he Big Tree Inn sits on Geneseo’s Main Street, red-brick proof that history is alive and well in Geneseo. Renovated and rescued over the years, the Big Tree manages to be all things to all people. Go in one door and you can enter a formal dining room; go in another and you’re in a cozy tavern. Either way, you’ll rub elbows with a diverse group of people. It’s been that way almost from the beginning. Theodore Roosevelt stayed at the Big Tree as a young man. Mark Twain is said to have slept there, as well. And now any busy night might find a mix of teachers, students and alumni, local residents, guests in town for a wedding, prospective students and their parents, and Rochester couples enjoying an anniversary dinner. No matter what door people enter, there’s a sense of coming home, not surprising as the Big Tree started smaller, as a family’s house. “I think it’s Geneseo’s living room, and it always has been,” says Wes Kennison, a lecturer in English and a fellow in the school’s Office of International Programs. Kennison grew up in nearby York, and lives in Geneseo just a block away from the Big Tree. “It’s our corner bar,” he says. “It’s a nice feeling to be able to walk to your pub.” The late Gertrude Houston, the Emmywinning television producer who grew up in Geneseo, had a similar connection to the Big Tree. “I’ve been coming here 30 years. This is my joint. It was my father’s joint before me,” she told this reporter a few years ago. Her credentials established, Houston turned her attention to what had been the notoriously balky tavern door: “That door has never worked,” she explained with force. “I’ve known every manager of this place. They all said they would fix it. They shaved it, shimmied it. It never closes. It never will.” The door did get fixed, but its years of dysfuction were emblematic of the fact that the Big Tree has always been a work in progress. The original structure was built in the 1830s as a home for the banker Allen Ayrault and his wife, Bethia, a woman whose mischievous ghost is said to be in residence at the Big Tree to this day. In 1885, J. W. “Boss” Wadsworth, a member of a storied Geneseo family who distinguished himself in the U.S. Congress, bought and enlarged the Ayrault house, converting it into an inn. He named his establishment after the spot of land where
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his Geneseo ancestors had settled in the late 18th century. The 1797 Treaty of the Big Tree between the Seneca Nation and the United States was signed at that place. After a few years, Wadsworth sold the Inn to William Nash, who expanded the building upward, adding a shingled third floor that provided more space for guest rooms. Thus, a pattern of management change was established.
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“I would say that there have been many owners of the Big Tree,” says Debbie Altrieth, the inn’s general manager. The turnover reflects the realities of the notoriously difficult restaurant business. It also reflects the mixed blessing of a historic building. Old is good, but old takes upkeep. In the 1970s, it looked like the building was about to be lost, but the newly formed Association for the Preservation of Geneseo led a fight to keep the Big Tree alive. Different owners, different menus, different management strategies ensued,
but the inn struggled. Then, in 1998, Campus Auxiliary Services — CAS — the independent nonprofit agency that manages the college’s dining halls and other activities, bought the Big Tree at public auction. It went on to spend millions of dollars over the years to upgrade its facilities. The establishment now has eight guest rooms and suites, a banquet facility and a front porch for dining. The tavern has a new paint job, a new ceiling, new barstools. And, yes, there’s a new menu, though the popular Bethia burger, a tavern staple named in honor of the resident ghost, remains. (One of the guest rooms also carries Bethia’s name. She’s a rock star.) Buying and renovating the Big Tree — saving a key landmark and a needed facility — made sense for the college and for the community, says Mark Scott, the executive director of CAS. “It’s not only the right thing to own the Big Tree, we are also very proud to own the Big Tree,” he says. The inn hosts a variety of college events from retirement celebrations to multi-cultural dinners and reunions. Students are welcome to use their meal plan funds Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Want to propose marriage? What better place than a building where Mark Twain penned a letter to his future wife? Want to take time out to celebrate memorable moment? Why not do it in a place where time seems to have stood still? “The blessing of the inn is the history behind it,” says Altreith, who led the inn’s 125th anniversary celebration last year. “People always have stories about the inn.” The inn’s website provides ample proof of the place the Inn occupies in its patrons’ scrapbooks. “We had our first date at the Big Tree Inn almost 16 years ago,” wrote one contributor, “and we came back this weekend to stay for our sixth wedding anniversary.” Dianne Giovanni, of Goldens Bridge, N.Y., stayed at the Big Tree for several days this summer, in town for her daughter Crista Burke’s wedding to Lauren Wadsworth, who grew up in Geneseo and is a descendant of the original Wadsworths. Giovanni loved the inn’s location in the heart of the village. She liked her room. And she even had a Bethia encounter. The ghost played a prank on her and a family member, switching some room keys. “We should start a Facebook page for Bethia,” Giovanni says, recommending yet another way to keep history alive in Geneseo. Fall 2012
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