Theodore Roosevelt High School across the street from the Rose Hill campus.

 

Theodore Roosevelt High School across the street from the Fordham Rose Hill campus.

I was there once to get a college financial aid form that Fordham had not received from my old high school. So, it was either go over there or hope to get back home before Mahopac High School closed on a Friday afternoon. Actually, my first trip was to Fordham Prep. They knew of the form but were out of them. So I then went across to Roosevelt.

For a guy from the Putnam County suburbs it was my first attempt to see such various "other" kinds of schools:

Fordham Prep, as I recall, was the most expensive Catholic High School in NYC. In part because the nearby Metro North makes stops out of places like Scarsdale and Greenwich, that made sense. I saw carpeted halls and all those boys wore jackets and ties. Yep, the ones that needed to be dry-cleaned.

By contrast, Theodore Roosevelt was the first high school I ever entered with a metal detector (late 1970s). As I went to their guidance counseling office I saw a security guard slam a kid against the lockers.

I don’t want to recall these places with any undue adult nostalgia since as a college freshman, I was only a few months removed from sneaking a look at their test answers or running down the same hallways with high schoolers just like these. I thought I was pretty cool and for the record it was all the big city to me back then-I didn't start to distinguish Manhattan as "The City" until my senior college year.

But, with a look back, l can say Theodore Roosevelt and Fordham Prep aren't as dramatically different as, let's say, some public high schools in Bedford-Stuyvesant/Harlem or Choate/Phillip Exeter types, on the other extreme. But for a country boy, these were worlds apart.

Oh, that financial aid form I needed, Roosevelt had an extra copy and kindly gave it to me.

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History of the School

I was disappointed to hear that the school has been closed. Chazz Palminteri, whose play A Bronx Tale is a graduate. Thelma Edna Berlack Boozer, prominent journalist and feminist leader graduated also, as did Dion and both of the Belmonts.

But after decades of riots and some students figuring out how to sneak weapons past metal detectors the Board of Education had had enough. Being placed among New York state's worst institutions, Roosevelt was placed on the New York State Department of Education's list of failing schools;

On June 30, 2006, the final class graduated at the lowest rate among the city's large high schools, 3%.[1] The High School then closed.

Note: Theodore Roosevelt High School, originally Roosevelt High School, the third public high school to open in the Bronx, New York, operated from 1918 until its permanent closure in 2006. https://insideschools.org/school/10X435

[1] Kenneth Lovett, "Grad Tidings", New York Post, 26 Apr 2007.