The Oscar S. Straus Memorial in Washington, D.C., commemorates the accomplishments of the first Jew to serve in the cabinet of a U.S. president. Oscar Solomon Straus served as Secretary of Commerce and Labor under President Theodore Roosevelt from 1906 to 1909. The memorial is a marble fountain located in the Federal Triangle on 14th Street between Pennsylvania Avenue and Constitution Avenue, Northwest, Washington, D.C. It is located in front of the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center.
The fountain was designed by German-American artist Adolph Alexander Weinman, funded with a public subscription beginning in 1929, and dedicated on October 26, 1947. In the center of the memorial is the massive fountain with the inscription "statesman, author, diplomat" and to each side are two groups of statues, one called Justice (to symbolize the religious freedom which allowed a Jew to serve in such a position of authority) and the other Reason (to symbolize the capitalism and labor efforts put forth by Straus).
It was rededicated on October 26, 1998.
Famous quotes containing the word memorial:
“I hope there will be no effort to put up a shaft or any monument of that sort in memory of me or of the other women who have given themselves to our work. The best kind of a memorial would be a school where girls could be taught everything useful that would help them to earn an honorable livelihood; where they could learn to do anything they were capable of, just as boys can. I would like to have lived to see such a school as that in every great city of the United States.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)