Cartwright Inn. Photo from the office of Henrietta Historian Tina Thompson.
BY DEB AND TIM SMITH
The venerable Cartwright Inn can be located at 5691 West Henrietta Rd. and it’s in trouble. We’ve all driven by it, probably several times in our lives, and to pinpoint the location, it would be on the southwest corner of the intersection of West Henrietta and Erie Station Rd. That intersection would constitute the original four corners of the old hamlet of West Henrietta. Keep that “Main Street motif” in mind because Henrietta Supervisor Steve Schultz is hoping to use it to his advantage in his efforts to salvage the Cartwright.
This piece started out with the Sentinel reaching out to the Town of Henrietta looking for opportunities to expand our connections with the town for which we had become the official paper in 2023. We had received a great deal of positive feedback on the historical hamlet pieces we had written for Mendon, Lima, Rush and Scottsville. That being said, we tackled the task of highlighting the Henrietta story and the fruits of that labor are being shared in recent issues of the paper.
A course of collaboration was initiated last spring with Henrietta Historian Tina Thomson and Henrietta Supervisor Steve Schultz. During this process, Steve made the comment to us that, “Probably not something appropriate for inclusion in your book, but perhaps for an article… I thought you’d also be interested in what we’re pursuing [regarding the Cartwright Inn].”
So here we are in early autumn and the Sentinel has some late-breaking news… Steve Schultz just informed us that, “a developer has an accepted offer on the Cartwright’s property and expects to close in December. He has met with me multiple times, including this afternoon, to discuss his plans and how they would integrate with his efforts to restore the historic Inn. He was fine with me saying there’s a buyer, but is one who prefers to stay behind the scenes.”
We had already written a component on the Cartwright for our history of Henrietta series, so we had put into perspective the plight of this venerable building. We are going to extract that from our ongoing series and use it here to flesh out this piece, but before we serve up a platter of the past, let’s fast forward to the future and the goal of what could hopefully happen in Henrietta at the heart of the hamlet that was once known as West Henrietta.
Keep in mind this was the game plan moving forward from our original June meetings in Henrietta. There’s no way we’re going to be able to reword this any more effectively than Supervisor Schultz, so at this point we’re going to defer to our emails and conversations with him to summarize where this process was at. According to Steve…
“One of the issues with why Cartwright’s has sat decaying is because, unfortunately, when the State created the right-of-way for Route NY 253 down Erie Station Road, they did so by surveying a centerline and then applying a standard width, such as a half chain (33’) to either side. Whoever did that did not check to see where the edge of the right-of-way ended up. It turns out, it encompassed a small part of the northwest corner of the building.
This becomes an issue when someone goes to buy the property because a bank will generally not finance a project without a clean title. Multiple potential sales have died on the vine because of this. To try to preserve the building, the Town has passed a resolution allowing us to pursue the process with the NYSDOT to correct this.
What has to happen is a long, complicated process by which a DOT survey is created to establish a new right-of-way that does not include the corner of the building. Then that goes to Albany and the NYSDOT has to accept the change and surrender that former right-of-way land to the County. The County can then dispose of the land as it sees fit, which in this case, I’ve talked with them to have them re-subdivide the Cartwright parcel so that its parcel boundary follows the newly surveyed right-of-way and the building is now out of the right-of-way and the building and parcel no longer overlap with Erie Staton Road.
The plan is to then levy that cost as a lien against the property so that when it sells, we are repaid. That would enable a developer to come in and purchase the property, including financing that with a bank.
In addition, I am applying for a grant through the FLREDC for “Main Street Blight Removal” – now, I know this sounds like it would bulldoze a blight under, but my approach is going to be that if nothing is done, the building will continue to decay and, let’s face it, it is currently a blight on the community on what certainly qualifies as “Main Street” for the West Henrietta hamlet.
But if we could get a grant to offset some of the restoration costs, I believe I can find a developer (I’ve spoken to a couple who have expressed a willingness to go further if the ROW issue can be resolved and if there were some means to offset some of the high restoration costs) wiling to restore the building, thus removing the blight.” (leaving Supervisor Schultz’s perspective and returning to ours… )
We thought we could visualize and explain this better if we were to see and walk the property firsthand, so we scheduled a meeting at the Cartwright Inn with Supervisor Schultz and Historian Tina Thompson. The additional piece of the puzzle we were able to take in is that there is a second parcel of land in play which is adjacent to the Cartwright parcel.
That second parcel includes an occupied, income-generating apartment building and a considerable chunk of green space behind that apartment building which is not visible from the road. The intriguing part of this realization is that the two parcels currently have the same private owner, so if the issues Steve addressed above can be resolved a potential developer would have some options available.
The picture provided by the Town of Henrietta shows an aerial view of the properties we have been discussing. Regarding these, Steve said, “It’s actually two parcels and they are subdivided strangely since the inn has very little parking. The goal would be to preserve as much of the greenspace as possible, but perhaps put a large barn just below where the “5711” is located. The land to the west of the wider portion of the parcels and for about two-thirds of the south of the parcel is Town land. That land has to stay open space, since it was part of a clustered development, but we could shift the vegetative screening there, to free up space on the Cartwright’s parcel and could also put any required stormwater ponds on that parcel.”
As we ended our meeting, Steve told us that he is optimistic the Cartwright can be saved. He mentioned that some of the potential investors have a personal or family connection with the establishment and that’s what it might take. “You would need someone who is not looking for an immediate return on their investment, but rather someone who holds a spot in their heart for the Cartwright Inn.”
We would like to flesh out this piece by going back in time and sharing with you the storyline of the historic Cartwright Inn. One of Tina’s predecessors as Henrietta Town Historian was Eleanor Kalsbeck whose 1977 book Henrietta Heritage is considered to be the early Bible of Henrietta history. That being said, if you wanted to read just one treatise on Henrietta history we suggest you go with Tina Thompson’s 2018 book Henrietta, New York from 1818 to 2018: A Bicentennial Commemoration. With all due respect to Eleanor Kalsbeck, Tina’s version, having been written 50 years later, is able to offer updates on several storylines that were not completed in Eleanor’s day.
But to include Eleanor in this tribute we’ll let her begin by picking things up with her storyline on the history of early hotels in Henrietta. She wrote that, “The second hotel to be erected in West Henrietta village still stands at 5691 West Henrietta Road and is known today as the Cartwright Inn.” Since then the Cartwright has closed but the building still stands.
In filling in some back history, that original inn was built in 1831 by Edward Bush. Through the late 1800’s and early 1900’s its oft-changing monikers had it known as Gilmore’s Hotel, Ryno’s Hotel, and Rafferty’s Hotel when Prohibition became the law in 1920.
During the next 13 years the building served as a gas station and auto repair shop which was run by William R. Myers. In 1926 Myers, along with some other civic-minded friends, founded the West Henrietta Volunteer Fire Department which housed its first vehicles on this property.
After Prohibition, with Myer still at the helm, it was remodeled again as Rambler’s Inn until being purchased by Gordon Cartwright in 1949. The Cartwright Inn was a Henrietta institution featuring “the gracious dining of yesteryear” which elevated it to the status of being “Upstate’s finest restaurant.” Few disputed the claim during the Inn’s glory years.
But that era would end as the aging inn was shuttered in 2007, living on as a stop on the Haunts of Henrietta ghost walk. But if those old walls could only talk…
That was our original ending but thanks to our most recent update, there is cause for optimism that those old walls might be absorbing some new stories in the not-too-distant future!
