Out with the Old, In with the New

And so it goes.

Preservation Online: Today's News Archives: N.Y. Town Approves Demolition of 190-Year-Old Inn for Walgreens:

"A 190-year-old inn that may have been a stop on the Underground Railroad could be torn down for a Walgreens. Last week the town of Chili, N.Y., located outside Rochester, approved a developer's plan to build a
drugstore on the site of the Stagecoach Inn.

'There are quite a few people
who are against it,' says Darcy Beeman, a member of the grassroots group Friends
of the Stagecoach Inn. 'Our take is that the two buildings can coexist.'
On
Mar. 15, the planning board of Chili, a town of 28,000, voted 7-0 in favor of
Illinois-based developer Maude Development's plan to build a 14,820-foot
drugstore in place of the inn. Critics of the demolition plan will attend a
meeting with the zoning board of appeals next week.
'My feeling is that they
didn't do their homework on its cultural and historical significance,' says
longtime resident Pastor Rodney Jones. 'It's the most important historic site in
our town.'
Built around 1816 as a stagecoach stop, inn, tavern, and post
office, in 1867 the two-story brick building became the Chili Seminary, the
first Free Methodist educational institution in the country. The Free
Methodists, who were abolitionists, operated a 'temperance house' in the
building and may have sheltered runaway slaves there, Beeman says.
Last used
as an art studio and apartments, the building has been vacant for only three
months. Its owner, Alexander Tulloch, asked tenants to move out by January.
An Eckerd's drugstore, video store, gas station, and strip mall already
surround the Stagecoach Inn."