High Street 103.pdf
Follow Massachusetts Historical Commission Survey Manual instructions for completing this form. FORM B − BUILDING MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION MASSACHUSETTS ARCHIVES BUILDING
220MORRISSEY BOULEVARD BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Photograph Topographic or Assessor's Map Recorded by: Bonnie Parsons Organization: Pioneer Valley Planning Commission Date (month /year):
March, 2010 Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number 17C-132-001 Easthampton NTH. Town: Northampton Place: Florence Address: 103 High Street Historic Name: Charles Sheffeld House
Uses: Present: Single-family residence Original: Single-family residence Date of Construction: pre-1873 Source: map of 1873 Style/Form: Italianate with additions Architect/Builder: Exterior
Material: Foundation: brick Wall/Trim: asbestos shingles Roof: asphalt Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: Major Alterations (with dates): Siding applied, ell added, ca. 1900. Condition:
fair Moved: no | x | yes | | Date Acreage: 0.447 Acres Setting: This is a south-facing house set on a ridge.
INVENTORY FORMB CONTINUATION SHEET [NORTHAMPTON] [103 High Street] MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation
sheet 1 NTH. _x__ Recommended for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. If checked, you must attach a completed National Register Criteria Statement form. Use as much
space as necessary to complete the following entries, allowing text to flow onto additional continuation sheets. ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION: Describe architectural features. Evaluate
the characteristics of this building in terms of other buildings within the community. This is a modest house, one-and-a-half stories in height, under a front-gable roof. It has a one-and-a-half
story wing on the east for a gable-and-wing form. Now covered in asbestos shingles the house is three bays wide on its south façade with a full-width porch across the south. Sash in
the house is 6/6. The wing is four bays wide and one deep and has an odd pair of dormers on its roof: a through-eaves, front-gabled dormer set to one side and below a shed roof dormer.
The house with its wide eaves was once Italianate in style but has lost some of its distinctive decorative features. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE Discuss the history of the building. Explain
its associations with local (or state) history. Include uses of the building, and the role(s) the owners/occupants played within the community. This house was once part of the A. Sheffeld
estate on North Maple Street and was probably built ca. 1870 to house servants on the larger property, which is now gone. By 1910 it was owned by Charles and Marion Sheffeld and Charles
was a magazine publisher who had just completed editing The History of Florence, Massachusetts in which he had written the history of the Northampton Association for Education and Industry,
a utopian community founded in part by his grandfather Samuel Lapham Hill, to whom he had dedicated the history book. Hill, his wife and three children – one of whom was Charles Sheffeld’s
Sheffeld’s mother Emily – were members of the Association and when it folded Hill took over its silk manufacturing mill to run it as the Nonotuck Silk Company. Charles’ father who was
born in Czechoslovakia does not appear in the census of 1870 or thereafter but his mother appears in 1880 running a boarding house with her two young children. Once grown, Charles managed
sales at the silk mill in 1920, until it closed in 1930 when he turned to the sales of securities. A photograph of the house as it appeared when the Sheffelds were living there is in
his History of Florence. BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES Beers, F. W. County Atlas of Hampshire Massachusetts, New York, 1873. Hales, John G. Plan of the Town or Northampton in the County
of Hampshire, 1831. Miller, D. L. Atlas of the City of Northampton and Town of Easthampton, Hampshire County, Massachusetts, Philadelphia, 1895. Walker, George H. and Company. Atlas
of Northampton City, Massachusetts, Boston, 1884. Walling, Henry F. Map of Hampshire County, Massachusetts, New York, 1860.
INVENTORY FORMB CONTINUATION SHEET [NORTHAMPTON] [103 High Street] MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation
sheet 2 NTH. National Register of Historic Places Criteria Statement Form Check all that apply: Individually eligible Eligible only in an historic district Contributing to a potential
historic district Potential historic district Criteria: A B C D Criteria Considerations: A B C D E F G Statement of Significance by _____Bonnie Parsons___________________ The criteria
that are checked in the above sections must be justified here. The Sheffeld House would be eligible as an individual listing on the National Register as the home of Charles Sheffeld
who documented the history of Northampton’s utopian community the Northampton Association for Education and Industry in his History of Florence. It was Sheffeld’s book based on his family’s
role in the founding of the Association that established the importance of the Association’s progressive principles in the history of Florence, but also documented members’ work in the
Abolition movement, the presence of Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, David Ruggles, and the Underground Railroad in Florence. Sheffeld’s life and livelihood were part of Florence’s
primary historical events, took part in its textile economy at the heart of the village of Florence. The Sheffeld House is significant as a remaining outbuilding of the Sheffeld estate
and though it has been added to over time, it represents the vernacular Italianate housing constructed for those who worked to maintain an estate.