One of the oldest continuously operated hotels in Ohio could be yours – complete with a colorful history, two bars, a restaurant and a few ghosts – for just under $4.7 million.
The Buxton Inn in Granville, established in 1812, is a landmark in the Licking County village and has gone through a series of restorations in the decade during which it has been owned by Robert Schilling and a group of partners.
“We’ve put our mark on it and feel it is now time to pass it on to the next generation,” Schilling said on Monday.
The Buxton, at 313 E. Broadway, “is an irreplaceable historic building that three presidents have stayed in,” said Lisa McKivergin, a member of the ownership group and a Granville real-estate agent who has the inn and three adjacent houses listed for just under $4.7 million.
She said Monday that the inn itself, along with its antique furnishings, are listed for $1.95 million, and that the adjacent three historic homes at the corner of Broadway and S. Pearl Street in Granville could be sold separately. The three homes currently house most of the 25 guest rooms offered by the inn – only three of which are in the original 212-year-old inn.
McKivergin said the ownership group led by Schilling, which paid $1.9 million for the inn and eight houses on the same block in 2014, would prefer to see the inn and three houses sold together to someone who will continue operating the inn in all four buildings. Schilling plans to keep the other four houses, which are currently single-family residences.
“They’re selling the inn because they did the right thing by taking the inn to the next level,” McKivergin said. “Bob Schilling took it from being in not such great shape to what it is now.”
Schilling, of Reynoldsburg, is managing general partner of Urban Restorations in Columbus, which also renovated the building on the northeast corner of N. Prospect and E. College streets in Granville where The Lot Beer Co. and other businesses are located.
The company has renovated other commercial buildings and homes in Licking County, including Granville and Newark, as well as Columbus, Schilling said.
This historic house at the southeast corner of E. Broadway and S. Pearl Street is one of three that are part of the current Buxton Inn complex. 
The lobby of the Buxton Inn was updated during renovations to re-orient the front desk, install accessible bathrooms and expose some of the original flooring. 
Still in the possession of the inn’s current owners is an original guestbook from the days when Major Horton Buxton owned and operated the inn. 
The patio dining area is flanked by balconies leading to several guest rooms on the second floor. 
The Buxton’s courtyard patio has been a popular dining spot in the past. 
The solarium has been used for weddings and other special events, and it opens to a courtyard between the inn and neighboring houses that contain many of the guest rooms. 
Buxton guest rooms were recently updated, and bathrooms have been renovated. 
Furniture in the Buxton guest rooms are antiques that reflect the history and character of the 212-year-old inn. 
Artwork and furnishings in the Buxton’s main bar give a nod to the Victorian era. 
The intimate main bar is lighted with a lamp originally used by surgeons in the days when candlelight was the only light to work by. 
The Tavern, in the cellar of the Buxton, was once used to house stagecoach drivers who brought guests to the inn in Granville. 
The large main dining room includes original woodwork and period furnishings. 
The view of E. Broadway from the Buxton’s main dining room is through a window in a very thick front wall. 
The upstairs dining room was often used for special events, private events and corporate meetings. 
A plaque in the Buxton lobby pays tribute to Orville and Audrey Orr, who owned and operated the inn for 42 years.
His family fell in love with Granville years ago when his children were young, he said. “Around the holidays, we’d always make a trip to Granville, and we’d have dinner at the Granville Inn one year and the Buxton Inn the next,” he said.
When his daughter Jennifer Valenzuela got married, she and her husband, Julio, moved to Granville and lived across the street from the Buxton Inn. They got to know the inn’s owners, Schilling said, and the couple, Orville and Audrey Orr, encouraged the Valenzuelas to buy the inn from them.
Schilling, his family and investors, including McKivergin, bought the Buxton Inn from the Orrs in 2014. The Orrs bought the inn in 1972 at a time when the inn had fallen into such disrepair that demolition was a real possibility. Over time, as the Orrs renovated the inn, they bought the houses around it to develop enough guest rooms to make it a viable business.
The Orrs saved and expanded the business, and served as stewards of the inn for 42 years, according to a plaque in the lobby. And then, McKivergin said, Schilling’s renovation work enhanced the historic character of the buildings.
Jennifer Valenzuela became the general manager of the inn, Schilling said, and used her design skills to improve the inn during the renovation process.
When COVID shuttered the place, Schilling took the opportunity to renovate bathrooms across the complex. And two years later, in October of 2022, the restaurant’s kitchen was gutted by fire.
Quick action by Granville firefighters saved the historic inn, but smoke filled the place and damaged carpeting and wall coverings. That led to an unanticipated but positive move, McKivergin said, because when they tore up the old carpeting, Schilling found beautiful wood floors that are now exposed in the original 1812 portion of the complex.
And the new kitchen is spacious and includes walk-in refrigerators and freezers, as well as modern cooking and dishwashing equipment.
“That’s a million-dollar kitchen for the next owner,” Schilling said.
The inn reopened six months after the fire, and its basement tavern, which once served as lodging for stagecoach drivers, reopened two years after the fire. The restaurant did not reopen, and while the kitchen has been available for caterers for special events, it has not been used for daily meals at the inn.
The inn features a large banquet room on the first floor that served as the restaurant for years, a banquet room for private events on the second floor, an intimate bar on the first floor, a patio for outdoor dining, and a solarium dining room that opens onto a courtyard that connects the four buildings that currently make up the inn.
According to a history of the inn, it was built as “The Tavern” in 1812 by Orrin Granger, a pioneer from Granville, Massachusetts, who bought the land for the inn in 1806 – a year after Granville was founded.
The village’s first post office was housed there, and it was a stop on a stagecoach line between Columbus and Newark. James W. Dilley bought the inn in 1858 and changed the name to The Dilley House. And in 1865, Major Horton Buxton bought the inn and gave it the name it carries today.
The inn’s history brochure says that among its famous guests were Presidents Abraham Lincoln, William Henry Harrison and William McKinley; as well as author Harriet Beecher Stowe; composer and conductor John Phillip Sousa; actresses Jennifer Garner, Cameron Diaz and Dixie Carter; industrialist Henry Ford and cellist Yo-Yo Ma.
Schilling said the late U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana stayed there. Lugar was a Denison University graduate and trustee. “I walked in one evening and saw this nice, well-dressed man at the front desk, and after he went to his room, the person at the front desk asked, ‘You know who that is? That’s Senator Lugar.’ He was a big deal in the senate at the time.”
And, of course, with a building that old comes at least one ghost story. In 1934, ownership of the inn passed to Ethel Houston of Newark, who also was known as Bonnie Bounell – and as the “Lady in Blue.”
She lived in room #9 at the inn, and some guests who stay in that room “report encounters with a female presence in this room” – and with her cat, which Bounell had named after Major Buxton. Some guests have reported hearing a cat meowing and running through a hallway toward the tavern.
Schilling said he has felt the presence of the spirits of previous owners of the inn – people who loved the place so much that they never left.
Despite how much he loves the inn and how much he poured into it, he said, “I’ll make this release right now: Bob Schilling will not be haunting the inn in the future.”
Alan Miller writes for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.