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HISTORY |
 estaurants are like recipes. Some are good, but cost too much
to enjoy frequently. Others are inexpensive, but aren't really that good. A very few are the ones you return to time after time.
They're a delight ...and affordable enough to permit you to enjoy them often. In Lancaster, that perfectly describes the Horse Inn.
The Horse Inn has seen generations of Lancasterians seeking out this hard-to-find restaurant. Why do they do it?
It starts, of course, with the restaurant's personality. Why is it down an alley and up a steep flight of stairs?
Why does it look as if it had once been a stable? Yet how could it have been if it's up a flight of stairs? The answer
goes back to the origins of this building, dating from the mid-1800's.
Legend has it that blacks were spirited from the Undergroud Railroad to the building's loft after making their way
across the Mason-Dixon Line. By 1911, the building was worth $800. At least that's what William Shaub and his sons paid for
it in order to use it for their excavating and contracting business.
They made the upstairs (the present restaurant) their hayloft, storing the horses, carriages, and equipment below.
In the early '20s, the family decided to pitch out the hay and convert the upstairs to a speakeasy, where neighbors
and friends could play shuffleboard and drink.
People who had worked up a thirst were often hungry as well, so William's wife Florence, started serving tenderloin
tips on toast. That became locally famous ...so much so that the Shaubs were soon able to buy the European handcrafted
bar and wall unit, which dates back to the late 1800's. In a happy burst of ingenuity, they added a front section to the bar,
building it from an original front door of Franklin and Marshall College, dating back to 1787.
It then seemed a good idea to bring the horse stalls and horse accessories upstairs ...and to fashion the unique
chandeliers from the actual wagon wheel hubs of the wagons that had been in the excavating company.
The changing decor led to an expanded menu, and the restaurant became a busy, popular place to eat, drink, and meet
friends. Two of the original menu items, prepared from the very recipes used then, remain on the menu today: Crabcakes and
Tenderloin Tips.
Later, a five-piece jazz style, swing band was added. During prohibition, the restaurant didn't miss a beat, with beer
flowing directly from the brewery through underground lines.
It wasn't until 1935 that son Richard's wife Emily, now the proprietor, named the restaurant, appropriately enough,
the Horse Inn.
The demise of Lancaster's wonderful, old Stevens House Hotel, with its famous Toby Tavern, provided another chance to
add color to the decor. Dick purchased the eight old Toby tables that now face the booths.
A few years later, the address became Rear 539 East Chestnut Street, as a result of the habit patrons had of cutting
across the yard of Clarence Shaub to get to it. Clarence, who lived at 539 Chestnut Street, took the traffic philosophically.
The Shaub family owned and operated the Horse Inn until 1971. The Bergers from 1971 to 1972. Since then, it has been owned and
operated by the Albert Medved family, who, knowing a good thing when they see it, changed nothing but a few menu items.
A patron who had frequented the premises in the '30s, would find it virtually unchanged today. Which is a large part
of its charm.
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Copyright Horse Inn Restaurant ©, Lancaster, PA 1999-2000.
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