In partnership with his mother, Elizabeth Christ Trump, Fred began a career in home construction and sales.
59 Facts About Fred Trump
2.
Fred Trump was investigated by a US Senate committee for profiteering in 1954, and again by the State of New York in 1966.
3.
For decades following World War II, Fred Trump concealed his German ancestry to avoid associations with Nazism in light of the Holocaust.
4.
Trump's father, the German American Frederick Trump amassed considerable wealth during the Klondike Gold Rush by running a restaurant for the miners.
5.
Fred Trump was conceived in Bavaria, where his parents wished to residency, but Friedrich was banished for dodging the draft.
6.
The family returned to New York on July 1,1905, and moved to the Bronx, where Frederick Christ Trump was born on October 11.
7.
Fred Trump's younger brother, John G Trump, was born in 1907.
8.
At the age of 10, Fred Trump worked as a delivery boy for a butcher.
9.
From 1918 to 1923, Fred Trump attended Richmond Hill High School in Queens, while working as a caddy, curb whitewasher, delivery boy, and newspaper hawker.
10.
Interested in becoming a builder, Fred Trump put up a garage for a neighbor and took night classes in carpentry and reading blueprints.
11.
Fred Trump studied plumbing, masonry, and electrical wiring via correspondence courses.
12.
Fred Trump continued his carpentry education and went on to be a carpenter's assistant.
13.
Fred Trump's mother loaned him $800 to build his first house, which he completed and sold in 1924.
14.
Elizabeth Trump held the business in her name because Fred had not reached the age of majority.
15.
Fred Trump, detained "on a charge of refusing to disperse from a parade when ordered to do so", was dismissed.
16.
In 1933 Fred Trump built one of New York City's first modern supermarkets, called Fred Trump Market, in Woodhaven, Queens.
17.
Fred Trump made use of loan subsidies created by the Federal Housing Administration not long after the program was initiated via the National Housing Act of 1934, which enabled the discriminatory practice of redlining.
18.
Fred Trump used his father's tactic of listing properties at prices like $3,999.99.
19.
Fred Trump argued that because he had not withdrawn the money, he had not literally pocketed the profits.
20.
In 1961, Trump donated $2,500 to the re-election campaign of New York mayor Robert F Wagner Jr.
21.
Fred Trump built more than 27,000 low-income apartments and row houses in the New York area altogether.
22.
In 1966, Fred Trump was again investigated for windfall profiteering, this time by New York State investigators.
23.
Under testimony on January 27,1966, Fred Trump said that he had personally done nothing wrong and praised the success of his building project.
24.
At a highly publicized ceremony in September 1966, Fred Trump demolished the park's Pavilion of Fun, a large glass-enclosed amusement center.
25.
Fred Trump reportedly sold bricks to ceremony guests to smash the remaining glass panels, which included an iconic representation of the park's mascot, the "Funny Face".
26.
Fred Trump began calling the company the Trump Organization around 1973.
27.
The younger Fred Trump entered the real-estate business in Manhattan, while his father stuck primarily to Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island.
28.
An October 2018 New York Times expose on Fred and Donald Trump's finances concludes that Donald "was a millionaire by age 8", and that he had received $413 million from Fred's business empire over his lifetime, including over $60.7 million in loans, which were largely unreimbursed.
29.
Minority applicants turned away from renting apartments complained to the New York City Commission on Human Rights and the Urban League, leading these groups to send test applicants to Fred Trump-owned complexes in July 1972.
30.
Some three dozen former Fred Trump employees were interviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
31.
Fred Trump advised me not to rent to persons on welfare.
32.
In early 1976, Fred Trump was ordered by a county judge to correct code violations in a 504-unit property in Seat Pleasant, Maryland.
33.
In 1987, when Donald's loan debt to his father exceeded $11 million, Fred invested $15.5 million in Trump Palace Condominiums; in 1991, he sold these shares to his son for $10,000, thus appearing to evade millions of dollars in gift taxes by masking a hidden donation, and benefiting from a legally questionable write-off.
34.
In late 1990, when an $18.4 million bond payment for Trump's Castle was due, Fred used a bookkeeper to purchase $3.5 million in casino chips, placing no bet, helping Donald avoid defaulting on his bonds; this action, illegal in New Jersey, resulted in a $65,000 fine.
35.
In 1976, Fred Trump set up trust funds of $1 million for each of his five children and three grandchildren, which paid out yearly dividends.
36.
Fred Trump rejected the proposal, and in 1991, composed his own final will, which made Donald, Maryanne, and Robert Trump co-executors of his estate.
37.
Fred Trump began to suffer from Alzheimer's disease around 1993, by which time the anticipated shares of Fred Trump's estate amounted to $35 million for each surviving child.
38.
In November 1997, Fred Trump transferred ownership of most of his apartment buildings, valued at just $41.4 million, to his four surviving children.
39.
Fred Trump's funeral was held at the Marble Collegiate Church, and was attended by over 600 people.
40.
Fred Trump's body is buried in a family plot at the Lutheran-Christian All Faiths Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens.
41.
Fred Trump's will divided over $20 million after taxes among his surviving children and grandchildren.
42.
In December 2003, it was reported that Fred Trump's four surviving children would sell the apartments they acquired in 1997 to an investment group led by Rubin Schron, priced at $600 million; the sale occurred in May 2004.
43.
Fred Trump met his future wife, Mary Anne MacLeod, an immigrant from Tong, Lewis, Scotland, at a dance party in the early to mid-1930s.
44.
Fred Trump told his mother the same evening that he had met his future wife.
45.
Fred Trump was a teetotaler and an authoritarian parent, maintaining curfews and forbidding cursing, lipstick, and snacking between meals.
46.
Fred Trump took his children to building sites to collect empty bottles to return for the deposits.
47.
Fred and Mary Trump supported medical charities by donating buildings.
48.
Fred Trump reportedly supported the Long Island Jewish Hospital and the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan.
49.
Fred Trump supported the private Kew-Forest School, where his children attended and he served on the board of directors.
50.
Fred Trump backed both Jewish and Israeli causes, including Israel Bonds, donating the land for the Beach Haven Jewish Center, a synagogue, in Flatbush, Brooklyn, and serving as the treasurer of an Israel benefit concert featuring American easy-listening performers.
51.
Fred Trump made contributions to Democratic politicians in New York City.
52.
Together with Donald in the 1980s, Fred provided over $350,000 to city politicians including Mayor Ed Koch, Council president Andrew Stein, Controller Harrison J Goldin, and four of the five borough presidents.
53.
Jerome Tuccille's 1985 biography of Donald Trump repeats Fred's fabrication that he was born in New Jersey and erroneously states that his middle name was Charles.
54.
Donald's The Art of the Deal alleges that Fred Trump was born in New Jersey and further that he was the son of an immigrant from Sweden.
55.
In 1993, Harry Hurt III wrote in his book Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J Trump that he overheard Fred Trump talking about Donald and his wife Marla Maples as they departed for a flight, saying, "I hope their plane crashes", because then "all my problems will be solved".
56.
In October 2016, in response to numerous Freedom of Information Act requests, the FBI released a small file it had on Fred Trump; it includes a 1986 news article concerning political donations by Trump Management, an amply redacted 1991 memo implying the bureau received intel regarding ties to organized crime, and a background report on Trump Construction Corp.
57.
In October 2019, American journalist and conspiracy theorist Wayne Madsen accused Fred Trump of being a Nazi sympathizer, citing the presence of the German American Bund in New York and asserting that Trump's Navy buildings were compromised by Nazi informants.
58.
Mary has asserted that Fred Trump could have been a Ku Klux Klan sympathizer and claimed he was "quite anti-Semitic".
59.
Fred Trump has been portrayed in various motion pictures since his son became a US president.