The Batjer Mansion -- No. 11 E. 81st Street

photo by Alice Lum

As Manhattan’s social elite moved northward up Fifth Avenue along Central Park in the 1890s, the wealthy merchant class followed along.  The side streets filled with luxurious mansions that emulated the grand palaces on the avenue, on a smaller scale.  Among them was the Beaux Arts towhouse of wine and liquor merchant Henry Batjer at No. 11 East 81^st Street, just steps from Fifth Avenue.

The five-story marble structure featured an American basement—the latest in architectural trends.  The offset arched entrance was balanced by a window of matching dimensions.  Between the two a lush carved cartouche supported a two-story bowed bay.  Above it all a copper-lined mansard completed the Parisian feel.

photo by Alice Lum

Born in Bremen, Germany, Batjer was the senior member of Batjer & Co. of No. 45 Broadway.  He and his wife, Harriet also maintained a summer residence, Howcroft Farm, in Maywood, New Jersey.   The family included two daughters and a son.   Young Henry Jr. was a member of the prestigious 7^th Regiment, nicknamed the “Silk Stocking Regiment” because of its socially-elite members.

As the year 1894 came to a close, Henry, Jr., became ill.  His condition worsened and on Friday, January 4, 1895 he died in the house at the age of 28.  Captain Charles E. Lydecker requested the members of his company to attend the funeral in the 81^st Street house at 4:00 the following Sunday.  “The usual badge of mourning will be worn thirty days,” instructed the Captain.

The mansion was the scene of a more joyful event three years later.  Following the wedding of daughter  Virginia to Luther Connah Brown in St. James Protestant Episcopal Church on Madison Avenue, the reception was held in the house.  Sadly Virginia lived only ten years after the ceremony.

The offset doorway is kept in perfect symmetry by a matching window opening -- photo by Alice Lum

The same year that Virginia died, 1907, her sister Josephine remarried.   While her first marriage to Alfred E. Pond produced a son, it ended in divorce.  She now married Major Charles Edward Lydecker—the same officer who announced the death of her brother 12 years earlier.

Lydecker’s first wife, Ella Voorhis, had died in 1889.  A graduate of the Columbia Law School, he was a member of the firm Redfield & Lydecker and the city’s Public Administrator.  A year before his wedding to Josephine he was made president of the National Guard Association.  The new family, including Charles’ three children and Josephine’s son, moved in with Henry Batjer, now widowed, at No. 11 East 81^st Street.

The family received a scare when young Kenneth Lydecker, an engineer, was traveling on the Pennsylvania Limited on Thursday, February 15, 1912.  The train wrecked near Altoona, overturning cars and injuring 67 and fatally wounding three.  Seconds before the wreck, as Lydecker realized that “things were going wrong,” in his words, he reached up to pull the emergency cord.  At that instant the car turned over.

“I fell heavily against the roof of the car and my elbow broke a hole in a ventilator,” he recalled.  “The porter was thrown into the window and badly hurt.  After the car had turned over a couple more times on its slide down the thirty-foot bank I worked my way out and helped pull out the porter.  There were sixteen persons in my car, which was second from the front.”

Lydecker suffered only a badly bruised elbow and a hurt ankle.

In 1914, as war broke out in Europe, Charles Lydecker warned of the need to prepare for war.  He helped organize the National Security League that year and was its President for two years.  Then, in 1916, he was forced to step down because of ill health.

The same year, on July 8, 1916 Henry Batjer died.  The 80-year old merchant had never retired, still holding the post of senior member of Batjer & Co.

The Lydecker family remained in the house on East 81^st Street and continued to use Howcroft Farm as their summer residence.   One by one the children married and left the home.  In 1918 Warren B. Pond, Josephine’s son who was attending an Army Aviation School, became engaged to Marion Chapman.  But the wedding never came to be.

Col. Charles E. Lydecker -- photo Library of Congress

In the meantime Charles continue to suffer from ill health.  Finally, on the morning of May 6,1920, he died in his bedroom.  The many obituaries paid little attention to his legal career and focused on the military man.  “During the late war his true-blue Americanism asserted itself in detection and denunciation of all forms of disloyalty,” said the “Year Book of the Holland Society of New-York.”  “While past the age for active service abroad his life-long connection with the Militia of the State of New York enabled him to serve his country efficiently at home.” 

The New York Times recalled “After the European war started in 1914, Mr. Lydecker was one of the earliest and most vigorous advocates of preparedness.”

Lydecker’s will left Josephine one-third of the estate.  She already owned outright the houses on 81^st Street and in New Jersey.  His daughter Nathalie L. Dyer received another third; and the final share, which was made up of Lydecker’s swords, medals and awards, was to be divided equally between his sons Leigh and Kenneth.   Josephine’s son, Warren, received nothing “because he is already well provided for in other ways,” said the will.

Love finally came to Warren and he was married to Helen R. Schniewind in the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church on October 6, 1921.  It was a high-profile society wedding with names like Payne, Gardiner and Mellon in the wedding party (attendant Ailsa Mellon was the daughter of Andrew Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury).

The Batjer House was sold in October of 1924.  It became home to Stanleigh P. Friedman, his wife the former Rena Frowenfeld, and their children Edward and Dorothy. Friedman was a man of many talents.  Having graduated from Yale in 1905 and from the Harvard Law School in 1908, he became a partner in the law firm of Friedman & Bareford I 1912.  Active in the Association of the Bar, he served as chairman of its Committee on Courts of Limited Jurisdiction from 1921 to 1936.

And he wrote music.

In 1904 while a undergraduate at Yale University he wrote their well-known fight song “Down the Field.”  The school honored him for it with an inscription carved on the walls of Welch Hall.  He also wrote “Glory for Yale," “Whoop it Up,” and other school songs for the college.

Friedman’s talents went beyond college songs.  He wrote a cantata, “All Ye That Cleave Unto the Lord” and an anthem, “God is My Trust.”  His arrangements of Bach’s “Bist Du Bei Mir” and “Gavotte en Rondeau” were performed by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

When the attorney was not busy with legal matters, he was President of the Schola Cantorum of New York, a Director of Ballet Associates in American, a member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and a member of the Yale Club.

As if all of this were not enough, in 1931 he became a vice-president and director of Warner Brothers Pictures.  Friedman functioned as the motion picture company’s attorney.

The year 1940 was a momentous one in the Friedman house.  On April 18 daughter Mary’s wedding to Sylvan Schwartzreich was held in the house; and two months later her sister Dorothy’s engagement to Martin A. Roeder was announced.  Dorothy had graduated from the exclusive Lenox School and Finch Junior College while her fiancé was an alumnus of Columbia, Columbia Law School and had attended the Sorbonne.

photo by Alice Lum

After decades in the house, the amazingly diverse Stanleigh P. Friedman died here at the age of 76 on September 30, 1960.  Today the house is owned by the Republic of Bulgaria, having served for some years as the country’s Consulate General.