P.S. 15 is located opposite the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, a national landmark located on the campus of Bronx Community College. The Hall of Fame, contains bronze portrait busts of 98 famous Americans chosen in a national selection process which was constructed from 1900 through 1972. It includes American heroes like Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Clara Barton, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, Susan B. Anthony, Booker T. Washington, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas A. Edison, and Daniel Boone. This selection of national honorees provides an important rationale for the content of Brinsley Tyrrell's bronze gates.

Tyrrell saw the design of the gates for P.S. 15 as an opportunity to update the Hall of Fame heroes. The candidates for portraits for the bronze entrance gates were selected from lists developed in collaboration with the Board of Education and the community. Among the thirty-six portraits are Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Helen Keller, Chief Little Turtle, Ella Fitzgerald, Roberto Clemente, Colin Powell, Nate Archibald, Jim Thorpe, Albert Einstein, Harriet Tubman, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Martha Graham.


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