Analysis: The Trumps were once one of many immigrant families in the working-class Bronx
A photograph of Fred Trump sits on President Trump’s desk. By Philip Bump Philip Bump National correspondent focused largely on the numbers behind politics Email Bio Follow April 5 at 7:00 AM President Trump’s grandfather, Friedrich Trump, never intended to come back to the United States.
There are several odd echoes between Friedrich’s life and his grandson’s politics: The issues with the draft, the forced emigration. But there’s a more interesting second layer, as well. Friedrich Trump was himself an immigrant to the United States, moving into the Bronx at a time when it was densely populated with German immigrants and their children. It’s an area that’s still home to many immigrant families — but mostly not immigrants from Germany.
It seems unlikely that this is where Trump’s father was born. What’s more, Blair’s book indicates that the Trump home was adjacent to the Third Avenue elevated train line, suggesting that the building at right in the below archival photo of the now-demolished Tremont-117th Street elevated station is the actual site of Fred Trump’s birth. A sign over the main entrance identifies it, as in the insurance map, as the Bronx Building.
He said he understood why Trump focused on immigrants during the 2016 campaign as a way to entice middle-income voters. But he was also unnerved by the rhetoric. “That, of course, caused a massive shift of population from the overcrowded Lower East Side and areas of Manhattan to the wide open spaces of the Bronx,” Ultan said. “Wherever the subway lines were, that is where developers started to build apartment houses and shops and things like that.”
It continued to attract immigrants and new arrivals as the years passed. By 1930, with more new arrivals from Eastern Europe about half the borough was Jewish. Shortly after the end of World War II, when the most-desired living arrangement changed from a subway-adjacent apartment to a suburban home accessible with a car, people began moving out of the Bronx.
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