Frank A. Rooke

Early career

Rooke was born in 1862 in Rye, New York, and opened an office at 1262 Broadway in Manhattan in 1887.^:2 That year he designed a building combining a store, a stable, and apartments for Loton Horton of the Horton Ice Cream Co., at 371 Amsterdam Avenue, in the Upper West Side–Central Park West Historic District (designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission). In 1888 Rooke formed a partnership with architect Paul F. Riggs. They designed a Flemish/Romanesque Revival style apartment building in 1889–90 at 373–375 Amsterdam Avenue adjacent to Rooke's 1887 building, also commissioned by Horton.^:132–33

Higgs & Rooke designed a row of seven houses built in 1889 at 669–681 10th Street in what is now the Park Slope Historic District in Brooklyn, and in Manhattan a pair of houses on West 92nd Street, a single house on West 77th Street, and a pair on West 147th Street, all built in 1890. In 1892 Rooke, again in private practice, designed the Claremont Stables, and adjacent private stables at 167, 169, and 171 West 89th Street.

Sheffield Farms

Rooke pioneered the design of large-scale milk plants, for the Sheffield Farms–Slawson–Decker Company (aka Sheffield Farms), which was established in 1902 with Loton Horton as its president and which was at the forefront of the dairy business in the early 20th century. In 1903 Rooke designed a stable and milk depot for the company, at the southwest corner of Broadway and 130th Street in Manhattan (now demolished).^:§8:3–4

In 1907, Sheffield Farms erected its first pasteurization and bottling plant, at 524–528 West 57th Street, to Rooke's design. It was the first large-scale pasteurization plant, with the first continuous holding system of pasteurization, in the country. In 1909 Rooke designed a four-story addition to the 1903 stable, giving it an electric freight elevator and a new facade topped with a Mansard roof.

In 1911 the company erected its second plant, also to Rooke's design. At 632 West 125th Street, the former plant stands today as Columbia University's Prentis Hall, home of the Computer Music Center. It features a glazed white terracotta façade, and the interior retains the original Guastavino tile vaulted ceiling.^:§8:5

Rooke designed a third Sheffield Farms Milk Plant, which opened in 1914 at 1075 Webster Avenue at 166th Street in the Bronx (now demolished). It was one of the most expensive and elaborate milk plants, with one of the largest processing capacities, in the country. The following year a company publication described Rooke as the "Company Architect".^:3 In 1917 Sheffield Farms completed another plant designed by Rooke, at 1368 Fulton Street in Brooklyn, at Marcy Avenue, in the Bedford–Stuyvesant section; it was advertised as the largest in New York. Like the Bronx plant, it has a glazed terracotta facade ornamented with reliefs of milk bottles and cow heads. Sheffield closed this plant in the early 1960s, a time of civil unrest there with gang wars and riots, and the plant remained empty several years before a new non-profit, the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, turned the plant into the Billie Holiday Theatre, which opened in 1972.

Other work

In 1906 Rooke incorporated dairy-plant features, like enameled brick walls, into plans for two structures at a private residence in Rye, New York; he designed a Classical Revival Carriage House as well as a unique Zebra Barn for financier Warner M. Van Norden. Both buildings are extant and undergoing restoration at the Jay Heritage Center.

In 1912 Rooke designed an alteration to the Mount Morris Bank Building in Harlem. Rooke's last known commissions were an alteration to a four-story commercial building at 130 West 45th Street in 1934,^:3 and a 1934–36 alteration of the one-story 433 W. 127th Street to three stories for the Horton Pilsener Company. Sheffield Farms replaced Rooke's 57th Street plant in 1937 with a massive new milk plant designed by a different architectural firm. ^:3

Rooke died in 1946.