The Oldest Building in Erie County

According to an article by John Conlin in the Winter 2003 issue of Western New York Heritage, the oldest surviving building in Erie County is the Gipple Cabin built by a frontier settler named Amos Woodward in 1803. The Rev. Walter Kern took this photo of the cabin in 1974:


This week I went out searching for the structure, located at the southwest corner of the intersection of Harris Hill Road and Wehrle Drive in Lancaster. (Map.) The building can be found at the very corner of an expanding office development whose parking lot ends only a few yards from the front door.


Here is the building today: