While walking down the hallways of Roosevelt Midle School, you may have noticed the eight tile motifs (pictures) located on our water fountains. Have you ever wanted to know the history behind them? A book that was published on the decorative tiles found around Erie even includes ourschool in it, and describes Roosevelt Middle School as "a tile treat" ! This web page was designed in order to tell you the history of our famous tiles.
In 1924, a man named W.W Meyers worked for the Erie School District as their chief architect. He took on the task of designing all new schools to be built in Erie City. One of these schools was Roosevelt Junior High School. The architect was very creative when it came to decorating Roosevelt and the other schools.
Behind each of Roosevelt’s eight water fountains are tiles with hand painted scenes from the life of Theodore Roosevelt, the school’s namesake and the United States 26th president. These murals are painted on tiles that are described as "arched three part panels with mat glazed backgrounds" and are then framed by "mustard yellow egg-and-dart relief pattern moldings".
The eight tiles represent various highlights from the
life of Theodore Roosevelt, including:
1. the North Dakota Ranch where he lived during the 1880’s
(now called the Roosevelt National Park)
2. Sagamore Hill, which is the name of the house he built
on Oyster Bay, Long Island in 1884
3. The White House, where he served as President
from
4. The infamous charge of the "Rough Riders" up Kettle
Hill in Cuba in 1898
5. A view of the Panama Canal, which Teddy Roosevelt
greatly influenced and worked towards
6. The "teddy bear incident", where Roosevelt refused
to kill a bear cub on a hunting trip
If you would like to find out more about the tiles around
Erie you could check out the book "A Guide To the Tiles of Erie Pennsylvania",
by Cleota Reed, which is where we found all of our research information
for this web site.