People's Collection at the Donnell Library Center is named for him. He also helped the city's poorer inhabitants by building a recreational pier, the first of many on the city's waterfront. Visits to Palestine Upon touring the Mediterranean with Lina in 1904, the couple stopped over in Palestine, expecting it to be but one stop of many. He wrote, "On reaching Jerusalem, we changed our plans. All that we saw in the Holy Land made such a deep impression on us that we gave up the idea of going to other places. Visiting the holy sights of which one hears and reads since childhood, watching the scenes in life as pictured in the Bible, was most soul-stirring. From that time on we felt a strange and intense desire to return to the land." Nathan and Lina became staunch Zionists. He built soup kitchens for the aged and the blind and the physically defective from 1912-1917. He supported workrooms so that unskilled laborers could find employment. He built health stations that ministered to the victims of malaria and trachoma. He believed strongly in palliative care. He provided $250,000 for the establishment of the Jerusalem Health Center and made possible the founding of a Pasteur Institute. He lent moral and material support to the farmers and colonists of Israel and labored in the interests of the Hebrew University. Straus broke his leg on a 1912 visit to Palestine and was unable to join his brother, Isidor, on the RMS Titanic. Isidor died in the sinking. The Israeli city of Netanya (Hebrew: Natan, for Nathan), founded in 1927, was named in his honor, and Rehov Straus (Straus Street) in Jerusalem, which was Chancellor Avenue during the British Mandate, was also named for him. Nathan Straus died on January 11, 1931, in Manhattan, New York City. Twenty years earlier, at a dinner in his honor, he had given what could have been his own eulogy. I often think of the old saying, "The world is my country, to do good is my religion. ... This has often been an inspiration to me. I might say, "Humanity is my kin, to save babies is my religion." It is a religion I hope will have thousands of followers. He is interred at Beth El Cemetery, also called New Union Field Cemetery, in Ridgewood, Queens. References 1848 births 1931 deaths American businesspeople in retailing American merchants American