A Builder Looks Back—and Moves Forward (original) (raw)
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- Jan. 28, 1973
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There is a certain alchemy for success in residential building and developing. Some men don't have it, and what should be gold turns to dross. Others possess it and create housing empires with seeming ease. One of these is a man whose name is probably unfamiliar to most New Yorkers, although he is marking his 50th year in the industry.
He is Fred C. Trump, the 67‐year‐old Chairman of the multimillion‐dollar Trump Organization. The bulk of his building activity has been in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. Now he is moving into Manhattan, where most of the illustrious reputations in New York real estate and architecture have been nurtured. His organization, he said, is buying a prime building site on the East Side for rental apartments.
Through 58 corporations, Mr. Trump owns 39 apartment complexes in the city that he values at 150‐million.Thesebuildingscontain14,382apartmentswithanannualrentrollof150‐million. These buildings contain 14,382 apartments with an annual rent roll of 150‐million.Thesebuildingscontain14,382apartmentswithanannualrentrollof50‐million. Out of town, his organization has property worth $50‐million more.
The Trump enterprise began modestly with the construction of a one‐family home in Woodhaven, Queens, in 1923, when Mr. Trump was a fresh‐faced graduate of Richmond Hill High School.
“I always wanted to be a builder—it was my dream as a boy, just as some kids want to be firemen or cops or chemists,” Mr. Trump recalled the other day in his office at 600 Avenue Z in Brooklyn.
“I was born in New Jersey on Oct. 11, 1905, and when I was a lad I discovered that I was agile with my hands, that I could take pieces of wood and nail them together, and that it was a lot of fun.
“My father died when I was 11, and I took odd jobs to help with the family finances. When I was 16, I built a garage for a neighbor, probably not the greatest garage ever put up, but the experience reinforced my hope of doing something creative with wood and bricks and cement.
“Just after I graduated from high school, I got a job as a horse's helper. It was the winter of 1922, and the job consisted of dragging lumber up a hill to homesites. That was still the era of horses, and horse‐drawn wagons couldn't get up those snowy slopes, and I was young and strong and could pull lumber —not the wagons, of course—up the hill.”
From being a “horse's helper” the young man went on to become a carpenter's assistant. And to learn more about the trade he took night courses in building construction at the Young Men's Christian Association. A quick learner, Mr. Trump amassed enough know‐how to build a simple one‐family house, which was completed in 1924.
Emboldened, the youth turned his hand to putting up other homes in Queens—two in Queens Village, then 19 in Hollis. Because of his age—he couldn't sign checks until he was 21—the business was in his mother's name.
“In those days I could build and sell a house for about $7,500,” Mr. Trump reminisced.
By 1929, he was constructing higherpriced homes in Jamaica Estates, then and now a posh residential area of Queens. The Depression put a crimp in his expansion dreams. For a year he did mortgage servicing for the bankrupt Lehrengrauss financial interests. Then he built a self‐service supermarket in Woodhaven, which he later sold to the King Kullen chain.
“About that time I sensed there would be residential expansion in Brooklyn, so I picked a site at Avenue H and Kings Highway and took a flier on a model home,” he recalled.
“I really was in luck. In three weeks I sold 78 homes—they went for $3,990 in the Depression year of 1935. This gave me the start I needed to venture into Flatbush, Manhattan Beach and Bensonhurst, where, over the next 15 years, I built about 2,500 other dwellings.”
During World War II he built temporary housing for shipyard workers and Navy personnel in Virginia and Pennsylvania.
In 1949 he began the first of the large apartment developments with which he is now generally identified. This was the Shorehaven Apartments at 2064 Cropsey Avenue in Brooklyn, containing 2,207 suites. Beach Haven came next, with 2,253 units at 2611 West 2d Street, Brooklyn. And in the middle‐sixties there was Trump Village, on a 40‐acre site near Coney Island.
A Mitchell‐Lama undertaking, Trump Village is a 60‐millioncomplexofsevenbuildingshousing4,600families.ThisprojecthasbredadisputebetweenMr.Trumpandcityandstateauthoritiesovera60‐million complex of seven buildings housing 4,600 families. This project has bred a dispute between Mr. Trump and city and state authorities over a 60‐millioncomplexofsevenbuildingshousing4,600families.ThisprojecthasbredadisputebetweenMr.Trumpandcityandstateauthoritiesovera520,000 legal fee in connection with the cooperative apartments that are part of the village. The dis pute was settled recently in Mr. Trump's favor.
Rents in Trump Village are modest by Manhattan standards. According to Donald Trump, Mr. Trump's son and president for the last three years of the Trump Organization, a two‐bedroom apartment leases for about $200 a month. It is smaller, however, than many similar units elsewhere, running to about 1,200 square feet. An area of 1,600 square feet is widely regarded as more adequate.
Although Mr. Trump is usually associated with lowrental apartments, he does deal in luxury ones. Nautilus Hall, for example, at 1230 Avenue Y in Brooklyn, has two‐bedroom apartments of about 1,200 square feet that go for 350amonth.WilshireHallinJamaica,Queens,isinthesamegeneralcategory.ParkBrian,inForestHills,withtwo‐bedroomapartmentsfor350 a month. Wil shire Hall in Jamaica, Queens, is in the same general category. Park Brian, in Forest Hills, with two‐bedroom apartments for 350amonth.WilshireHallinJamaica,Queens,isinthesamegeneralcategory.ParkBrian,inForestHills,withtwo‐bedroomapartmentsfor475, is the grand luxe of Trump buildings.
The big change in Mr. Trump's operations in recent years is the advent of his son, Donald. Born in 1946, Donald is the second youngest of five children — three boys and two girls—and the only one of them to display an interest in real estate.
Donald, who was graduated first in his class from the Wharton School of Finance of the University of Pennsylvania in 1968, joined his father about five years ago. He has what his father calls “drive.” He also pos sesses, in his father's judgment, business acumen. “Donald is the smartest person I know,” he remarked admiringly. “Everything he touches turns to gold.”
Both father and son appear happy to continue in the apartment‐rental business. “We are not trying to convert to cooperatives,” Donald said in an interview. “In fact, we are seeking more rental buildings with potential.”
Recently he concluded a deal for 20 per cent of Starrett City, a 5,868‐unit Mitchell‐Lama complex going up at Pennsylvania Avenue and the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn. “It's a rental investment,” he said. “We are by no means standing still, and our entry into the Manhattan field is one evidence of that.”
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