Straus Park is a small landscaped park on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, at the intersection of Broadway, West End Avenue, and 106th Street.
The most notable feature is a bronze 1913 statue by American artist Augustus Lukeman of a nymph gazing over a calm expanse of water in memory of Ida and Isidor Straus, a United States congressman and co-owner of Macy’s, who perished on the RMS Titanic. The model for the statue was Audrey Munson.
On the memorial is carved a passage from Second Samuel 1:23, "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 Strauses lived in a house at numbers 2747 Broadway, between 105th and 106th Street, one block south of the location of the memorial.
The park exists because a small triangle of land is formed where Broadway and West End Avenue merge. It was known as Schuyler Square when acquired by the city in 1895, and was renamed to Bloomingdale Square in 1907.
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.
Straus Park is mentioned in Andre Aciman's 2011 novel Eight White Nights.
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Famous quotes containing the word park:
“Linnæus, setting out for Lapland, surveys his “comb” and “spare shirt,” “leathern breeches” and “gauze cap to keep off gnats,” with as much complacency as Bonaparte a park of artillery for the Russian campaign. The quiet bravery of the man is admirable.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)