[1] A native of Dallas, Crow earned money through a series of odd jobs as a child and later as an adolescent, including plucking chickens, cleaning bricks, and unloading boxcars.

In 1933, Crow landed a job for roughly $13 a week (equivalent to $305.98 in 2023) as a runner for Mercantile National Bank in Dallas while attending night school in accounting at Southern Methodist University.

His company's skyscrapers – including Dallas' 50-story Trammell Crow Center and the 53-story Chase Tower – reshaped skylines in the 1980s in cities stretching from Charlotte, North Carolina to San Diego, California.

Crow once had interests in nearly 300,000,000 square feet (28,000,000 m2) of developed real estate, comprising eight thousand properties in more than one hundred cities.

Crow's holdings were said to be much larger than those of the better-known William Zeckendorf and Donald Trump and include hotels, hospitals, residential developments, and – just as in the early days of the company – warehouses.

[citation needed] The Austin Business Journal said in its profile of TCC, "When compared to Trammell Crow, other real estate companies are for the birds.

[5] The Trammell Crow Company was privately held until 1997 when it went public on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the symbol TCC.

[6] In 1998, 598 of the family's best pieces were donated to the people of Dallas with the founding of the Trammell & Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art.

He also commissioned several pieces from artist Bjørn Wiinblad, also sculptor David Cargill, incorporating them into his Dallas hotel and real estate projects.

The H. Neil Mallon Award, hosted by the World Affair Council of Dallas/ Fort Worth, is presented annually to individuals who have excelled at promoting the international focus of North Texas.

The prestigious Mallon Award is named after the Council's founder and is presented annually to individuals who have excelled in promoting our region's international profile.

Funds raised from this event support the World Affair Council's public and education programming, international exchanges, and diplomatic services.