[Rarebooks] FS: SIGNED Theodore Roosevelt & Jacob Riis: THEODORE ROOSEVELT THE CITIZEN

[Charles Agvent]

One of hundreds of fine SIGNED PRESIDENTIAL items in our inventory 
including letters, ephemera, photographs, and signed books, all of which 
can be seen at http://www.charlesagvent.com

(ROOSEVELT, Theodore) RIIS, Jacob. THEODORE ROOSEVELT THE CITIZEN. New 
York: The Outlook Company, 1904. First Edition. Second Printing in 
publisher's original decorated cloth. Illustrated with plates. This copy 
virtually unique as it is INSCRIBED and SIGNED by both the author and 
the subject, as President. Riis's inscription is dated 5 August 1908. 
Roosevelt writes: "with the best wishes of/Theodore Roosevelt/The White 
House/Jan. 18th 1909." The addition of "The White House" by Roosevelt is 
notable as prior to Roosevelt's administration, the residence was known 
as the "President's Palace," the "President's House," and the "Executive 
Mansion." It was Roosevelt who officially named it "The White House" in 
1901. Of the many books signed by Roosevelt we have both handled and 
seen, we have never before encountered one in which he has noted his 
official residence along with his signature. Hinges cracked and neatly 
repaired. Still Near Fine.

Jacob Riis, among the most dedicated advocates for America's oppressed 
and downtrodden, arrived in New York from his native Denmark at the age 
of 21 in 1870. A pioneer in photojournalism, Riis photographed and wrote 
about the slums and tenements of a New York in the dawn of a new 
century. Riis came to Roosevelt's attention through his 1890 book HOW 
THE OTHER HALF LIVES. As Commissioner of the New York City Police 
Department, Roosevelt accompanied Riis on his evening travels through 
the slums and witnessed firsthand the inhumane conditions endured by 
many of New York's inhabitants. In his 1901 book MAKING OF AN AMERICAN, 
Riis wrote of Roosevelt: "It could not have been long after I wrote HOW 
THE OTHER HALF LIVES that he came to the Evening Sun office one day 
looklng for me. I was out and he left his card merely writing on the 
back of it that he had read my book and had 'come to help'. That was 
all, and it tells the whole story of the man. I loved him from the day I 
first saw him; nor ever in all the years that have passed has he failed 
of the promise made then. No one ever helped as he did. For two years, 
we were brothers on Mulberry Street." Roosevelt, in turn, wrote of Riis 
after his death: "It is difficult for me to write of Jacob Riis only 
from the public standpoint. He was one of my truest and closest friends. 
I have ever prized the fact that once, in speaking of me, he said, 
'since I met him he has been my brother.' I have not only admired and 
respected him beyond measure, but I have loved him dearly...and I mourn 
him as if he were one of my own family." (#014375)        $12,500.00

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