Isidor and Ida Straus Memorial, Upper West Side, Manhattan
Straus Park is a small landscaped park in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, at the intersection of Broadway, West End Avenue, and 106th Street.
The most notable feature is a "beautiful" [1] 1913 sculpture by the American artist Augustus Lukeman in the form of a memorial to Ida Straus. The model for the sculpture was Audrey Munson. [2]
The park is a memorial to both Ida and Isidor Straus, a United States congressman and co-owner of Macy’s, who perished on the Titanic.[3]
On the memorial is carved a passage from Second Samuel 23, “Lovely and pleasant were they in their lives and in their death they were not parted.” The reference is to Ida’s choice to stay with her beloved husband, Isidor rather than get safely into a lifeboat.
The Straus’ lived in a house at numbers 2747 Broadway, just below the 105th Street location of the memorial.
The park exists because a small triangle of land is formed where Broadway and West End Avenue merge. Between 1995 and 1997, Straus Park was renovated and expanded to the west, by the addition of 15 feet of West End Avenue. An endowment established by the Straus family funded the transformation of a neglected reflecting pool in front of the sculpture into a planting bed. The Friends of Straus Park fund maintenance and the planting of seasonal flowers. [4] [5]
External links
References
| |
