Meadow Spring
A virtual walk through Glen Cove's Meadow Spring.
Community Origins
Meadow Spring is a private housing development that includes eleven properties located within a private residential enclave of 100 verdant acres in Glen Cove. The community was initially conceived by Henry Lewis Batterman (1876-1961) and his company Barwin Realty Company.
In 1912, Batterman purchased his first property in what would become Meadow Spring - a surviving early 18th century shoemaker's home. Capitalizing on the Anglo-Dutch heritage of the existing structure, Batterman commissioned architect Harrie T. Lindeberg to design two residences for the site's opening. Barwin Realty Company began advertising Meadow Spring in the March 1913 issue of Country Life in America , describing the settlement as catering to all-year country living, featuring revival-inspired houses with modern appliances, utility services and multi-car garages. The advertisement boasts the community's close proximity to both the Long Island Railroad's Nassau Station and the Nassau County Club, emphasizing its exclusivity through exclusionary practices, by which "rigid restrictions to insure a colony of thoroughly congenial people will be manifested."
Advertisement for Meadow Spring housing developing in Country Life in America (March 1913): 3.
Building Tour
Nassau Railroad Station
Visitors to Meadow Spring in 1913 would have likely arrived by Long Island Railroad at Glen Cove's Nassau Railroad Station. Constructed in the summer of 1895, the station was originally named Titus Corner after Glen Cove's oldest surviving two-story eighteenth century dwelling, the Townsend/Titus House, which is located just east of the railroad crossing. The station building was funded by the Nassau Country Club for club members' use, providing quick transport to and from Manhattan.
Nassau Country Club
The Nassau Country Club was formed in 1896 as the Queens County Golf Club by a number of residents whose summer houses were located in the Glen Cove-Oyster Bay area. In 1898, it was renamed to Nassau Country Club. After a fire destroyed the original Woodruff Leeming-designed clubhouse, the current building, designed the architectural firm Delano and Aldrich, was constructed on St. Andrews Lane in 1910.
The club's founding preceded the rapid growth of golf courses throughout the United States at the turn of the century. Early club members included J.P. Morgan, Henry Whitney, Percy Chubb and Henry Pratt.
4 Meadow Spring Lane
Portions of this structure predate the Meadow Spring development project, with the earliest part of the building believed to have been built in 1720. Its first resident was a shoemaker named John Cocks, and it served as the birthplace of Civil War State Assemblyman Isaac Coles in 1817. It was later purchased by rubber importer Edward Simpson in 1859 and Carmine D. Gruman, founder of old Glen Cove Bank, in the 1880s. Developer Henry L. Batterman acquired the property in 1912, and it was later owned by Russell Doubleday (1872-1949), the writer and Vice-President of Doubleday Publishing.
( Image Credit: USN: 05924.000144, CRIS , 2016)
1 Meadow Spring Lane
This building was one of the two houses initially constructed for the Meadow Spring development, as seen in the 1913 advertisement above. It was designed by architect Harrie T. Lindeberg (1879-1959) and his partner Lewis Colt Albro (1876-1924) in an Anglo-Dutch revival style that incorporated clapboard additions to create the appearance that the new construction had developed over time. The residence first belonged to cotton goods broker Henry C. Martin and was destroyed by a fire in 1923 ( Lindeberg would design Martin's subsequent residence as well ). Colonel William N. Dykman (1854-1937), President of the New York State Bar Association and his wife Isabelle (née Annan) (d. 1941) used Lindeberg's designs to rebuilt the property. Its front entrance was photographed and noted for its unusual roofline details in the June 1925 issue of Country Life in America , as shown above.
12 Meadow Spring Lane
As seen in the 1913 advertisement above, this house was one of the two residences commissioned for the Meadow Spring development and designed by the architectural partnership of Harrie T. Lindeberg and Lewis Colt Albro. Set on a 3-1/2 acre plot, the house was first occupied by the son of William and Isabelle Dykman, Jackson Dykman (1887-1983) and his wife Susan (née Merrick) (1893-1969). The stables/cottage on the property was built sometime prior to 1939 by architect Bradley Delehanty.
(Image Credit: Country Life in America )
11 Meadow Spring Lane
This house was constructed in 1916 and first occupied by banker Julian Percy Fairchild (1881-1934). It was later used as the residence of William Rogers Coe (son of corporate executive William Robertson Coe and Mai (née Rogers) of Planting Fields ).
The Farm House 9 Meadow Spring Lane
Built circa 1917 and initially the home of financier A. Clarkson Runyon Jr. and his wife Jane Runyon (née Peterson), the Farm House was the first Long Island commission designed by architect Mott B. Schmidt. The building is a Jacobean-inspired, eclectic style country house with classical finishes throughout the interior. Later residents of the Farm House include Carl Fleischmann Holmes (1893-1984), heir to the Fleischmann Yeast Co., and his wife, actress Nancy Ryan (1904-1983).
Olmsted Brothers' Garden Design
Jane Runyon contracted the landscape architects Olmsted Brothers in 1918 to develop a flower garden plot design for the Farm House property after admiring the firm's work at the nearby estate of Mr. and Mrs. J. E. Aldred's property ( see her letter to the firm at Library of Congress ). Although the flower beds are no longer extant, the garden's primary structure and weeping hemlocks survive at the property.
10 Meadow Spring Lane
This house was built for Henry L. Batterman by Patterson King Corp., with plans dated to 1924 and revised in 1928.
3 Meadow Spring Lane
Believed to have been constructed in c. 1927, this house was built by developer Henry L. Batterman for his daughter, Marian Batterman Bullock and her husband George. It was remodeled in 1951 by Peter Paul Muller.
2 Meadow Spring Lane
First occupied by test pilot James Blackstone Taylor, Jr., his wife Aileen (née Sedgewick) and their children until 1924, this Harrie T. Lindeberg-designed house was featured in the November 1922 issue of Country Life in America . The magazine highlighted the steeply pitched roof and hanging lantern at the entrance as well as the white-painted brick exterior walls that referenced a rural French cottage as its inspiration. A two-car garage was incorporated into the design as a wing to the house.
(Image Credit: Country Life in America )
Le Pesage
This house was built by Henry L. Batterman and constructed in c. 1923.
Caretaker's Lodge
This property housed the original caretaker's lodge for Meadow Spring, built in 1913. Since the closure of the gate, the house is no longer part of Meadow Spring and it is only accessible through Elm Avenue.
(Image Credit: Country Life in America )
Notable Contributors to Meadow Spring
Henry Lewis Batterman (1876-1961)
Before entering into real estate development, Henry Lewis Batterman had served as the General Manager and Vice-President of the successful Brooklyn-based H. Batterman Department Store. The store was founded in 1881 by his father, merchant and financier Henry Batterman (1849-1912). The younger Batterman sold out his interest in the department store in 1909 (at that point it was renamed to Frederick Loeser & Co.). Henry L. Batterman then turned his attention to real estate ventures throughout New York City and Long Island through his development business, Barwin Realty Company.
Henry Lewis Batterman and his wife Edith Whitney kept a summer estate, Beaver Brook Farm , in Mill Neck, Long Island. Constructed in 1914, the Battermans commissioned architect Harrie Lindeberg for the design with landscaping by the Olmsted Brothers. Henry Lewis Batterman was a breeder of Guernsey cattle, employing them in a milk business that served the estates on the North Shore. The estate was eventually demolished c. 1950.
Image Credit: Detail, Beaver Brook Farm for H.L. Batterman by H.T. Lindeberg, Architecture (1915).
The Battermans purchased a townhouse at 15 East 61 st Street and hired architect Mott B. Schmidt in 1919 to renovate it into a modern residence in the English Regency style. The house served as a primary residence for the couple and their three children, Henry, Jr., Mirian Gardiner, and Beatrice Whitney until 1925. The five-story building was clad in limestone, with a tripartite design defined by a projecting bands above the ground level and third floor. The townhouse is still extant on Manhattan’s East Side, as visible here .
Image Credit: 61st Street (East) - 5th Avenue, 1929. NYPL Digital Collections .
Mott Schmidt (1889-1977)
The famous promoter of European modernism and postmodernism, Philip Johnson, referred to Mott Schmidt as “the last of the academic Georgian architects of our time,” recalling the priority that the architect placed on functionalism in his designs.
Mott Schmidt was born in Middletown, NY in 1889 and raised in Brooklyn. He studied architecture at Pratt Institute, graduating in 1906, and spent several years abroad to further his training. He returned to New York to eventually open his own office in 1912, with the majority of his initial projects focused on building alterations.
“You see, I wanted to be an artist, and I also wanted to go into business. Business has always been one of the most romantic things in the world to me. So I went into architecture, where art and business are linked.”
–Mott Schimdt, 1921 interview
Schmidt's first major break came after World War I, when we was commissioned by Elizabeth Marbury, Anne Morgan and Anne Harriman Sands Rutherfurd Vanderbilt to renovate their townhouses at Avenue A near East 57 th Street, to be renamed Sutton Place. Schmidt collaborated heavily with interior decorator Elsie de Wolfe on the Sutton Place project. Through this collaboration he met future wife, Elena Bachman, a decorator who worked at de Wolfe's office. They married in June 1922, and Elena would eventually design the interior for the much-acclaimed Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center in 1934. After Elena's death, Schmidt remarried Katharine Lapsley Stone in 1959.
While Schmidt’s primary architectural practice focused on townhouses in New York City, his clients often hired him to design country houses for their estates on Long Island. His work was instrumental in transforming the American country house type from the ostentatious mansions of Newport and Long Island during the Gilded Age into a smaller, more comfortable residences requiring much less staff. As historian Mark Hewitt writes, “rich Americans of the post- war years wanted to live more simply than their parents, and seemed to have less need for the opulent trappings of the robber baron generation. In contrast to the sprawling, additive quality of picturesque houses of the 188os and 1890s, or the grand symmetries and vast enfilades of Beaux Arts houses from the years before World War I, the new country houses were more compact and densely planned." (Hewitt, 1991: 17) Schmidt's country houses tended to comprise sets of gabled boxes flanked by one or two service wings or porches. Changes in room use and plan arrangement included the introduction of garages, modern kitchens, streamlined service quarters, the powder room, and the consolidation of various drawing rooms into a single living room and library.
The cost of construction almost doubled between the years of 1914 and 1920, and the need for simpler, streamlined forms also coincided with a greater academic interest in American colonial heritage. Contemporary design using Colonial and Federal architecture as inspiration reached its highest levels during the 1920s and 1930s and coincided with a more efficient use of architectural materials that kept construction costs manageable.
Harrie T. Lindeberg (1879-1959)
Born to Swedish immigrants in Bergen Point, New Jersey, Lindeberg launched his career as an apprentice at the age of 17 and studied at the National Academy of Design from 1898 to 1901. Though he never completed an architecture degree, Lindeberg worked at the firm McKim, Mead and White until 1906, when he left to form a partnership with fellow McKim, Mead & White draftsman Lewis Colt Albro.
Lindeberg launched his own practice after his partnership with Albro dissolved in 1916, and quickly became the firm of choice for industrial titans looking to build gracious country estates in upper-crust New York enclaves like Glen Cove, Mill Neck, and Rhinebeck—as well as St. Louis, Missouri, and Lake Forest, Illinois.
"In America, the increased desire for country life has of late given rise to an increased demand for modest but well-designed country houses...the large dwelling, or manor house, we may say, in general, should be a dignified structure. It should express, as the wisdom of generations has rightly felt, a certain quiet stateliness of planning and furnishing."
Harrie T. Lindeberg, "Some Observations on Domestic Architecture," House Beautiful , Vol. 32 (1912): 34-38.
Recommended for further reading:
Harrison, Joan. Glen Cove. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2014.
Hewitt, Mark. The architecture of Mott B. Schmidt. New York: Rizzoli International, 1991.
Lindeberg, Harrie T. Domestic Architecture of H.T. Lindeberg. New York: Acanthus Press, 1996 (based on earlier 1940 edition).
National Academy of Design. Mott B. Schmidt: An Architectural Portrait. New York: National Academy of Design, 1977.
Pennoyer, Peter and Anne Walker. Harrie T. Lindeberg and the American Country House. New York: Monacelli Press, 2017.
Tolhurst, Desmond. Nassau C.C. The Place to Be: 1896-1996. Glen Cove: Nassau Country Club, 1996. Available online .
