Frank A. Rooke

Frank Aydelott Rooke, known professionally as Frank A. Rooke, was a New York City architect who established his practice in 1887, and pursued his career until the mid-1930s. He was long associated with the Sheffield Farms dairy company, for which he designed four pioneering pasteurization and bottling plants. He also designed stables and carriage houses.

Rooke was born in 1862 in Rye, New York, and opened an office at 1262 Broadway in Manhattan in 1887. 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.

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.

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).

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