In the 1600s, long before the United States was even an idea, an inn was built right here on Long Island. The Milleridge Inn, as it was so dubbed, has lasted over 340 years, surviving revolutions, industrialization, and many acts of nature. However, the Milleridge recently faced its biggest threat to date when a real estate giant and Long Island residents went head-to-head in a modern day David and Goliath story.

The main building of the Milleridge was finished in 1672, serving as an inn and tavern (in fact, it is one of the oldest food establishments in the country) in what is present-day Jericho, NY. More than a hundred years later, the owners of the inn were forced to quarter both British and Hessian soldiers during the American Revolution. Later in the early 1800s, as Long Island began to develop, the inn not only managed to hold onto its land, but actually expanded to include a catering hall and a small village of shops.

In 2014, when strip mall developer Kimco Realty bought up the property, people were hopeful that the company would be able to revitalize the little slice of history. However, when the Milleridge stopped taking reservations past 2016, people realized that instead of promoting the inn, Kimco might just be tearing it down.

Enter Trish Flynn, a local Long Island resident. One day while on Facebook, Trish saw a post that said “Save the Milleridge.” She soon found out that the Milleridge was in immediate danger of being shut down for good, and she had to do something about it.

“When they said they were going to shut it down, it was just horrible,” said Trish, who signed every online petition she could to save the inn. For Trish, the Milleridge was more than just another old building, it was part of her own history. When she was a little girl, her grandparents used to take her for St. Patrick’s Day to hear the traditional bagpipers–she had all her children’s christening parties there, and her late mother would always take the family there around Christmas time.

Trish reached out to the woman who was, as Trish recalls, “All on her own against a big company,” and asked what she could do to help. The two spread the word through Facebook, gave out bumper stickers, and arranged a meeting with Kimco at the inn.

Trish and the other advocates for the inn came to the meeting ready for war, each person bringing their own arsenal of stories and personal anecdotes to convey to Kimco just how much the inn really meant to each and every one of them. Person after person got up to speak, each reflecting on “just how beautiful” the Milleridge is. One man said that when you go into the bakery in the small village, it is like “you go back in time.” One woman, who is a history teacher from Hungary, recognized the “amazing” architecture the building possesses, and she claimed that to tear down the building would be a crime against the world (in fact, destroying historical artifacts, she noted, sounds a lot like what a certain group in the Middle East has been doing).

Finally, on November 27th, Kimco gave up their plan to create a mega-hotel, and the fight was at last over. “It really means a lot to me that our hard work was noticed,” reflected Trish, who can’t wait to go get herself a popover at the Milleridge Inn.