A Look at the Belnord Reveals All-Natural Retirement Isn’t Easy

Lucette Lagnado, The Wall Street Journal, July 3, 2001

NEW YORK — Will there be a bench for Hugo?

This is a small question rife with larger meaning.

Hugo Kahn is 85 years old, frail and forgetful. But with the help of his wife, Margie, he still tries to take a daily stroll around the interior courtyard of the place he calls home, a fabled apartment building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side called the Belnord.

On good days, he waves to everyone he sees. On bad ones, he slumps down like an exhausted, lost boy, refusing to move. This is tough on Margie, 73. A courtly, retired businessman, Hugo used to be the life of the party. Now, ten years after a massive stroke, his lapses are so profound that the Belnord’s doormen have had to come to the rescue — picking him up from the elevator floor, freeing him from the shower.

Read the full article in The Wall Street Journal.

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