[2][4][5] His father was a tailor who arrived penniless to the United States, eventually becoming a successful dress manufacturer and then expanding into real estate management and development.
[2] While on holiday in Paris, France, in the early 1960s, Durst noticed a book on the history of New York City by a German author in a mom-and-pop bookstore.
However, his son and successor, Douglas Durst, received interest-free, government-issued Liberty Bonds under Governor George Pataki, and also used eminent domain to facilitate the family's growing real estate interests.
The former subsidized the cost of building massive projects in both midtown and downtown Manhattan, and the latter enabled the Durst family to take holdout properties on West 42nd Street, where 4 Times Square and 1 Bryant Park were built.
They had four children: Bernice Herstein Durst (1918–1950) died in 1950 at the age of 32 as a result of falling or jumping off the roof of their family home in Scarsdale.