Gettysburg Friends Buy Motel On Grounds Of Pickett's Charge
By Deborah Fitts
July '02
GETTYSBURG, Pa.

The Home Sweet Home Motel, a longtime commercial use built on the Pickett’s Charge battlefield, was sold May 30 to the Friends of the National Parks at Gettysburg and will be razed later this year.

The Friends made the $1.2 million purchase with $335,000 in grants, plus a loan from the Conservation Fund. The Friends will in turn sell the property to Gettysburg National Military Park by July 15, allowing the nonprofit to recoup most — but not all — of the cost.

Park spokesman Katie Lawhon said the park had been attempting to buy the motel for the past two years, “but we didn’t have a willing seller. The Friends made this deal happen and we are very, very pleased with it.”

Lawhon noted that the park can pay no more than fair market value for property. “The federal government can’t buy it as a motel business, because we’re not going to operate it as a business.”

The Friends, however, could offer more. “Sometimes there can be a manageable gap that the Friends can fill,” Lawhon explained.

Ownership will transfer to the park by July 15, according to Lawhon. The park will give the former owner of the motel, RMR Enterprise, 90 days to vacate.

The 41-unit motel at 593 Steinwehr Ave. is opposite the main entrance to the park and visitor center.

Demolition of the structures, including a house and a couple of one-story blocks of motel units, plus parking lots, should take place in the fall, and the 1.5-acre site will be returned to its 1863 appearance.

Restoration of the site is “a very high priority,” Lawhon said.

One addition to the site will be a wayside exhibit of interpretive panels focusing on Union Medal of Honor winners at Gettysburg. One member of the 8th Ohio Infantry earned the medal for action in the vicinity as the regiment advanced across the motel property to strike the famed Confederate assault of July 3, 1863, in the left flank.

Lawhon said creation of an interpretive display on the motel site is an element in the park’s new General Management Plan. The park already owns a grassy, vacant lot behind the motel, which will be combined with the motel property. The park boundary includes that lot and the motel property, and runs between them and the adjoining General Pickett’s Buffet eatery at 571 Steinwehr Ave.

Lawhon noted that no other business on Steinwehr Avenue lies inside the park boundary. Lawhon said it was uncertain whether a line of trees along Long Lane on the south side of the motel will be removed. The trees have screened the motel and other adjacent businesses on Steinwehr from the battlefield.

Following usual practice, Lawhon said the park would not disclose the price that the park will pay the Friends until the transaction takes place.

According to Friends chief administrative officer Denise Carper, the $335,000 in grants came in about equal proportion from the McKenna Foundation of Pittsburgh and an anonymous donor. The Conservation Fund money, from its revolving loan program, made up the rest of the $1.2 million.

Carper said Friends board member Andrew McElwaine, chairman of the Land Committee, had taken the lead in negotiations. The deal was complicated by the fact that RMR Enterprise, which owns several properties in Gettysburg, leased the motel business to another party.

Carper said the Friends were pleased to help the park with the purchase. “This is very vital land, right on the edge of Pickett’s Charge,” she said. With the planned Medal of Honor exhibit, “It has the opportunity to tell a different story than has ever been told before.”

The motel represents the second significant property purchase this year by the park. In January the park paid $125,000 for the historic “first shot” house and 3.8 acres on Route 30 west of the battlefield, where on July 1 federal troops first fired at Confederates advancing upon Gettysburg. In that case, the Friends contributed an additional $5000 in order to satisfy the seller and make the deal possible.