405 E MAIN ST

Summary

Rock School and Hanmer Robbins School Complex
405 East Main Street, Platteville, Grant County
Architect: Henry Kleinhammer (Hanmer Robbins School)
Dates of Construction: Rock School (1863); Hanmber Robbins School (1904)

The Rock School and Hanmer Robbins School are located next to each other, just east of downtown Platteville. The two schools were constructed roughly fifty years apart and illustrate the development of public education in Platteville.

The Rock School is a two-story, Greek Revival-style building. Its walls are built of locally-quarried limestone known as “glass rock.” Construction on the Rock School began in 1858, but the project stalled due to opposition from local taxpayers. The first classes were held in the unfinished building in 1861, and the Rock School was finally completed in 1863. The Rock School earned its name to distinguish it from Platteville’s other two nineteenth-century public schools: the Cottage School and the Brick School (neither of which are still in existence). Between 1928 and 1963, the Rock School served as an American Legion post. In 1966, the City of Platteville established a museum in the Rock School dedicated to the region’s history of lead and zinc mining, and a decade later, the museum restored part of a former lead mine located on the property.

Hanmer Robbins School was designed in 1904 by local architect Henry Kleinhammer. The building has a limestone basement, salmon brick walls, a slate roof, and is capped with a decorative metal cupola – all of which are classically-inspired architectural elements typically associated with the early twentieth-century Queen Anne style of architecture. The building originally served as Platteville’s first high school, but was later converted to an elementary school. In 1957, a large multipurpose room addition was built onto the east side of the older building. The last classes were held at Hanmer Robbins School in 1979, and beginning in 1980, the building was remodeled to house a large collection of artifacts and renamed after the collection’s donor, Rollo Jamison.

The exterior appearances of both the Rock School and the Hanmer Robbins School are largely unchanged since their original construction. Both buildings continue to illustrate their importance as the earliest and best-preserved public schools in the city of Platteville.

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