Percy S. Straus Gives $1,000,000 to N.Y. University

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A gift of $1,000,000, to be known as the Edith A. and Percy S. Straus Fund was made to New York University by Mr. and Mrs. Percy S. Straus, Chancellor Elmer Ellsworth Brown announced. The income from the fund is to be used at the discretion of the university officials.

News of the gift, made through the Centennial Fund of which Mr. Straus is Chairman of the Executive Committee, came as a surprise to the university. Mr. and Mrs. Straus had sailed Friday for Paris. Announcement to the university was made in a letter mailed to the university by Mr. Straus before he sailed on Friday.

“We are overwhelmed with surprise and wonder at your magnificent gift,” Chancellor Brown declared in a radiogram sent the donors on board the steamer Paris. “Nobody knows better than you the greatness of the need which this gift helps to alleviate and the greatness of the educational opportunity which it helps to realize. We are all of us overjoyed and agree that this marks the turning point in the long road.”

Mr. Straus, who is a vice-president of R.H. Macy & Company, is a graduate of Harvard, class of 1897. In 1924 with his brothers, Jesse and Herbert, he gave $300,000 for Straus Hall, a dormitory in Harvard Yard, named in memory of their father, the late Isidor Straus.

The Centennial Fund, of which Mr. Straus is Chairman of the Executive Committee, is raising $73,000,000 for an endowment to be completed in 1931.

Last week Mr. Straus anounced the gift of a building valued at $700,000 to New York University by Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Brown. The gift was equivalent to an endowment of $1,900,000.

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