20 Facts About Nathan Straus

Nathan Straus is a founding father and namesake for the Israeli city Netanya.

Nathan Straus was born to a German Jewish family in Otterberg in the former Palatinate, then ruled by the Kingdom of Bavaria, the third child of Lazarus Straus and his wife, Sara.

Nathan Straus's siblings were Hermine Straus Kohns, Isidor Straus, and Oscar Solomon Straus.

The Straus family owned slaves and conducted business with other slave owners, taking several formerly enslaved people to the North with the family following the defeat of the Confederacy.

Nathan Straus served as Parks Commissioner from 1889 until 1893, president of the Board of Health and Commissioner of the Department of Health in 1898, and in 1894 he was selected by Tammany Hall to run for Mayor on the Democratic ticket, but withdrew from the race when his friends in society threatened to shun him if he did.

Nathan Straus is credited as the leading proponent of the pasteurization movement, which eliminated the hundreds of thousands of deaths per year then due to disease-bearing milk.

Nathan Straus opened lodging houses for 64,000 people, who could get a bed and breakfast for 5 cents, and he funded 50,000 meals for one cent each.

Nathan Straus was appointed by President William Taft as the sole United States delegate to the International Congress for Protection of Infants, in Berlin 1911, delegate to the Tuberculosis Congress, in Rome, Italy, 1912.

Nathan Straus retired in 1914 to devote his time to charity.

Shortly after World War I, Nathan Straus traveled to Asheville, North Carolina, to lay a wreath at the Confederate Vance Monument as a "debt of gratitude" for Zebulon Baird Vance's opposition to antisemitism.

Nathan Straus paid for a "suitable fence" to be built around the monument.

Nathan Straus donated money to the New York Public Library, specifically targeting young people.

Nathan Straus helped the city's poorer inhabitants by building a recreational pier, the first of many on the city's waterfront.

Nathan Straus supported workrooms so that unskilled laborers could find employment.

Nathan Straus built health stations that ministered to the victims of malaria and trachoma.

Nathan Straus provided $250,000 for the establishment of the Jerusalem Health Center and made possible the founding of a Pasteur Institute.

Nathan Straus lent moral and material support to the farmers and colonists of Israel and labored in the interests of the Hebrew University.

Nathan Straus broke his leg on a 1912 visit to Palestine and was unable to join his brother, Isidor, on the RMS Titanic.

Nathan Straus died on January 11,1931, in Manhattan, New York City.

Nathan Straus is interred at Beth El Cemetery, called New Union Field Cemetery, in Ridgewood, Queens.