The c. 1816 Stagecoach Inn has been vacant for about three months. (Darcy Beeman)

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.

"I've been a pastor here for 42 years," Jones says. "I've seen the historic buildings go down and get burned up. The historic preservation board was started about 10 years ago to stop this nonsense and yet they're not given any power, any authority. They're not even asked. It's so sad."

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