Theodore Roosevelt High School (New York City)

Theodore Roosevelt High School
Address
Map
500 East Fordham Road

Belmont

The Bronx
,
NY
10458

United States
Coordinates40°51′34″N 73°53′19″W / 40.859444°N 73.888611°W / 40.859444; -73.888611
Information
Former nameRoosevelt High School
School typePublic high school
OpenedNovember 14, 1918 (1918-11-14) (school); September 1928 (1928-09) (building)
Statusclosed
Closed2006 (2006)
School boardNew York City Panel for Educational Policy
School districtNew York City Department of Education
Grades9–12
Color(s)red and white
Team nameRough Riders
Theodore Roosevelt Educational Campus in February 2020

Theodore Roosevelt High School, originally Roosevelt High School, the third public high school to open in the Bronx, New York,[1] operated from 1918 until its permanent closure in 2006. Shutting down incrementally since 2002, this large high school, initially enrolling about 4 000 students,[2] 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,[3] still open after the historic, namesake high school ceased in 2006.[4] At its November 1918 opening, Roosevelt High School operated in the building of school PS 31.[5]

At the January 1919 death of the Roosevelt family's preeminent member, a recent US president and venerated statesman, Roosevelt High School was renamed.[6] And as the Bronx led New York City's population growth,[7] its enrollment snowballed.[6] Still focusing on accounting and secretarial skills,[8] Roosevelt gained more classrooms in other schools' buildings.[6] 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.[2] 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' meetings[9] and politicians' speeches.[10]

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.[11] Still, Roosevelt was esteemed in its own niche,[12] educating for the basic workforce, the school's image enduring into the 1950s.[13] Meanwhile, a local gang, the Fordham Baldies, menacing blacks and Hispanics in Roosevelt's vicinity, kept enrollment overwhelmingly white.[14] 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.[15][16]

Across the 1960s, amid economic stagflation,[17] drug selling popularized,[18] common at Roosevelt by 1970.[16] As drug culture had eased racial hostilities, Roosevelt's black and Hispanic enrollment grew.[14] Although heroin lowered gang violence,[14] New York City teetered on bankruptcy in 1975,[19] and the 1977 blackout incited massive looting, triggering a domino effect of rapid urban decay,[20] including soaring crime rates and white flight.[21][22][23] By 1980, the South Bronx, largely rubble,[24] was notorious for having the city's worst public high schools.[25] Then the crack epidemic struck.[26] Many adolescents from the city's most violent neighborhoods,[27] policed by especially corrupt officers,[28] were zoned to Roosevelt, which, having the city's highest dropout rate in 1984,[29] symbolized the educational disaster.[30]

In 1986, with a new principal, efforts began to raise Roosevelt's attendance.[29] But improvement was negligible until 1992, when the next new principal, Thelma Baxter, led an astonishing turnaround.[30][31] Upon Baxter's 1999 promotion to superintendent of schools in Manhattan's Harlem section, Roosevelt's progress reversed.[30] In 2001, the city's Department of Education, ordered by the state's, commanded Roosevelt to shut down.[32] In 2002, it received its final freshman class.[32] In 2006, about 3% graduated.[33] The Theodore Roosevelt High School then closed.[30]

From the 1920s to the 1960s, a number of eventual public figures—journalist Thelma Berlack Boozer, actress June Allyson, actor John Garfield, baseball player Rocky Colavito, all the singers of Dion and the Belmonts, Kiss's lead guitarist Ace Frehley, actor and screenwriter Chazz Palminteri, and comedian and actor Jimmie Walker—had attended the Theodore Roosevelt High School.[34][35]

  1. ^ Morris High School and Evander Childs High School had opened first.
  2. ^ a b 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".
  3. ^ In February 2015, a two-year reconstruction project began on the building's exterior, affected by crumbling cement and falling bricks.
  4. ^ Clara Hemphill, "Theodore Roosevelt Educational Campus", Insideschools, Mar 2012:
  5. ^ 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.
  6. ^ a b c "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.
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference BBT1922p32 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ 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.
  9. ^ Clarence Taylor, Reds at the Blackboard: Communism, Civil Rights, and the New York City Teachers Union (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), p 158.
  10. ^ Susan Dunn, 1940: FDR, Willkie, Lindbergh, Hitler—the Election Amid the Storm (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2013), pp 1 & 202–203.
  11. ^ Paula S Fass, Children of a New World: Society, Culture, and Globalization (New York & London: New York University Press, 2006), p 76.
  12. ^ 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".
  13. ^ 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.)
  14. ^ a b c Eric C Schneider, Vampires, Dragons, and Egyptian Kings: Youth Gangs in Postwar New York (Princeton & Oxfordshire: Princeton University Press, 1999), p 184.
  15. ^ Jimmie Walker w/ Sal Manna, Dyn-O-Mite!: Good Times, Bad Times, Our Times—A Memoir (Philadelphia: Da Capo Press, 2012), p 22.
  16. ^ a b 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.
  17. ^ Amid economic stagnation—that is, floundering industry, rising unemployment, and stalling pay raises—prices of products and services were rising, inflation.
  18. ^ Eloise Dunlap & Bruce D Johnson, "The setting for the crack era: Macro forces, micro consequences (1960–1992)", pp 45–59, in Marilyn D McShane & Franklin P Williams III, eds, Drug Use and Drug Policy (New York & London: Garland Publishing, 1997), pp 53–54.
  19. ^ Jeff Nussbaum, "The night New York saved itself from bankruptcy", The New Yorker magazine website, Condé Nast, 16 Oct 2015.
  20. ^ Businesses typical of wholesome communities closed or moved, property value fell, and most apartment buildings either were burned and abandoned, how their reputable landlords may collect insurance compensation, or were sold to thrifty or miserly landlords.
  21. ^ Composed mainly of American whites, including Jews, the gentrified classes fled.
  22. ^ Christina Sterbenz, "New York City used to be a terrifying place", Business Insider, 12 Jul 2013.
  23. ^ Rodney P Carlisle, Handbook to Life in America, Volume IX: Contemporary America, 1970 to the Present (New York: Facts On File, 2009), pp 68–70.
  24. ^ David Gonzalez, "Faces in the rubble", New York Times, 21 Aug 2009.
  25. ^ John N Gardner & Betsy O Barefoot, ch 10 "Lehman College of the City University of New York", pp 219–42, in Betsy O Barefoot et al, eds, Achieving and Sustaining Institutional Excellence for the First Year of College (San Francisco: Jossey–Bass, 2005), p 219.
  26. ^ Eloise Dunlap & Bruce D Johnson, "The setting for the crack era: Macro forces, micro consequences (1960–1992)", pp 45–59, in Marilyn D McShane & Franklin P Williams III, eds, Drug Use and Drug Policy (New York & London: Garland Publishing, 1997), pp 49–50.
  27. ^ "46th Precinct", Official New York City Police Department Web Site, visited 10 Mar 2014: the 46th Precinct polices the Bronx sections Mount Hope, Morris Heights, University Heights, and Fordham Heights. For a closer discussion, see Graham Rayman, The NYPD Tapes: A Shocking Story of Cops, Cover-ups, and Courage (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp 62–64. For a contemporary source, see John T McQuiston, "Four slain in violent Bronx area", New York Times, 29 Sept 1987, reporting, in part, "Four residents were slain in separate incidents in one South Bronx precinct during a 15-hour period that ended early yesterday afternoon, the police said. The slayings occurred in the 46th Precinct, north of the Cross Bronx Expressway in Morris Heights, where it is not unheard of to have four homicides in a day, according to Sgt. Benjamin Dowling, a precinct spokesman. There was an average of 4.3 murders a day last year in all of New York City, which is divided into 75 precincts. 'We're very heavy into homicides in this precinct,' said Sergeant Dowling".
  28. ^ Leonard Levitt, NYPD Confidential: Power and Corruption in the Country's Greatest Police Force (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2009), pp 155–56. In contemporary journalism, Craig Wolff, "Tales of police corruption not surprising, 46th Precinct residents say", New York City, 10 Oct 1993, reported, in part, "The 46th Precinct is in the Fordham section of the Bronx. It is a crime-ridden precinct where, the Mollen Commission was told, some of the department's worst officers were commonly 'dumped.' And it is where 'the Mechanic' worked, a convicted officer who earned the nickname for the tune-ups,' or beatings, he performed on drug suspects and innocent bystanders alike. The Police Department says there is no policy of using any precinct, including the 46th, as a place of exile for troublesome officers". Yet under two years later, Clifford Krauss, "Police officer convicted of extorting payoffs", New York Times, 21 Apr 1995, reported that perhaps some 30 officers in the 46th Precinct were involved in various criminal activity in the community. And soon, Clifford Krauss, "16 officers indicted in a pattern of brutality in a Bronx precinct", New York Times, 4 May 1995, § B, p 1, reported endemic criminality in the 48th Precinct, policing the Belmont section.
  29. ^ a b Jane Perlez, "City's schools seek solutions on dropouts", New York Times, 28 Nov 1986.
  30. ^ a b c d Mark Coultan, "Weak schools caned where winning counts", Sydney Morning Herald, 15 Nov 2006: "And they don't just name aircraft carriers after their presidents. There's the Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School, and the Eleanor Roosevelt High School. However, the Theodore Roosevelt High School closed this year. But there's a story to that. Theodore Roosevelt High, in the south Bronx, opened in 1919 and as the area descended into drug-fuelled despair, so did the school. An energetic principal, Thelma Baxter, revived the school in the 1990s but after she was promoted the school went downhill again. Schools are reflective of society, and America loves winners. Losers? Nobody wants to know. In Australia, struggling schools get extra help; in America, it's the best schools that get the money. The worst are told to improve, or close. The principals and teachers find new jobs, and the children are found new schools. Often three new schools occupy the same building".
  31. ^ Editor, "Cloning Thelma Baxter", New York Times, 27 Jan 1996.
  32. ^ a b Catherine Shu, "A South Bronx high school's long goodbye: Phasing out an 80-year-old institution", Columbia Journalism News: Youth Matters, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, 2005.
  33. ^ Kenneth Lovett, "Grad Tidings", New York Post, 26 Apr 2007.
  34. ^ "Theodore Roosevelt High School, Bronx, NY", NNDB, Soylent Communications, 2013, Website accessed 3 Jul 2014.
  35. ^ Cite error: The named reference :1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).