Letters from Family Members

Letters from Family Members of the Founder and of the Architect

I take great pride in my grandfather’s role in establishing the Bialystoker Home, but my concern of its preservation goes beyond the personal. A city’s past is as important as its present.

Rona K. Moyer, AICP, (granddaughter of David Sohn, founder of the Bialystoker Center and Home)

I have seen wonderful and economically viable adaptive re-uses of high quality historic structures. It has been said that the greenest building is the one that is already built. It has been my experience that when municipalities protect important cultural resources, there are valuable economic benefits as well as the equally legitimate value of preserving our past. Landmark designation of the Center and Home is a logical step which I urgently support.

Steven Sohn Kavee (grandson of David Sohn)

I am the surviving daughter of Harry Hurwit, the architect who designed the Bialystoker Home. It was one of the last buildings my father was able to see constructed before the Great Depression hit the building industry and forced him to spend most of his life doing ‘alterations’. He was justly proud of the Bialystoker Home and all of his life he was concerned about the welfare of the people who were cared there.

Leah Hurwit Friz, (daughter of Harry Hurwit)

I am the granddaughter of the late Harry Hurwit, Architect of the Bialystoker Home ….. Designation of the Bialystoker Center and Home as a landmark offers the only secure path toward ensuring that this remarkable structure can survive.

Amy Fritz, (granddaughter of Harry Hurwit)

Taking this place away would be more than just a loss for my family, the Hurwitz’s, who view it as a personal piece of ourselves in the huge city of New York, but also a loss for New York, a city different than every other because of its beautiful, old, distinguished and architecturally breathtaking architecture like the Bialystoker Center.

Noa Elliot, (age 15, great, great, great grandniece of Harry Hurwit)