Oscar Straus Memorial
artwork by Adolph Alexander Weinman
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 was 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 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.
“Oscar Straus Memorial” enters the record as artwork by Adolph Alexander Weinman. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Oscar, Straus and Memorial can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 12, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7106264. Authority coordinates are 38.894, -77.032. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1906, 1909, 1929 and 1947.
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This entry incorporates text from “Oscar Straus Memorial” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.