Oscar S.Straus Memorial Fountain
The Voice of Reason: 64 x 137 x 60 in. (162.6 x 348 x 152.4 cm)
U.S. General Services Administration
The Oscar S. Straus Memorial commemorates the accomplishments of the first Jewish-American cabinet member, Secretary of Commerce and Labor Oscar Solomon Straus, who served under President Theodore Roosevelt from 1906 to 1909. Straus was a decorated public servant, serving multiple appointments as Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, in addition to acting as a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague and serving as chairman of the Public Service Commission of New York State.
The memorial is composed of three distinct components: a three-tiered granite fountain flanked by two bronze sculptural groups. Preliminary designs for the fountain were completed by acclaimed neo-classical architect John Russell Pope, prior to his death in 1937. The two sculptural groups, Liberty of Worship and The Voice of Reason, were sculpted by artist Adolph Alexander Weinman. Completed in 1947, the memorial predates the construction of the adjacent Ronald Reagan Federal Building and International Trade Center completed in 1998, which architect James Ingo Freed designed to curve around the memorial site. Weinman also designed the sculpture group titled Destiny (1935) that fills the north pediment of the National Archives Building, facing Pennsylvania Avenue. These earlier sculptures are stylistically similar to his bronze figures for the Straus fountain.
