Theodore Roosevelt High School, originally Roosevelt High School, the third public high school to open in the Bronx, New York,Morris High School and Evander Childs High School had opened first. operated from 1918 until its permanent closure in 2006. Shutting down incrementally since 2002, this large high school, initially enrolling about 4 000 students, yearly dwindled, newly sharing its 1928 building with new, small public high schools—all pooling students for major, extracurricular activities like athletics and JROTC—a reorganization renaming the building Theodore Roosevelt Educational Campus,In February 2015, a two-year reconstruction project began on the building's exterior, affected by crumbling cement and falling bricks. still open after the historic, namesake high school ceased in 2006.Clara Hemphill, "Theodore Roosevelt Educational Campus", Insideschools, Mar 2012:
Belmont Preparatory High School Bronx High School for Law and Community Service Fordham High School for the Arts Fordham Leadership Academy for Business and Technology KAPPA International High School West Bronx Academy for the Future At its November 1918 opening, Roosevelt High School operated in the building of school PS 31.Norval White & Elliot Willensky w/ Fran Leadon, AIA Guide to New York City, 5th edn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), entry "W1", p 846.
At the January 1919 death of the Roosevelt family's preeminent member, a recent US president and venerated statesman, Roosevelt High School was renamed."The Roosevelt High School: Only a little over a year old and overcrowded", School (New York, NY), 1920 Jan 22;31(21):197,202, p 197. And as the Bronx led New York City's population growth, its enrollment snowballed. Still focusing on accounting and secretarial skills,Elsie B Goldsmith, "Schedule of schools: 1: Commercial education", pp 2–21, Directory of Opportunities for Vocational Training in New York City (New York: Vocational Service for Juniors, 1922), p 16. Roosevelt gained more classrooms in other schools' buildings. Yet in 1928, the high school entered its own, newly built at 500 East Fordham Road, making it one of America's high schools largest and best equipped.Lisa Rogak, A Boy Named Shel: The Life and Times of Shel Silverstein (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2007), p 9: "When World War II broke out in 1939, the curriculum at public schools across the country was retooled toward the war. Teaching basic military skills was the rule when Shel entered Theodore Roosevelt High School in September 1944. The high school was one of the largest in the nation, covering two city blocks, and was one of the best equipped as well. Its capacity was just over four thousand students and contained ninety classrooms and a variety of sewing rooms, music rooms, auto shops, three woodworking shops, science laboratories, gymnasiums, swimming pools, auditoriums, and a cafeteria that could seat one thousand". At the northern edge of the Belmont section, soon a Little Italy, and the southern edge of Fordham University's campus, Roosevelt's building became a community venue for organizations' meetingsClarence Taylor, Reds at the Blackboard: Communism, Civil Rights, and the New York City Teachers Union (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), p 158. and politicians' speeches.Susan Dunn, 1940: FDR, Willkie, Lindbergh, Hitler—the Election Amid the Storm (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2013), pp 1 & 202–203.
The school colors were red and white. The sports teams were the Rough Riders, nickname of the cavalry unit led by Colonel Roosevelt before his US presidency. The high school's 1930s and 1940s students participated extracurricularly at about 55% or New York City's lowest rate, about 80% citywide.Paula S Fass, Children of a New World: Society, Culture, and Globalization (New York & London: New York University Press, 2006), p 76. Still, Roosevelt was esteemed in its own niche,Lloyd Ultan & Barbara Unger, Bronx Accent: A Literary and Pictorial History of the Borough (Piscataway NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000), pp 107–108, including quote from p 108: "Child, when I showed up that day—at Theodore Roosevelt High School, a white high school—they just about died when they saw me. A colored woman! But my name was on the list to teach there, and it was too late for them to send me someplace else. The plan had worked! Once I was in, they couldn't figure out how to get rid of me. So I became the first colored teacher in the New York City system to teach domestic science on the high school level. I spent the rest of my career teaching at excellent high schools! Between 1930 and 1960, when I retired, I thought at Theodore Roosevelt High School, which is on Fordham Road in the Bronx, then at Girls' High School in Brooklyn, and finally at Evander Childs High School, which is on Gun Hill Road in the Bronx". educating for the basic workforce, the school's image enduring into the 1950s.Harold Thau w/ Arthur Tobier, Bronx to Broadway: A Life in Show Business (New York: Applause Theater & Cinema Books, 2002), pp 32–33: "It wasn't until my father's business went into financial hemorrhage and all the help had to be let go that I got a close look at the downside of free enterprise. ... Every night for a year, with the meager receipts of the evening in a brown paper bag, I closed the door on a failing business and rode a cab up to the Bronx, asking myself: What could I do to help? How could I make a difference? I really didn't have the answers. No one seemed to have them. ... For a long time, a shroud of gloom lay over my soul. Theodore Roosevelt High School didn't help me much in this regard. It wasn't a progressive academic institution; it never was. The governing idea there was, 'Get these boys and girls out into the world and into jobs that'll permit them to survive'. But I always knew I could survive: it was more than a job that I wanted. Besides, there was never a question in my mind that I wouldn't be going to college. I always felt, whatever else was going on, my parents would find a way for me to go. That was simply my frame of reference. Few of my friends thought otherwise. In the East Bronx, Jews as a group had an almost religious fervor about educating their children". (A search of the book, on Google Books, using the term born leaves elusive Thau's birth year. Yet page 28 shows a photograph and caption, viewable via Amazon.com's Look Inside feature, that put his bar mitzvah in 1947. This suggests the age 14, presumably starting high school, in 1948.) Meanwhile, a local gang, the Fordham Baldies, menacing blacks and Hispanics in Roosevelt's vicinity, kept enrollment overwhelmingly white.Eric C Schneider, Vampires, Dragons, and Egyptian Kings: Youth Gangs in Postwar New York (Princeton & Oxfordshire: Princeton University Press, 1999), p 184. In the 1960s, among students citywide, truancy increased and socializing gained priority, whereby other high schools often issued diplomas once their requirements were met via Roosevelt's evening and summer classes.Jimmie Walker w/ Sal Manna, Dyn-O-Mite!: Good Times, Bad Times, Our Times—A Memoir (Philadelphia: Da Capo Press, 2012), p 22.Allen Jones w/ Mark Naison, ch 17 "Shifting loyalties", pp 83–87, The Rat that Got Away: A Bronx Memoir (New York: Fordham University Press, 2009): pp 83–85 discuss local youth subculture around 1967, while pp 86–87 illustrate it in events involving T Roosevelt HS.