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As I entered the access code and pushed open the door on Saturday afternoon, I felt a silence envelop me. There was a living room decorated with red-and-gold, Ethan-Allen-ish chairs and couches and a chaise longue meant to invoke a degree of midcentury splendor. Behind it was a dining room table with a large American flag folded across it. (Displaying the American flag on a dining table violates several provisions of the federal law known as the United States Flag Code, said Michael Buss, a flag expert and deputy director at the American Legion.)

And from practically every surface gazed the visage of the adult Donald J. Trump. Photos of Trump, the swinging 80s developer; a framed People magazine cover that says At Home With the Trumps!; multiple paperback copies of Art of the Deal; a Warhol-inspired print of cartoon-colored Donalds; and, next to the flat-screen TV, a life-size cardboard cutout of the man.

As my wife and 12-year-old daughter explored the first floor, occasionally emitting startled yelps, I went upstairs to what another plaque said was likely the childhood bedroom President Donald J. Trump. On the wall was a photo of Mr. Trump with Michael Jackson.

I sat down and closed my eyes and tried to imagine young Donald, a beautiful little boy, very blond and buttery, as his preschool teacher would remember him, taking his first steps, tagging after his older siblings, stealing his younger brothers blocks.

The house, while solid, is a modest affair, especially by Trump standards, with normal-size rooms and a tiny front yard. Fred C. Trump built it in 1940 for his wife and their first two children. It had four bedrooms, possibly only three originally. By the time Donald, child No. 4, was born in 1946, things were getting crowded, and after the youngest Trump, Robert, was born in 1948, the elder Trump, now very wealthy, bought two lots behind his backyard and built a colonnaded 23-room brick mansion where Donald spent the rest of his childhood.

In the small backyard, I looked over the fence at the mansion. I pictured Donny as a teenager looking from the mansions yard back at the house where he used to live and thinking, with a mix of wistfulness and contempt, Thats where I came from, and look where I live now. As made-up insights go, it would have to do.

The doorbell rang. It was a man who grew up in the house in the 1980s and 1990s. I had invited him over to walk through it. The man, who asked not to be named, citing concern for his familys privacy, pointed out the renovations his father had done, including one of the houses few seemingly Trump-like features, a jacuzzi with gold trim. He seemed both amused and chagrined to see his childhood home turned into a makeshift shrine.

Fred Trump lived in the mansion until his death in 1999, and I asked the man if he had met him. Not directly, he said, but I came home from high school one day and there was some sort of a subpoena for Fred Trump taped to the door. The experience may have influenced him: He is now a corporate lawyer.

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In Search of Donald Trump at His Boyhood Home - New York Times