Oscar Straus and his Memorial

Mavi Boncuk |
This monument was erected buy public subscription in accordance with the joint resolution of Congress of December 16 1927 signed by President Coolidge Marge 2 1929 in memory of Oscar S. Straus (1850-1926)
Author: "Origin of Republic Form of Government" 1885 "Roger Williams - Pioneer of Religious Liberty" 1894 "Under Four Administrations" 1922
Diplomat: Minister to Turkey 1887-1888, 1898-1900 Ambassador to Turkey 1909-1910

Statesman Secretary of Commerce and Labor 1906 - 1909 Member of the Hague Court of Arbitration 1902-1926
The Oscar S Straus Memorial Association, Inc. October 1947
Oscar Solomon Straus, (born Dec. 23, 1850, Otterberg, Bavaria [Germany]—died May 3, 1926, New York, N.Y., U.S.), the first Jewish U.S. Cabinet member (1906–09), three-time emissary to Ottoman Turkey (1887–89, 1898–1900, 1909–10), and adviser to President Woodrow Wilson.
A brother of Nathan Straus, the philanthropist and owner of R.H. Macy & Company, a New York City department store, Oscar Straus represented the United States in Constantinople (now Istanbul) on two missions between 1887 and 1900. In 1902 he was appointed a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, to which he was reappointed in 1908, 1912, and 1920.

In 1902, on the death of ex-President Harrison, Straus was appointed by President Roosevelt to succeed him as a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, this high honor being given him in recognition of his diplomatic service and knowledge of international relations. Straus has written much for the magazines, has delivered lectures at Yale and Harvard universities, and, since 1903,has lectured annually upon international law before the United States Naval War College at Annapolis. 

In 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt named Straus secretary of commerce and labour, and three years later he was again sent to Turkey as its first U.S. ambassador.  Straus did excellent work while at Constantinople, especially in obtaining recognition of the American schools and colleges in the Turkish dominion. He was again appointed minister plenipotentiary to Turkey (1897-1900) by President McKinley, and was enabled by his influence with the sultan to help reconcile the Mohammedan inhabitants of the Sulu Archipelago in the Philippines to the recognition of the suzerainty of the United States. As a delegate representing the League to Enforce Peace to the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919, Straus aided President Wilson in the incorporation of provisions for the League of Nations into the Versailles Treaty and was active in advocating measures for the protection of Jewish minorities in Europe. His memoirs, Under Four Administrations; From Cleveland to Taft, were published in 1922.

November 12, 1930
Pick Washington Site for Oscar Straus Memorial
One of the most desirable sites in Washington has been offered the Oscar S. Straus Memorial Association by the Treasury Department as a site for the memorial to the memory of the late Oscar S. Straus, according to an announcement yesterday by William Loeb, president of the association. This site is at the entrance to the Great Plaza, facing the new Commerce Building, which has been described by President Hoover as “the noblest governmental building in the world.”
The directors of the association at their meeting yesterday formally accepted the offer of this site, which was proffered them in accordance with the Act of Congress signed by President Coolidge on March 4, 1929. The Executive Committee was directed to secure the services of John Russell Pope to draft some tentative design for the memorial.

The following were elected to the board of directors of the association: Dr. Mary Mills Patrick, former president of the Constantinople College for Women; Hon. Simon W. Rosendale of Albany, formerly Attorney General of New York; and Dr. Albert Shaw, editor of Review of Reviews. All of these were close personal friends of Mr. Straus.
Oscar S. Straus served under four presidents. He was Minister to Turkey under Cleveland and McKinley; Ambassador to Turkey under Taft; and Secretary of Commerce and Labor in President Roosevelt’s Cabinet. President Roosevelt also appointed him as a member of The Hague Court, which appointment was renewed by President Wilson.

During the American Civil War the family aided the Confederacy, but, following its defeat, they resettled in New York City. There they established the merchandising firm L. Straus and Sons. In 1888 Isidor and Nathan acquired a percentage of R.H. Macy and Company, and by 1896 they had gained full ownership of the department store. Isidor served for a short time in the U.S. House of Representatives (1894–95) and in later years engaged in philanthropic works. He and his wife, Ida, perished aboard the ocean liner Titanic in 1912. (Although offered a seat in a lifeboat, Isidor refused to disobey the order of women and children first. Ida, in turn, would not leave her husband, reportedly saying, “Where you go, I go.”) Their son Jesse Isidor Straus became president of Macy’s in 1919 and was succeeded in that office by his son Jack Isidor Straus, who served as company president from 1939 to 1956.
Nathan Straus gained distinction for his philanthropic efforts to improve the health and nutrition of needy children. His brother Oscar Solomon was the first Jewish member of a U.S. cabinet and represented the United States in Turkey under three administrations.

Macy's (originally R. H. Macy & Co.) is an American department store chain founded in 1858 by Rowland Hussey Macy. In 1875, Macy took on two partners, Robert M. Valentine (1850–1879), a nephew; and Abiel T. La Forge (1842–1878) of Wisconsin, who was the husband of a cousin.[10][11] Macy died in 1877 from inflammatory kidney disease (then known as Bright's disease).[12] La Forge died the following year, and Valentine died in 1879.

Ownership of the company remained in the Macy family until 1895, when the Straus brothers acquired the company (now called "R. H. Macy & Co."). Isidor Straus and his brother Nathan Straus had previously held a license to sell china and other goods in the Macy's store.  It became a division of the Cincinnati-based Federated Department Stores in 1994, through which it is affiliated with the Bloomingdale's department store chain; the holding company was renamed Macy's, Inc. in 2007.

American family, originally from Otterberg, in the Rhenish Palatinate. The earliest member known was one Lazarus, born in the first half of the eighteenth century, whose son Jacob Lazarus was known also as Jacques Lazare. Lazarus was elected in the department of Mont Tonnerre for the Assembly of Jewish Notables convened by Napoleon in Paris July 26, 1806, preliminary to the establishment of the French Sanhedrin. His son Isaac took the name of Straus in the year 1808, when Napoleon passed the decree ordering all Alsatian Jews to adopt family names. Isaac's son Lazarus was possessed of considerable means, made in both agricultural and commercial pursuits. Being of liberal tendencies, he was involved in the revolutionary movement of 1848; he emigrated to the United States in 1854 and settled in Talbotton, Ga. In 1865 he established in New York a successful pottery and glassware business, in conducting which he was joined in 1872 by his sons. It was due to his instigation that Kayserling undertook the researches in Spain resulting in his work on Christopher Columbus. He died in New York in April, 1898.