[Bialystoker Center and Home for the Aged, 228 East Broadway.]
1975
[Bialystoker Center and Home for the Aged, 228 East Broadway.]
Bialystoker Center and Home for the Aged, 228 East Broadway, ca. 1970.
Designed by architect Harry Hurwit and built between 1929 and 1931 in the Art Deco style, the Bialystoker Center and Home for the Aged is the best known landsmanshaft— or immigrant hometown association, in the city. Bialystok, a Polish industrial city, was the hometown of a large population of Jewish immigrants to the Lower East Side. The community established a number of mutual benefit societies and a synagogue beginning in the 1860s. In the aftermath of the devastation of World War I, the a new Bialystoker group was organized to assist in foreign aid to Europe. In the 1920s the Center developed into an umbrella agency and meeting place for all of the Bialystoker groups, while also shifting focus to supporting Jewish communities within the city. Plans for a home for the aged necessitated a new building and the cornerstone for the stylized Art Deco struture was laid in 1929.
The Bialystoker Home for Aged closed its doors in 2011 and has been empty since. (Though there was a massive effort in early 2017 to rescue and rehome the memorial plaques, religious books, and other sacred objects from the building.) The building and the plots on either side were sold together in 2016 and are being developed in to condos.