Roe School (1919)
Roe School is a three-story, red brick schoolhouse in the Tudor Revival style. A central entrance bay projects forward and rises through a stepped, castellated gable topped with a carved stone shield. Tall stone-mullioned window groups with diamond-pane leaded glass mark the tower, and a carved stone panel above the main doors reads "John J. Roe School." Flanking arched doorways, labeled "Public Library" and "Kindergarten Room" in incised stone lettering, sit on either side of the central portal. Multi-light double-hung windows with green shutters line the classroom wings. Only the north wing was built to match the central mass; a planned south wing was never constructed, leaving the building asymmetrical.
The present Roe School building at 1921 Prather Avenue replaced an earlier school of the same name that had stood on Mitchell Avenue. Rockwell M. Milligan, a partner of William B. Ittner in the St. Louis Public Schools' architectural office, designed the new building, completed in 1919 in the Tudor Revival style rather than Milligan's more typical eclectic manner. The school included a library and an auditorium, each entered through its own doorway flanking the main portal. A planned second wing south of the entrance was never built, leaving only the north wing constructed to match the central mass. The school was named for John J. Roe (1809–1870), who moved from Cincinnati to St. Louis in 1840 and built a fortune as a steamboat captain and pork packer, becoming one of the largest pork operators in the United States. He freed his own slaves after concluding slavery was wrong, and supported the Union during the Civil War. His home stood at Lafayette and Compton avenues. Roe Elementary School closed in 2004. The building now houses Wilkinson Early Childhood Center, a St. Louis Public Schools magnet school for grades pre-kindergarten through second grade. The center moved into the Roe building from its previous home, the 1927 Wilkinson School on Arsenal Street, partly for the building's central heating and air conditioning, and kept the Wilkinson name after the move.
