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 mansion’s yard back at the house where he used to live and thinking, with a mix of wistfulness and contempt, “That’s 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 family’s privacy, pointed out the renovations his father had done, including one of the house’s 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.