Geneva’s historic blacksmith shop gets last-ditch plea for preservation

Preservationists are making a last-ditch effort to convince the Geneva City Council not to approve a petition to demolish the circa 1840s blacksmith shop at 4 E. State St.

Speaking at Monday night’s city council meeting, Alan Leahigh invited the public to see an architectural model of the Alexander Brothers’ 1845 Foundry and Blacksmith Shop, which he said will be on display from 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday at Comfort Inn & Suites hotel, 1555 E. Fabyan Parkway.

“We’re very concerned about maintaining and not demolishing the blacksmith shop,” Leahigh said. “If you imagine, for a moment, what it would be like to be back in 1845 – that’s the year we became incorporated as a city – and you walk past 4 E. State St., you would have been able to visit the Alexander Brothers’ Blacksmith Shop.”

Leahigh said he hoped what they have is the next best thing to time travel, and that is a model of what the shop looked like back then.

“There were no photographs, so you can’t prove things. But there’s a lot of research that’s been done,” Leahigh said.

A group of like-minded citizens has worked for months to create a model of what the structure might have looked like on the interior and exterior, Leahigh said.

The impetus is that the city council will consider a demolition permit for the blacksmith shop at a special meeting at 7 p.m. Monday, Jan. 12.

The Historic Preservation Commission voted in December to deny the demolition permit request. Developer Shodeen is appealing that decision to the council.

Leahigh credited Craig Elliott for building an architectural model of the blacksmith shop, which was once part of the iconic Mill Race Inn restaurant.

In the course of creating the model, preservations also developed concepts for its adaptive reuse, which they will present Thursday.

The Mill Race Inn restaurant closed in 2011. The developer bought the property in 2014.

Shodeen would like to demolish the remnant limestone blacksmith shop so the site can be developed without it.

The developer has public support for demolition, according to testimony at the Historic Preservation Commission hearing.

In past comments, David Patzelt, president of the Shodeen Group, said there is nothing the developer can do with the structure, as it is too expensive to repurpose, and there’s nowhere to move it and no buyers for it.

Patzelt said late Monday that he would not attend the preservationists’ event.

“I know nothing about it, nor am I interested in it,” Patzelt said.

In addition to the diorama, retired architect Chuck Cassell painted a watercolor of it.

“I support what they’re trying to do,” Cassell said. “I don’t see the blacksmith shop as an architectural edifice of some kind. Its importance is in its function.”

The blacksmith shop in the 1830s and 1840s was a major industry that supported farmers and anyone else who was trying to make a living off the land, Cassell said.

“The community could not have existed without the blacksmith shop,” he said. “Saving it is important.”