Roosevelt High School (Washington, D.C.)

Plans for the school began in 1920, and it opened in 1932. The 64-room school was designed to hold 1,551 students. Alongside a regular college entrance curriculum, the school included business-oriented classes to accommodate the interests of white students who had previously been served by the Business High School at Ninth Street and Rhode Island Avenue Northwest. created a mural in the cafeteria. Titled An American Panorama, the mural was created as part of the New Deal-era Public Works of Art Project. It was later accompanied by other murals, added by later students, around the school. The fresco is currently being restored and will be incorporated into the final renovation. == Notable alumni ==

• Ralph Asher Alpher (1921–2007), National Medal of Science 2005 for his research in Big Bang nucleosynthesis, and the prediction of the temperature of cosmic background radiation. • Bertie Bowman (1931–2023), hearing coordinator of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations • Lennard Freeman (b. 1995), a basketball player in the Israeli Basketball Premier League • Charlene Drew Jarvis (b. 1941), educator and former scientific researcher and politician • Shirley Ann Jackson (1964), a physicist and the eighteenth president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She is the first African-American woman to have earned a Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). • Bowie Kuhn, Baseball Commissioner • Ted Lerner, owner of the Washington Nationals • Phil Perlo, American football player • Abe Pollin, Owner Washington Bullets, Washington Capitals • Sharon Pratt (Sharon Pratt Kelly, Sharon Pratt Dixon), 1961 – DC politician (Mayor of DC, 1991 to 1995) • Diane Rehm, 1954, American public radio talk show host • Bill Smith, former MLB player (St. Louis Cardinals, Philadelphia Phillies) • Kate Smith (1907–86), singer, attended Business High School—likely class of 1924. • Irvin Yalom, 1931 psychiatrist, author. == References ==