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The Mansion House
This building is the house Abraham Wagener built about 1816 across from his mill at the foot of Main Street in Penn Yan. The drawing was made some years later, after Wagener moved away from the village. The house was enlarged and used as a hotel called the Mansion House. Still later, when the Knapp House was built in its stead, this house was moved to a location on Jacob Street (now East Elm Street), where it was caught and destroyed in the conflagration of 1872.
This was Wagener's second house in Penn Yan. His first was farther up Main Street, across from the modern intersection with Chapel Street. It was the first frame house within the modern bounds of Penn Yan, and Wagener moved into it on New Year's Day, 1800, a few months after his father's death gave him the land north of the Outlet, including a sawmill just out of sight in the above picture.
Wagener built the Mansion House on the site of a house built earlier for his mother, Rebecca Wagener, who died in 1812. Her house, known locally as the "grandmother house" was not demolished but moved. After several more moves during the 19th century it landed at its present location on Chapel Street, near its corner with Keuka Street.