Herbert N. Straus House

The Herbert N. Straus House stands as a limestone monument to an era of excess that vanished almost as soon as it was built. Commissioned in the late nineteen-twenties by an heir to the Macy's department store fortune, this seven-story mansion was intended to serve as a grand display of status. Its architect, Horace Trumbauer, designed the residence in a French Renaissance style, incorporating imported limestone and entire eighteenth-century rooms sourced from Europe. The ambition was to mirror the palatial homes of the established elite, but the economic reality of the Great Depression intervened. Herbert N. Straus died in nineteen thirty-three just as the project neared completion, and his family never moved into the finished house.