The answer is, it's there because it's cool.

OK, that isn't a very satisfactory answer. A talk with Eleanor ("not Roosevelt!") Lavatai, a nice administrator at the high school, reveals the tower "has no bell. No light, either. It's just sort of ... there."

When the school was built in the early '30s, it was considered a masterpiece of municipal architecture, and it's still a very good-looking school. The faux beaux-arts, retro-Mediterranean style of architecture that came to be known as "Hawaiian" was all the rage then, and Spanish villas featured bell towers, so, naturally, Hawaiian public buildings also featured towers. Look at City Hall. The tower there is good for nothing except locking up Andy Mirikitani when he annoys John DeSoto.

There are also psychological ramifications. Towers reach toward heaven. They provide splendid views. They're vertical, and therefore, Freudian. They're a visual anchor in a sprawling campus. Frankly, they're cool.

Following the DOE guidelines of the period, the school was named after an American president. Roosevelt's original buildings cost $300,000 to build and the walls were surfaced with canac, a sugar cane by-product touted as a wonder material.

Almost immediately, an intense rivalry sprang up between Roosevelt and Punahou, and the dome of the Roosevelt tower was a favorite target of Punahou kids painting over the school colors. Eventually, the two schools actually chose a paintbrush as a symbol of their rivalry.

Kids were injured scaling the tower with rope ladders. Star-Bulletin editorial page editor Diane Chang, a Roosevelt grad, remembers the tower as "haunted. I think someone died there. That's what I heard, anyway." Boo!