he never served in the military. Decades later, Trump would find himself roiled in controversy after he criticized U.S. Senator John McCain for being captured and held as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War. Trump dismissed McCain as a war hero, saying, “I like people that weren’t captured.”
9. Graduating!
10. College Grad!
11. Brooklyn, 1975
“#TBT With my father, Fred Trump, in Brooklyn,1975. A great Father’s Day gift—a stay at my 5 star hotel,” Trump wrote in this photo caption he shared to his Facebook page. It was a happy moment for the father and son business team. But trouble lurked in the background. The Trumps that year settled a lawsuit from the Justice Department that their company systematically discriminated against prospective renters who were African-American. The Justice Department alleged the Trump Organization had screened out people based on race and not economic status. This wasn’t the first time the Trumps settled a case of racial discrimination. The pair was sued in 1969 by the management of a property they owned in Cincinnati, Ohio. Fred Trump directed that lawsuit be “quietly settled,” according to news reports. Despite the setbacks, the business kept chugging along, and Donald Trump soon would find love…
12. Father and Son Partners
13. The Business Grows
14. The Model for Trump Tower
15. Marriage to Ivana Zelníčková
16. First-Born Son
17. Football Team Owner
18. ‘The Art of the Deal’
In 1988, Donald Trump established the Donald J. Trump Foundation, which initially was meant as a way to give away proceeds from Trump’s most famous book, The Art of the Deal. The foundation’s tax returns show it donated money to various healthcare and sports-related charities, as well as many conservative political groups.
In the above photo, Trump shared, “Here with my father Fred, back in 1980. My hero, role model, and best friend. #TBT”
19. Wollman Rink Renovation
20. Fred Trump’s Passing
21. Marla Maples
22. With the Kids
23. Trump’s ‘Lost City’
Here’s Donald Trump next to a model of “Television City,” a proposed vast commercial and residential complex in Manhattan’s Upper West Side neighborhood along the Hudson River. Trump hoped the project would headquarter NBC News and other television studios. The tall building model in Trump’s hand was a proposed 150-story tower as the area’s centerpiece. It would have been the tallest building in the world if approved. However, things didn’t go as planned.
First and foremost came criticism of the development of the area, with numerous architecture critics saying the entire idea was “woefully simplistic” and had “little connection to the varied pattern of streets” of New York. Additionally, people in the community disapproved of the plan after Trump nearly doubled the area of the original idea when it was first presented. It further spiraled out of control when Mayor Ed Koch agreed to provide tax breaks to NBC if it moved its studios there, but not to Trump himself. In characteristic Trump fashion, this boiled over into tabloid fodder name-calling.
24. Breakthrough
25. Trump Tower
The same year Trump’s Commodore Hotel takeover was finalized, the city approved the rights for Trump to develop Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan. In order to complete the tower, Trump reportedly hired undocumented Polish workers to demolish the old Bonwit Teller retailer flagship store. That building was well known for its art deco features and had originally been marked for preservation by the city.
Trump Tower took four years to complete (pictured here is Trump at the building’s “topping off” ceremony), with the final spaces opening by November 1983. The building holds numerous residential and commercial spaces, most notably Trump’s own penthouse condominium and headquarters for the Trump Organization.
26. Trump Tower Opening
Here is Trump and his friend and lawyer, Roy Cohn, at the opening of Trump Tower in 1983. Cohn and Trump have a long and interesting history together. First, Cohn represented Trump in a federal lawsuit against the Justice Department where Trump was accused of violating the Fair Housing Act at 39 of his properties by quoting different rental terms, conditions, and making false “no vacancy” statements to African American tenants in efforts to keep them from renting at his properties. Cohn’s countersuit against the DoJ was unsuccessful and Trump settled the charges out of court in 1975. Trump would be back in court again in 1978 for violating terms of the 1975 settlement.
But it was wasn’t only legal aid that Trump sought from Cohn. It’s been said that Trump emulates Cohn’s brash public “counterattacks.” That might explain why Trump loves to provide comments to the press, both positive and negative, of his perceived opponents.
28. Looking Unhappy
This 1986 photo shows Donald Trump leaving a federal court. If Trump looks unhappy, that’s because he had just agreed to pay a $750,000 penalty to settle an antitrust lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission. Trump had not notified the government before purchasing more than $15 million worth of voting stock in both Holiday Corp. and Bally Manufacturing Corp.
Even though it was a hefty sum, Trump at that time was riding the gravy train and things were going well for him. For Trump these little setbacks in New York were easy to escape since he had come into possession of a sprawling estate down in Palm Beach, Florida. Many know it as Mar-a-Lago estate these days.
For those familiar with Donald Trump and his aesthetic preferences, they might recognize this as the interior to one of Trump’s many properties. Trump does love gold! However, this image of Trump and his first wife Ivana Trump was taken in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1987. Unless you’ve been living beneath a rock the last few years, you probably know that Trump has a long history with the Soviet nation.
The visit in 1987 was an exploration to develop a hotel in Russia. Trump had been invited by Ambassador Yuri Dubinin. Almost a decade later in 1996, Trump attempted more real estate development deals by submitting trademark applications. For years, Trump infamously asserted he had no business connections with Russia, but that was found to be false when it was revealed Trump had been pursuing a deal to build a Trump building in Moscow into June 2016. It’s also been found that Trump received considerable financial support following his bankruptcies in the 1990s from sources in Russia. This was corroborated by Donald Trump Jr., who said Russia made up a “pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. … We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”