During the British Mandate for Palestine, the street provided a contiguous route from the Bukharim neighborhood in the north to Rehavia in the south, all Jewish-owned areas.

[13] Like other Histadrut buildings around the country, the large, rectangular structure symbolized the power and influence of the Mapai left-wing political party.

[15] Besides offices, the Histadrut building housed a movie theater[11] and a hall that became the home court for the Jerusalem Hapoel Basketball Club beginning in the mid-1950s, as it was the only roofed facility in the country.

[16] The first move toward Orthodoxy south of the Histadrut building was the 1979 opening of the Orthodox Union Israel Center at the corner of Straus and Street of the Prophets.

[17] By the end of the twentieth century, the Histadrut building stood out as a secular anomaly amidst the predominantly Haredi occupancy of Straus Street.

[1] In 2012, the Premiere School of the Arts, offering dance, voice, theater, and auxiliary fitness for religious, English-speaking women and girls, opened in the Histadrut building.

[21] On the southwest corner stands a newer wing of Bikur Holim Hospital constructed between 1918 and 1925;[22] this building is known for its three sets of double doors made of beaten copper depicting the twelve Tribes of Israel and biblical passages.

[23][24] On the northwest corner stands the former Israel Medical Association building, which today houses the Bikur Holim Hospital dialysis unit.

In the days leading up to the Sukkot holiday, the large lot fronting the building is covered with a tent and lulav and etrog sellers set out their wares on dozens of tables.

The apartment building on the northwest corner of Straus Street at Jaffa Road was one of the beneficiaries of a full-size mural painted by the Cite’ Cre’ation company of France.

Beginning in 1999, the Jerusalem municipality contracted CitéCréation [fr]'s street artists to spruce up poor and rundown parts of the city center with the realistic painting technique called trompe-l'œil.

[36] Bazaar Straus, a discount clothing store, opened here in the 1980s, as did HaSOFER, a sofer stam and seller of tefillin, mezuzahs, and megillahs.