6. Straus Square
Straus Square on East Broadway and Rutgers Street was the go-to spot to get the news a century ago. Straus Square is named for Nathan Straus (1848-1931), the international representative for L. Straus & Sons, the family’s crockery and glass firm. His father, Lazarus, emigrated to America in 1852, and the rest of the family followed him to Georgia in 1854. Although Nathan took Sunday School classes with a Baptist minister, he also took Hebrew lessons in Alabama before moving to New York. Nathan traveled across America to open new markets and throughout Europe to acquire new products for the firm. The Strauses were sole owners of Macy’s in Manhattan and were partners in the Abraham & Straus department store in Brooklyn. To promote welfare in the community, Nathan provided a dining hall with full meals for just five cents, as well as offering personal gifts of money, clothing and medical treatment. Tragedy struck his family when his wife and brother died aboard the Titanic in 1912, after which he retired from business and devoted himself to charity and public service.
At Straus Square, many immigrant Jewish families would come to get their news. Because many families could not afford to buy a newspaper, people would crowd around the square to get their daily news fix, especially during World War I. The site was also a popular place for protests, where many progressive Jews would listen to speeches by activists such as Lillian Wald and Emma Goldman about workers’ rights. Nathan would also sell milk in the square, and he supplied a milk bar on the roof garden of the Educational Alliance, a settlement house and a community center which stands to the east of Straus Square. In 1953 the Manhattan Borough President and members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars gathered at the site to dedicate a monument to the men and women of the Lower East Side who served in World War I, World War II, and the Korean War.