Far from the bright lights of Manhattan, Friedrich, a German immigrant, opened a restaurant called the Dairy Restaurant with “private rooms” for prostitution, writes Gwenda Blair in Politico.
Although Donald Trump’s gleaming towers now dwarf the skylines of several U.S. cities, the patriarch of the Trump legacy, grandfather Friedrich Trump, got off to a more humble start — in Seattle.
He also bent the social norms of the era at the turn of the 20th century.
Far from the bright lights of Manhattan, Friedrich, a German immigrant, opened a restaurant called the Dairy Restaurant with “private rooms” for prostitution, writes Gwenda Blair in Politico.
Blair researched the Trump family extensively for her 2000 book about the family, “The Trumps: Three Generations That Built an Empire.”
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Her research shows Grandfather Trump later opened a hotel and prostitution parlor near the mining town of Monte Cristo, Wash., cashing out before investments in the area went bust.
Then, he put his chips on the Yukon gold rush, starting the New Arctic Restaurant and Hotel. As Up Here magazine reports, the elder Trump built a rare two-story building near the Yukon trail, and “apparently, it wasn’t just Trump’s assortment of poultry dishes that brought in the crowds.”
One newspaper considered it the best restaurant in town, but advised “respectable women” against going there to sleep, reports Blair.
She sees a common thread between the two pioneering Trumps:
“A century later, Donald would use basically the same MO as Friedrich — nabbing the best locations and offering customers an almost cartoonlike version of their heart’s desire — to become a billionaire,” she writes.