"Webster Avenue, west side, north from East 165th Street, showing the pasteurization plant of the Sheffield Farms Company, 1938."
The annex building at 1045 Webster Avenue (seen at left) that once housed part of the Sheffield Farms Company still stands and the company name is still visible on the front facade. Unfortunately the larger plant building at no. 1075 (in the background) and the massive bottle of milk that once topped the building are gone.
The Sheffield Farms pasteurization plant was built in 1914 and was a state of the art facility, one of only two Class 1 gravity plants in the country. It had the largest processing capacity of any milk plant. In 1930 Sheffield Farms introduced the first paper-packaged milk container in the world. Designed by Frank A. Rooke, who designed four plants for the farm company, the original building featured decorative cows' head features on the facade, in addition to its oversized jug of milk. The milk processing functions ceased in the early 1970s, the building at no. 1075 was emptied of tenants in the late 1980s and demolished in the early 1990s.