Harold Ostroff, who died yesterday at 82, led the development of 50,000 units of middle income housing in New York, including Coop City in the Bronx.

In the second act of a lengthy career rooted in Jewish social and political concerns, he served as general manager of the Forward Association for 22 years, and oversaw the opening of the English and later Russian language versions of the newspaper.

As executive vice-president of the United Housing Foundation, Ostroff oversaw vast cooperative developments that continue to rank among the city’s largest, including Penn South in Manhattan, Amalgamated Housing Coops in the Bronx, and Rochdale Village in Queens.

Speaking at a ceremony marking the opening of Coop City in 1968, Robert Moses, the 80-year-old chairman of the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, praised Ostroff for having “wrought this miracle when others chattered piously about salvation.”

“He had been involved life-long in what he called ‘The Movement,'” the president of the Forward Association, Barnett Zumoff, said last night, speaking of the web of organizations which Ostroff was involved with, and many of which he led.

Among these was the Workmen’s Circle, a century-old alliance founded by leftist Yiddish laborers, that ran schools, provided services like life insurance and health care, chartered cooperatives, and worked to preserve Yiddish culture. Ostroff attended its schools, served two terms as its president, and had the satisfaction of seeing his granddaughter, Jessica Rich, join its board in 2002.

Ostroff was raised in the Bronx. His parents were Polish immigrants. His father was an anarchist and a member of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. Ostroff also called himself an anarchist in his early years.

He met his future wife, Frieda Pomerantz, when the two were students at a Workmen’s Circle “Mitl-Shul,” or middle school. In a story published years later in the Forward, Ostroff said they met on the roof of an apartment building in the Bronx, and Frieda sat on his lap. “You and I are going to get married,” Ostroff told her. “You must be meshuggah (crazy),” she snapped back. Five years later, his words came true. They had two daughters, and remained devoted until her death in 1997.

“They still held hands at 70, like young lovers,” Laurence Weinberg, an executive with the Forward, said.

Ostroff was an outstanding student, skipped several grades, and enrolled in City College at age 15. A self-described “political nut,” he spent more time debating fellow politicos than studying, and dropped out after a year and a half. He joined the Army Air Corps in World War II, and served as a master sergeant in England, France, and Germany.

In 1945, he began working for the Amalgamated Housing Cooperative, the Bronx coop where he grew up. He later worked at the United Housing Foundation, where he became executive vice-president in 1966.

Ostroff had served for several years on the board of the Forward Association when he was tapped in 1976 to be general manager. The first years were ones of retreat, as the venerable Yiddish language paper experienced circulation declines that mirrored the population of Yiddish speakers. In 1983, the paper became a weekly instead of a daily.

In 1990, together with the New York Sun’s current editor Seth Lipsky as founding editor, he launched the English language edition of the Forward. Three years later he launched the Russian version.

Ostroff also oversaw the sale by the Forward Association of the radio station WEVD-FM, and the acquisition of WEVD-AM, and the purchase for the association of the Workmen’s Circle Building on Sholom Aleichem Place, as East 33rd Street between Park and Madison Avenues is called. He retired from the Forward in 1997.

Mr. Lipsky yesterday recalled Ostroff as a man capable of great editorial and entrepreneurial courage, which he exhibited often during the founding years of the Forward in English. Mr. Lipsky said that he had “rarely met as avid – or as shrewd – a reader of newspapers as Ostroff,” and told of an incident when, as the Forward’s editor, he was attempting to compose a headline with a reference to “GOP Goombahs.” Ostroff, watching from a distance, called him over and said there was a more appropriate, Yiddish word for bigshot, leading to the front-page headline in the Forward ran, “GOP Gedoylim.”

A life-long supporter of Israel who treasured a photo of himself with Golda Meir, Ostroff identified strongly with the secular Jewish tradition.

“I’m a non-observant Jew,” he told the Forward in 2002.” One of the things I hated most in my life is that I’m called ‘unaffiliated.’ It drives me up the wall. I think there will always be a need for secular Jewish institutions. We have to make room for those who want to be connected [to Jewish life] but don’t want to be connected to the dogma.”

Harold Ostroff
Born September 22, 1923 in New York City; died March 2 after a lengthy illness; survived by his daughter, Madelon, four grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. His wife, Frieda, died in 1997, and another daughter, Sandra, also predeceased him.