The Thinker was originally called The Poet and was conceived as part of The Gates of Hell, an 1880 commission for a pair of bronze doors to a planned museum of decorative arts in Paris. The first bronze of The Thinker was cast in 1901, the year that Vide President Teddy Roosevelt became president upon the assassination of William “Dingley Tariff” McKinley. This one sits at the beginning of the sidewalk that leads to the tower at Wizard Academy.