File:Eagle House, Williamsville, New York - 20200802.jpg

English: Eagle House Tavern, 5578 Main Street, Williamsville, New York, August 2020. One of the most historic structures in all of Williamsville, as well as its oldest continuously operating business, the Eagle House was founded in 1832 by Oziel Smith (1784-1836), a businessman, farmer, and real estate speculator originally from Clarendon, Vermont who was responsible for the construction or operation of many of the village's most important buildings and institutions during its earliest days: the Dodge Mill, the elegant Mansion House, and the Phoenix Hotel are other examples. It was largely thanks to his effervescence that the village was able to pull itself out of the period of economic stagnation in which it spent the 1820s. During its earliest decades, the Eagle House served as a stop on the stagecoach line linking Buffalo to Batavia along the Great Iroquois Trail (now Main Street and Route 5), the venue for the first several meetings of the Amherst Town Board, a polling place for elections, and also, local rumor has it, a stop on the Underground Railroad. The Eagle House boasted eight guest rooms for lodgers passing through the town. The building passed into the hands of Timothy Hopkins several years after Smith's death, and thenceforward to a succession of different owners, each of whom left his own particular mark on the business and the building. However, it was during Norman Rackl's tenure as lessee, beginning in 1958, when restoration of the Eagle House began in earnest. Today, in addition to being a popular bar and restaurant for village residents with an obvious and authentic historic ambience, it's also a designated Village of Williamsville historic landmark.