Built in 1828 by businessman John Schaffer, this imposing three-story, twelve-room structure housed his family and provided food and lodging to Pennsylvania Canal construction workers and later canal boatmen and passengers. Travel conditions were austere in the mid-1800s, and according to Anna Liddick Dorman, the third floor offered lodging for both sexes separated only by a curtain in one large open room, where as many as forty people slept on straw tick mattresses on the floor. Schaffer bought his lot from developer Jacob Baughman, who in 1814 laid out eighty-one lots in what became New Buffalo. The house reflects the economic development that arose along the Susquehanna River because of the canal; two boat yards and two other canal-era lodging facilities later disappeared with the canal's final closing by 1899. From the beginning, the structure served multiple purposes and was often a private residence, including for the Henry and Lydia Thatcher family in the 1840s. Their son Henry C. Thatcher served as the first Chief Justice of the Colorado Supreme Court, while his brothers John and Mahlon opened banks throughout Colorado and the West and became the wealthiest people in the state. Over time, the left side of the house also served as a general store, post office, and restaurant. From 1899 to 1947, Odd Fellows Lodge 628 owned the building, using it for meetings while renting part of it out. Since 1948, the house has been a private residence, and after Harold H. and Anna Dorman Halter purchased it in 1957, it remained in the family as of 2015. Its road frontage on Mill Street, part of the Susquehanna Trail, was the main north-south highway until 1951, when Route 11/15 was rerouted onto the bed of the long-closed canal.