In 1881, developer John W. Stevens acquired a 50-foot-wide parcel on West 84th Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues. (The avenues would be renamed Columbus and Amsterdam, respectively, in 1890.) Rather than erect two commodious townhouses, Stevens directed his architect, William Howe, to squeeze three onto the plot. In January 1882, Howe filed plans for three "three-story brick and brown stone dwellings." Each would be just over 16-feet-wide and would cost $8,000, or about $260,000 in 2026.
Like its identical siblings, the easternmost house at 127 West 87th Street was faced in brownstone and designed in the neo-Grec style. Howe compensated for the home's lack of width with exuberant decoration. The windows were flanked by paneled piers upon bracketed sills. Mimicking the doorway, their earred lintels were profusely decorated with incised, foliate designs. A complex pressed metal cornice of corbels, brackets and a paneled fascia completed the design.
The house was initially owned by Albert M. Crouter and his family. They sold it at auction on September 29, 1891. The following day, the New-York Tribune reported, "The bidding rose from $12,000 up to $16,900." Norman and Sarah E. Macdonald placed the winning bid, but they quickly suffered buyers' remorse.
Court papers explained that on October 29, 1891, the Macdonalds "rejected the title and refused to complete [the purchase], claiming that the title was defective." Albert M. Courter sued and the Macdonalds, apparently begrudgingly, moved in.
The couple welcomed a son, John, in October 1893. Sadly, he died at just 18 months on March 20, 1895.
Norman Macdonald was one of hundreds of New Yorkers who were frustrated with the city's lack of street signs. Some residents or businessmen erected their own signs, and stone blocks on the second floor of some corner buildings were carved with the avenue and street names. But there was no standardized, city-authorized signage. In January 1901, Macdonald signed a petition that began:
It is within the knowledge of every citizen who walks the streets of this great metropolis that it is next to impossible for a stranger to find the names of many of the streets of the city, unless he is fortunate enough to encounter a Policeman or make inquiry of some one he meets acquainted with the locality.
The petition that Macdonald signed was successful. Later that year, the Guggenheim Ordinance was enacted. It instituted a system of standardized street signs.
The Macdonalds sold 127 West 87th Street to Clarence W. Eckhardt in April 1905. He sold it to Emily L. Landon in June 1908 and she resold it the following year, in March 1909, to Dr. Herman B. Sheffield.
Born in 1871, Sheffield graduated from the University of Maryland School of Medicine in 1895. A pediatrician, when he purchased the West 87th Street house he had been associated with the Yorkville Dispensary and Hospital for Women and Children for 11 years; and in 1905 he was appointed Instructor in Diseases of Children art the New York Post Graduate Hospital. (The Yorkville Dispensary and Hospital was renamed Beth David in 1910.)
Dr. Sheffield was a prolific author and routinely contributed medical articles to journals. His expertise was often sought by attorneys in cases involving medical issues. Such was the case in March 1913, when he was called to testify in the lunacy hearing of 22-year-old Walter Lathrop Hanson.
Hanson's mother, Mrs. Aimes Hanson, had homes in Brooklyn and Saratoga Springs and was the niece of Leland Stanford, the founder of Leland Stanford University. Hanson's father died in January 1912, and Walter began receiving payments from a $50,000 trust, administered by his mother. The New York Times reported that on November 5, 1912, Walter married Henriette Keutti "without his mother's consent." She now cut him off from his "allowance" and sought to have him committed as a lunatic.
In the courtroom on March 5, 1913, Dr. Herman B. Sheffield "pronounced him mentally competent," reported The New York Times. The article added, "On the side of young Hanson sat his young bride, who returned stare for stare of her mother-in-law."
Sheffield occasionally took in a boarder. At the time of his testimony, Rev. Charles Winfred Douglas was renting a room for the winter season. Born in Oswego, New York in 1867, Douglas was educated at Syracuse University and at St. Andrews Divinity School, also in Syracuse. He was a leader in Episcopalian liturgy.
In her Ladies of the Canyons, Lesley Poling-Kempes writes that in the spring of 1913, Douglas was in poor health, "overwhelmed by the weekly commute between his home in Peekskill and his apartment in 127 West 87th Street in New York." She notes:
By March, the canon was looking ahead to the summer break and the Douglas family's annual return to their palatial, two-story, seventeen-room log home at Camp Neosho...near Evergreen, Colorado.
In 1915, Sheffield published The Backward Baby, a book on "Idiocy and the allied metal deficiencies in infancy and early childhood." It was one of several books and texts he would write.
Like pediatricians nationwide, in 1916 Sheffield was investigating the cause of poliomyelitis. He was carefully following a number of cases, hoping to discover how the affliction was acquired and how it could be treated.
Among Dr. Sheffield's patients were Joseph Truitt Talbert and his wife, the former Almira Root Trevis. Talbert was a vice president of the National City Bank and "one of the better known financiers of New York," according to The New York Times. The banker suffered a fatal stroke on May 8, 1920 and five months later, his widow's 18-year-old sister, Betsy Tevis, moved from Richmond, Kentucky to live with her.
The situation was intended to be a solace to Almira. But it only added to her grief. On December 2, Betsy met a boy and became "infatuated," according to The New York Times. They had a "social engagement" ten days later, but the young man telephoned at night and cancelled. Betsy Trevis went to her bedroom, closed the door, and shot herself in the head.
A physician arrived and declared Betsy deceased. The New York Times reported, "Mrs. Talbert, not satisfied that her sister was dead, telephone for the family physician, Dr. Herman F. Sheffield." He, of course, could only confirm the previous statement. The shock was too much for Almira. The following day, the New York Herald reported, "She is under the care of Dr. William B. Sheffield, of 127 West Eighty-seventh street."
In 1930, Sheffield retired, "because of failing vision," according to the Bulletin of the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He continued his writing, however, and in addition to his five books on diseases of children, he wrote poetry. On November 10, 1940, for instance, The New York Times reported on the release of Lights and Shadows, Supplement III, "the final ten poems in a series of seventy-five."
via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services
Dr. Herman B. Sheffield died at the age of 79 on March 17, 1950 "of arterio-schlerosis," as reported by the Bulletin of the University of Maryland School of Medicine the following year.
In 1951, the basement level was converted to an apartment. Living here in the mid-1950s was H. Greenough Jr., an instructor at Julliard.
Monroe Schall and his wife, Doris, lived here by the early 1960s. Around 7:30 on the night of October 31, 1964, they were parked in front of the apartment house at 123 West 93rd Street. In the car was June Baron and the three were waiting for June's husband, Leon, to come down. Suddenly, an armed man forced his way into the car and ordered Schall to drive. Within a few blocks, he ordered him to stop, took June's purse, pushed her out of the car, then told Schall to drive to 84th Street and Riverside Drive. There he took Schall's wallet, forced the couple out and drove off with their car.
Speeding through the Upper West Side, the crook sideswiped a taxi at the intersection of 82nd Street and Broadway. He lost control and crashed into the window of a store. In doing so, he hit Christine Zam. She died on the scene.
The injured culprit ran from the scene, and then tried to hijack another motorist who grappled with the gun. Before David Barnes was able to wrest control of the weapon away it went off once, missing both men. The New York Times reported "the thug then leaped out of the car and fled east down 79th Street."
No. 127 West 87th Street survives remarkably intact after more than 140 years. Even the interior shutters survive on the upper floors.
photographs by the author
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