Batavia Club

Of the two extant works in New York of Rochester architect-builder Hezekiah Eldredge, it is the less restrained, serving as a bank and a residence for the cashier.

Two blocks to the west is Batavia's city hall and the Genesee County Courthouse Historic District, the collection of government buildings at downtown's western edge.

The former clubhouse is an L-shaped two-story three-by-five-bay brick building on a stone foundation with a stepped gable roof.

The main entrance, with sidelights, is similarly decorated and topped with a heavy wooden bracketed flat-roofed hood.

Above them, in the gable field, is a wide fanlight and "SEYMOUR PLACE" in metal lettering on the west side.

[2] In the rear are the kitchen facilities, with some past fire damage evident, a bar and storage space.

The high cost may have been the result of paying some of the region's best craftsmen high hourly wages to produce a building far less restrained than the Lockport Bank building, the only other work of Eldredge's that remains in the region (now a contributing property to the Lowertown Historic District).

In 2008, the group received a grant from the State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation to renovate and restore the building.

Upon the completion of work in 2010, it was renamed Seymour Place in memory of a local couple, longtime benefactors of the center, who had contributed much of the matching funds to make the $320,000 project possible.

[6] Work done at that time exposed the basement's original dirt floors, as well as a safe on rollers the center has not been able to open.

A view of the front of the Batavia Club building.
Front view