Webber Packing House

The six-story warehouse at 207 E. 119th St. was built in 1895 for Richard Webber, a butcher, for storing refrigerated meat. The meatpacking building was part of a former complex including a commercial slaughterhouse and retail space. The brick and stone Renaissance Revival building was the tallest in the complex and is part of the East Harlem Historic District, covering about 90 acres and listed in the National Register in 2019. The Webber Packing House became a New York City Landmark in 2018. The building's front windows are now bricked in and the building contains Ferguson Plumbing Supplies, accessed from a side parking lot on the adjacent lot.

Richard Webber Sr. was born in England in 1847 and began an apprenticeship as a butcher at age 15. He moved to Canada and then to New York City in 1870, where he worked as a butcher in a shop on E. 118th Street and Third Avenue. Webber Sr. set up a butcher shop in East Harlem at 210 E. 120th Street by 1877. He was an active member of several butcher trade organizations. Webber Sr. served on the Harlem Board of Commerce and was a Harlem Savings Bank trustee.

Webber Sr. was apparently a benevolent employer. The employees held an annual outing each summer. In June 1889, Webber Sr. rode horseback and led a parade of his employees and a musical band through the streets of Harlem; the group ended up in the Bronx at Brommer's Union Park for the rest of the day's celebration. He started the Richard Webber Mutual Aid Society in 1894 to help out his workers, who numbered only 12 at the time. The Mutual Aid Society membership topped 400 by 1914, when the 20th annual Midsummer Night's Festival was held at the Manhattan Casino at 155th Street and Eighth Avenue.

Webber Sr. died at sea in 1908 and was described in the New York Times as one of the largest retail butchers in New York City. The business continued in the complex until 1928, initially run by his sons Richard Webber Jr. and William Webber. The Webbers owned three stores by 1912; the others were at 177th St. and Webster Ave. and 1st and 6th Ave. in Mt. Vernon. The company had rebranded to "Richard Webber, The Food Department Stores" and offered other groceries, too. Webber Jr. wrote an article for Good Housekeeping Magazine in 1915 on cuts of meat and their uses, complete with diagrams; with this information, the housewife was prepared to "get full value for her money" when shopping at butcher shops. Richard Webber closed at the E. 119th St. location by 1919 and reopened in October 1919 as Municipal Market Company, Inc. The property was leased by an organization led by Alderman Clarence Y. Palitz, who leased stalls to dealers who planned to buy direct from producers and sell at a minimal profit; the initial markup was one cent per pound.

The architects for Webber's Meat Packing House in East Harlem were Bartholomew and John P. Walther. The father and son team specialized in factories, warehouses, and flats. The six-story packing house features a stone base, grand arches and pilasters with Corinthian capitals, and a prominent bracketed cornice. The central bay sports decorative terra cotta carvings of cow heads on the second floor, suggesting the original function of the building, plus the date 1895.

Since 1928, the building has contained a number of different businesses. The building was a paper warehouse by the mid-1940s. Not much has been changed in the building, except for filling in the windows on the main facade with buff-colored brick.

Anonymous. The Meat Trade 25 Years Ago. Butchers' Advocate and Market Journal, vol. 57, no. 9, 17 - 17. Published June 24th 1914. Google Books.

Anonymous. Greater New York News. Butchers' Advocate and Market Journal, vol. 57, no. 13, 23 - 24. Published July 22nd 1914. Google Books.

Anonymous. "Army Bacon Put on Sale at 28 Cents a Pound." The Evening World (New York) October 9th 1919. Final ed, 17-17.

Gannon, Devin. Three historic East Harlem buildings designated as New York City landmarks, 6sqft. March 27th 2018. Accessed November 29th 2021. https://www.6sqft.com/three-historic-east-harlem-buildings-designated-as-landmarks/.

Historic Districts Council. Former Webber Meat Market, Six to Celebrate. Accessed November 29th 2021. https://6tocelebrate.org/site/former-webber-meat-market/.

Municipal Market Company, Inc. "Municipal Market Company Inc., Formerly Richard Webber. Ad." The Evening World (New York) October 17th 1919. Final ed, 24-24.

New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. Richard Webber Harlem Packing House, 207-215 East 119th Street, memo, New York City Government. November 14th 2017. Accessed November 29th 2021. https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/lpc/downloads/pdf/webber-blurb-20171114.pdf.

Noonan, Theresa C. Richard Webber Harlem Packing House, Designation Report, List 505, LP-2595, NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission. March 27th 2018. Accessed November 29th 2021. http://www.neighborhoodpreservationcenter.org/db/bb_files/2018-Richard-Webber-Harlem-Packing-House.pdf.

Richard Webber. "Richard Webber. Ad." The Evening World (New York) June 5th 1912. Final ed, 3-3.

Webber, Richard [Jr.]. Meat Cuts and Their Uses. Good Housekeeping. Vol. LXI no. 1, July 1st 1915. 388 - 394.