Straus Square was one of many accidentally-created plazas which, in the decades before the building of Central Park, served as New York's de facto public space. Originally known as Rutgers Square, the plaza was a veritable hotbed of political activity -- pamphleteering, speechifying -- for the overwhelmingly Jewish surrounding neighborhood. In 1931, the square was renamed to honor Nathan Straus, an early partner in the Macy's empire, later a prominent philanthropist and outspoken Zionist.