Coventry Crest

The former Music Room is now the Admissions Office.

The former Dining Room is now the Development Office.

The building we now call Hill House on the Bloomfield Hills campus was originally completed in 1929 as a family home by Alfred and Zillah Stephens. They named it Coventry Crest, to commemorate Zillah’s family’s origins in Coventry, England. The building remained in the Stephens’ family until 1946, when George and Annemarie Roeper purchased it for their school.  The building was the sole space for the school until the Middle Building was built in 1960. Until the 1990s, it was known as the Main Building but is now called Hill House.

The Stephens’ grandson created a website about the history of the building. In another connection between the Stephens family and the school, Alma Burrows, a beloved Roeper Nursery teacher from 1956-1972, had been a nanny for the Stephens family before coming to teach at the school.

A History for the Yearbook

The school published yearbooks in 1953 and 1954.  The tradition resumed in 1965 after the school instituted a high school and the students began publishing yearbooks. For the 1954 yearbook, George wrote a brief history of the earliest days of the school.