HE made his presence known on the island of Manhattan in the mid 70's, a brash Adonis from the outer boroughs bent on placing his imprint on the golden rock. Donald John Trump exhibited a flair for self-promotion, grandiose schemes - and, perhaps not surprisingly, for provoking fury along the way.
Senior realty titans scoffed, believing that braggadocio was the sum and substance of the blond, blue-eyed, six-footer who wore maroon suits and matching loafers, frequented Elaine's and Regine's in the company of fashion models, and was not abashed to take his armed bodyguard-chauffeur into a meeting with an investment banker.
The essence of entrepreneurial capitalism, real estate is a business with a tradition of high-rolling megalomania, of master builders striving to erect monuments to their visions. It is also typically dynastic, with businesses being transmitted from fathers to sons and grandsons, and carried on by siblings. In New York, the names of Tishman, Lefrak, Rudin, Fisher, Zeckendorf come to mind.
And now there is Trump, a name that has in the last few years become an internationally recognized symbol of New York City as mecca for the world's super rich.
''Not many sons have been able to escape their fathers,'' said Donald Trump, the president of the Trump Organization, by way of interpreting his accomplishments. Three of them, built since 1976, stand out amidst the crowded midtown landscape: the 68- story Trump Tower, with its six-story Atrium housing some of the world's most elegant stores; the 1,400- room Grand Hyatt Hotel, and Trump Plaza, a $125 million cooperative apartment. And more is on the way.
''At 37, no one has done more than I in the last seven years,'' Mr. Trump asserted.
Fifteen years ago, he joined his father's business, an empire of middle-class apartment houses in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island then worth roughly $40 million. Today, the Trump Organization controls assets worth about $1 billion.
The largest and most striking properties were developed by the younger Trump and are owned by him individually or with one non-family partner. While his father, Fred C. Trump, is the company chairman and oversees the original holdings, the Trump Organization is unquestionably a Donald Trump extravaganza.
HE makes that clear. At Trump headquarters on the 26th floor of the Trump Tower astride Fifth Avenue, he opened the door of a room furnished with a vast table.
''This was supposed to be a board room but what was the sense when there's only one member,'' said Donald Trump. ''We changed it to a conference room.''
Mr. Trump assiduously cultivates a more conservative public image now, a gentleman of taste in a navy- blue suit with discreetly striped shirts and blue ties, who weekends with his family in Greenwich, Conn. Last spring he forsook the Hamptons, his former habitat, to buy an estate in the conservative community.
His pastor, the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale of New York, avowed that he is ''kindly and courteous in certain business negotiations and has a profound streak of honest humility.''
But Mr. Trump prides himself on being street smart and boasted that Brooklyn and Queens, where he was raised, are among ''the toughest, smartest places in the world.'' Mr. Trump prefers the vocabulary of war and sports to document his exploits, acknowledging ''I don't like to lose.'' Nor does he like to receive less than full credit for his victories.
''He was a pretty rough fellow when he was small,'' recalled his father, who packed off his obstreperous teen-age son to the New York Military Academy in Cornwall-on-Hudson for his high school education. According to some of his peers in the industry, Donald Trump has not really changed much from those boyhood days.
His alternating skills of charming some individuals and riding roughshod over others has earned Donald Trump a reputation in some quarters as someone not to be trusted. He reneged, for example, on a promise to donate to a museum the Art Deco bas- reliefs on the facade of Bonwit Teller's - bulldozed to make way for Trump Tower. It was a sin deemed unforgivable by landmark preservationists. But the only negative comments about Donald Trump these days are given off the record.
