biography
pronunciation:
[strows]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1845–1912)
|
| biography:
| Merchant, born in Otterberg, Germany, the brother of Nathan and Oscar S Straus. His mother, Sara, brought the family to join her husband, Lazarus, in Georgia in 1854. Isidor worked as a clerk in his father's Atlanta store, and then travelled to Europe (1863) on commission to purchase supplies for the Confederacy. Stranded in Liverpool, UK, with Southern ports blockaded, he sold cotton shares and Confederate bonds and returned to New York (1865). There, he and his father formed L Straus & Sons, a crockery and glassware firm that in 1874 bought into R H Macy & Co. Isidor and brother Nathan became partners of Macy's (1888) and then sole owners (1896). They also developed Abraham & Straus, another department store. Active in civic affairs, Isidor was an influential friend of President Grover Cleveland, on whom he prevailed to pursuade Congress to adopt a gold standard. He served in the US House of Representatives (Democrat, New York, 1894–5) but declined renomination. His philanthropies included the Montefiore Home and the American Jewish Committee, and he was president of the Educational Alliance (1893–1912), a settlement house on New York City's Lower East Side. He and his wife, Ida Blun, were aboard the SS Titanic, and both drowned when Ida refused to be separated from her husband of 40 years, and he refused a seat on a lifeboat while women remained aboard the ship. |
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