Fred L. Lavanburg Returns from Europe

Fred L. Lavanburg, founder and president of the Fred L. Lavanburg Foundation, which is erecting an apartment house for poor families on Goerick Street, in the heart of the Jewish East Side of New York City, returned from abroad. Mr. Lavanburg who has donated $750,000 as a perpetual fund to bring housing relief to congested city areas, made a survey of housing conditions in Europe. He said he had examined with great interest the four apartment houses erected in Paris by the Rothschild Foundation. These houses are run without profit by the Rothschilds of Paris.

Whitechapel, the Jewish quarter of London, contains many unsanitary buildings and presents a health problem which the London County Council has attempted to remedy. Ten square blocks in Islington, adjoining Whitechapel were condemned and on the site improved dwellings have been erected for working people at low rents, Mr. Lavanburg stated.

Mr. Lavanburg, who is a brother-in-law of the late Oscar S. Straus, explained that the gift of the Goerick Street apartment house to the Foundation was prompted by the hope that after erection this experiment, where modern, improved apartments of three rooms will rent for $7.50, four rooms for $8.50 and five rooms for $10 per week, might serve as a model for others and eliminate the unsanitary blocks of tenements on the East Side.

Mr. Lavanburg has offered to contribute an additional $50,000, on condition that thirteen other philanthropically inclined individuals do likewise, for the erection of a second apartment house block.

The officers of the Foundation are Fred M. Lavanburg. President, Roger W. Straus, Vice-President, Fred L. Somers, Treasurer, and George Taylor, Secretary.