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		Oscar Straus Memorial
		Statue of Benjamin Franklin
		Old Post Office Department

OSCAR STRAUS MEMORIAL

The Oscar S. Straus Memorial Fountain, located in Federal Triangle on 14th Street between Constitution and Pennsylvania Avenues, NW, is today dwarfed by the building in its background, the massive Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center.

The fountain, designed by German-American architect Adolph Alexander Weinman and constructed in 1947, was authorized by Congress in 1927 as a memorial to another German-American, Oscar S. Straus. He was born in 1850 in the town of Otterberg, Rhenish Bavaria, now in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. Otterberg was founded in 1579 as a place of settlement for the many Protestant families from France and the Spanish Netherlands who had fled their homelands. It also became home to a significant Jewish community. Today, Otterberg is known for the Romanesque art of its Cistercian Abbey Church, built 1168-1254, as well as its many houses dating back to the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries.

In 1854, Oscar S. Straus, then a small child, came with his mother, sister, and brothers to the United States, joining their father, Lazarus, who had emigrated in 1852. He grew up in Talbotton and Columbus, Georgia, and became one of the United States's first career diplomats, serving for many years as Ambassador to Turkey and at the International Court of Arbitration at The Hague. Later, Straus was named Secretary of Commerce and Labor under President Theodore Roosevelt. An early film from the Library of Congress shows him at work. At that time, he became the first occupant of the so-called "Pink Palace," (2600 16th Street) in Meridian Hill, now home to the Inter-American Defense Board. Straus was also a staunch proponent of American entry into the League of Nations and worked on behalf of Jewish refugees after World War I. He died in New York in 1926. Among his many writings, Oscar S. Straus was author of a book of memoirs published in 1922 entitled Under Four Administrations, from Cleveland to Taft.

Oscar S. Straus was but one of several prominent members of the Straus family. In 1874 the Strauses--Lazarus, Isidor and Nathan--opened a 25' x 100' concession in the basement of Macy's Department Store, selling china, glassware and imported items of this kind from their family business, L. Straus & Sons. In 1888 they bought part interest in Macy's, founder Rowland Hussey Macy having died in 1877 while on a business trip to Europe with Nathan Straus. By 1894 the Strauses became sole owners of Macy's. Oscar Straus's brother, Nathan, was a distinguished public health reformer and philanthropist. The Straus Family maintains a historical website that includes material relating to Isidor and Ida Straus (who both died on the Titanic) as well as to Oscar S. Straus.

Weinman's monument to Straus includes a fountain (with the words "Statesman, Author, Diplomat") and two groups of statues, "Justice" and "Reason," each accompanied by inscriptions related to these virtues.