East Chicago, Indiana, had a Riley School at one time, as did neighboring Gary, Indiana, and Anderson, Indiana. One of New Castle, Indiana's, elementary schools is named for Riley as is the road on which it is located. There are also Riley Elementary Schools in La Porte, Indiana, and Arlington Heights, Illinois. The former Greenfield High School was converted to Riley Elementary School and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986. Indianapolis Public School 43 is named for him and is located less than a mile from his burial place in Crown Hill Cemetery. Riley Towers, a high-rise apartment complex in Indianapolis, is named in his honor. In 1940, the U.S. Postal Service issued a 10-cent stamp honoring Riley. As a lasting tribute, the citizens of Greenfield hold a festival every year in Riley's honor. Taking place the first or second weekend of October, the "Riley Days" festival traditionally commences with a flower parade in which local school children place flowers around Myra Reynolds Richards' statue of Riley on the county courthouse lawn, while a band plays lively music in honor of the poet. Weeks before the festival, the festival board has a queen contest. The pageant has been going on many years in honor of the Hoosier poet According to historian Elizabeth Van Allen, Riley was instrumental in helping form a Midwestern cultural identity. The Midwestern United States had no significant literary community before the 1880s. The works of the Western Association of Writers, most notably those of Riley and Wallace, helped create the Midwest's cultural identity and rival literary community to the established eastern literati. For this reason and the publicity Riley's work created, he was commonly known as the "Hoosier Poet". Critical reception and style Riley was among the most popular writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, known for his "uncomplicated, sentimental, and humorous" writing. Often writing his verses in dialect, his poetry caused readers to recall a nostalgic and simpler time in earlier American history. This gave his poetry a unique appeal during a period of rapid industrialization and urbanization in the United States. Riley was a prolific writer who "achieved mass appeal partly due to his canny sense of marketing and publicity". He published more than fifty books, mostly of poetry and humorous short stories, and sold millions of copies. He is often remembered for his most famous poems,