Roak Block

Roak Block is a historic building in Auburn, Maine.

Jacob Roak, an enterprising young man from Durham had been making and selling shoes at Goff's corner since he was very young. When the railroad came to Auburn in 1849 and continued across the river above the falls, Auburn commerce gravitated to a more modernized area. Many businesses formally in Minot and Durham started exploring opportunities to move to the central part of Auburn. Because of the direction of the falls, textile mills that were expanding in Lewiston and that required water wheel power did not work as well on the Auburn side of the river.

Due to the growing demand for shoes promoted by the Civil War, by 1959 twenty five shoe manufactures were in operation in the city. Although the War had brought expansion and prosperity to Auburn it also interrupted the lives of many of its young men. Jacob Roak understood this and knew that after the war the community would need a manufacturing center to provide jobs to all the returning veterans.

Roak joined with eight others in 1871 in the construction of a four-story brick building. Among those making their start here were long time leaders Dingley & Foss and Wise & Cooper, such that it became known as the “Cradle of the Auburn Shoe Industry." Roak, in addition to being a shoe manufacturer, was a banker and business man, who secured the cooperation of these prominent shoemakers, each of whom invested and owned a separate vertical section of the combined structure.

The building, with its back to the Androscoggin River, was later named Roak Block and housed various types of manufacturing until the early 1970s. It has since been modernized and used for elderly housing as well as street side businesses.