Trump’s Grandfather Lived at this Lower East Side Tenement in 1885 [HISTORY]
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The first Trump Palace was a fairly ordinary tenement on the Lower East Side. One that now overlooks Sara D. Roosevelt Park.
Donald Trump’s grandfather Friedrich arrived in the United States on October 19, 1885. It was on a steamer called the S.S. Eider. At 16, a barber’s apprentice, he left Germany without performing the mandatory military service at the time.
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Scale model of the block bounded by Canal, Chrystie, Bayard and Forsyth, Photo: New Yorker
The elder Trump – original surname was Drumpf – settled with his sister and family (Katherine and Fred Schuster) at 76 Forsyth Street, in what is now Chinatown. In its long-read history, the New Yorker noted of the surroundings:
According to the exhibit text that accompanied the model, the thirty-nine tenement houses inside this block—not the worst in the neighborhood but merely “typical”—contained six hundred and five apartments that housed twenty-seven hundred and eighty-one people. There were only two hundred and sixty-four water closets, and not one bath on the entire block. Only forty apartments had hot water.
Not serving in the military apparently bit him in the ass, though. After making his fortunes stateside, Friedrich returned to the town of Kallstadt in 1901 where he met his future wife. They eventually moved to New York a year later, but then back to Germany in 1904. The authorities caught wind of the shirked army duty, and Trump was reportedly ordered expelled, according to the German-language Bild newspaper. He even wrote a letter Bavarian Prince Luitpold begging the “well-loved, noble, wise and just” leader not to deport him. Luitpold rejected the “most subservient request.”
Trump and immigration…
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Friedrich Trump in 1887, Photo: New Yorker
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