Posted on 06/04/2016 12:17:17 PM PDT by Lorianne
Showboating is something we expect from Donald Trump, but his father Fred was no shrinking violet himself. He even used a real boat to advertise his goods — a 65-foot cabin cruiser bearing hoardings with TRUMP HOMES spelled in ten-foot-tall letters. Trump’s houses were cozy, well made, and — more than anything — affordable even to working-class families. He reduced construction costs by using the same economies of scale that made the Model T automobile so inexpensive. Known in the industry as “the Henry Ford of housing,” he applied techniques of mass production to home construction a full decade before William Levitt became famous for doing so at Levittown. Levitt’s subdivisions were studiously suburban and designed for motorists. Trump’s row house developments accommodated cars — most had garages tucked below grade in front or rear — but not at the expense of a picturesque, pedestrian-friendly streetscape. Trump was a city builder first and foremost, and his largest works were always close to rapid transit.[3]
However prolific, Trump was a latecomer to what had been the biggest real estate party in New York history. It roared to life after Governor Al Smith signed legislation in 1920 that eliminated property taxes on new housing for a decade. The Al Smith Act, as it became known, was inspired by Victorian economist Henry George, who argued for a single tax on the value of land, exclusive of improvements, rather than on labor, production, or capital. (A George acolyte invented Monopoly to popularize the concept.) The tax holiday unleashed a frenzy of residential development throughout the five boroughs. Construction outlays citywide from 1921 to 1923 were seven times that of the three years prior to the act.[4] The main field of action was in the city’s southern hemisphere, far-flung sections of Brooklyn and Queens where land was cheap and increasingly served by streetcars, subways, and water and sewer infrastructure.
The development history of Brooklyn cleaves closely to the region’s glacial past. The great Laurentide glacier — the miles-deep ice sheet that ground down the Adirondacks, carved the Finger Lakes, and scoured the Hudson — quit about halfway down present-day Brooklyn, leaving behind an elongated pile of detritus known today as Long Island. A pair of terminal moraines forms the spine of high ground that runs the length of the island. In Brooklyn, this topography is invoked in numerous place names: Bay Ridge, Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope, Crown Heights. Eons of rain flushed the morainal uplands toward the Atlantic, forming a broad outwash plain — modern Brooklyn’s vast southern expanse, from roughly the Verrazano Bridge to East New York.
By 1900, most of Kings County north of the glacial rampart had hardened into cityscape. Nearly everything to its south was still countryside, with the exception of Coney Island and scattered development around the old towns and new subway lines. Not until the 1920s and the Al Smith tax holiday did the tide of metropolitan growth spill fully down the outwash plain. There, the Tudor Revival row house became the iconic building type, eclipsing the Victorian brownstone that had been the archetype of Brooklyn’s 19th-century building booms.
snip
I just find it amazing that the media can find a jillion stories about Trump, Trump’s family, Trump’s friends, Trump’s business ventures, etc, etc, yet Hillary Clinton is a mystery hidden by “I can’t remember” and Barack Obama is a mystery hidden by “You’re a racist.”
On the one hand, one wants the media to simply stop lying and tell the truth.
On the other hand, one wants the media to make an effort to be interested in an even-handed approach.
All-Trump-All-the-Time seems to have benefited Trump so far, but willfully ignoring the trainwreck which is the Clinton campaign is a special kind of bias.
NOTE: My comment is a broad comment about media coverage and not intended to disparage the posted article.
Bingo! Well said, my friend.
Does the article mention the addition of attached garage. ?
My link isn’t working. My devise not your link
Who knew!?
The article has a personal connection for me because my paternal grandfather, with wife in family in tow, got off the boat at Ellis Island in 1927 (coming from Germany). They lived in the Bronx for about five or six years before moving up to Thornwood and he hand-built his own Tudor Revival style home which still stands today. The stately trees he planted in the front yard are gone now, so it doesn't look as grand. I remember it seemed like a palace to me as a little kid in the 50s.
There has never been a bigger SHOWBOAT than Barack Hussein Obama.
All the things described there were typical of tract house construction elsewhere. San Francisco for instance. You will see thousands upon thousands of cookie cutter houses in the 3/4 of the city that is residential tracts. These date from the 1910s-1930s. I own one of these. They were built to near-identical plans, only varied by adjustment to the lot grade and details of the facade. They used standard subcomponents and prefab framing assemblies. They are on scattered lots or in small groups on a block, not in large developments, because the city blocks were laid out in the previous century.
So Trump was one of very many in this sort of business.
They haven’t dug deep enough to find his grandmother. She was a young widow with three children. The oldest was Fred, age 11. She somehow got him into Trade School under age; where he learned plumbing, electric and other building skills. Together they flipped homes to put food on the table (She signed the paperwork. He did the labor).
No foods stamps, housing assistance , help with college expenses. Fred paid for both his sisters and brother Johns education. John developed the radar that saved England during WWII After the war he returned to his work on medical radiation (we still benefit from his work). Donald John Trump mentions that he was a professor at MIT
From poor widow to multibillionaie in three generations -—
The American Dream on Steroids
Yes
“Trump’s row house developments accommodated cars — most had garages tucked below grade in front or rear — but not at the expense of a picturesque, pedestrian-friendly streetscape.”
My computer just locked up momentary and I couldn’t read. It’s ok now. Fred was one of the first if not the inventor of attached garage. Mary didn’t like getting out in the rain LOL. So he did it for all the ladies
Interesting read. Fred Trump actually successfully built housing for the middle and working classes, something that the “progressives” claim to care about deeply, but somehow never manage to pull off.
Yes, and pretty nice housing for the day too. I bet many families have fond memories of living in those houses.
I thought it was pretty interesting as well.
What’s the story behind the letter inset into the brick on the chimney? Is the photo reversed? Looks like a backwards “S.”
You got me curious so I started looking on the web and there are a lot of ideas out there, but nothing definitive. The first theories were that it means "Santa Clause" -- told him where to enter. Others suggested that was better than "Soot" or "Smoke." LOL.
The most common suggestion is that old houses had tie-rods that ran front-to-back through the house often ending in a double-ess plate or a cast iron star-shaped plate that spread the load on the masonry wall. Maybe the reversed ess decoration was a derivative of those functional tie-rod ends. I found some chimneys tied off to the roof structure with a rod through the chimney and a decorative element to spread the load.
The most common suggestion was this was a standard trademark by masons on their work. But I sure can't find photos of other chimneys with a backwards ess on them. Some thought it was the initial of the mason who did the work.
Here's an anchor plate on a church in France (from Wikipedia):
As a reversed S, Ƨ was also used as a fractional Roman numeral, where it stood for the fraction 1/72.
According to symbols.com, the letter 's' was also used to denote saintliness or holiness and it was also use to denote 'spirits' (notably wine).
A "charge" strongly resembling a Ƨ appears in the civic coat of arms borne by the municipality of Haßloch in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. But that was quite a ways from their home in Germany, so I don't see a family connection there.
Some suggested this was a traditional decoration on Tudor houses, but I don't find any photos.
Great...now you've got me wondering about it and I'll probably never know.
Wow that is a beauty! I am a bungalow fanatic personally, but I really appreciate the Tudor revival and Storybook styles. Your grandfather did a lovely lovely job. Bet it has some nice woodwork and cute details inside too.
Yup, I would move into that in a heartbeat.
Thanks. He and my Dad were amazing craftsmen and engineers!
Oooh those vinyl shutters someone put on are all wrong. Bet if there were shutters originally, they were solid wood with raised panels and a little design cut out at the top, like a pine tree or crescent moon or heart. If they did have louvers they would still have been wood.
/housegeek ;)
Funny you mention that...I was looking at the pic after your note and saw that the shutters are totally out of scale to the windows. Opa would never have done that. I have no idea what he had there originally, though. I do remember the upstairs was rented out after the three kids all left home. They had good income from renters.
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