The oldest town in the Cumberland Valley, straddling the border between Franklin and Cumberland counties in the rolling foothill system of the Appalachian Mountains of south central Pennsylvania, the Borough of Shippensburg is laid out in a grid pattern. The town's major east-west thoroughfare is King Street, an old Indian path, and along this two-lane road, also designated U.S. Route 11, has long lain much of its commercial district. The major north-south crossing is Earl Street, or Pennsylvania Route 696, a former Cumberland Valley Railroad right-of-way. The intersection of these two streets defines the current town square, the commercial center of the town since the first half of the nineteenth century, when the railroad extended its tracks down Earl Street to its station at South Earl and Orange streets, two blocks south of the square. As expansion and wealth followed the railroad, a number of fine homes were built west of the square on King Street.
Originally the 1878 mansion of wealthy Shippensburg native George Hamill Stewart, Sr., the Shippensburg Public Library building at 73 West King Street has undergone significant reconstruction during its history; it is unique among structures in this small rural community. In 1738, original Shippensburg settler Samuel "Big Sam" Rippey erected a two-story stone tavern with distillery, barn, and tannery buildings to the rear of lots 100 and 101 as laid out on the original numbered grid of the town by its founder, Edward Shippen. Rippey successfully petitioned the justices of the Cumberland County Court for a tavern license on 24 July 1750 and began selling beer. During the French and Indian War, Rippey's thirty-foot-square stone distillery building held supplies for British Major General Edward Braddock's ill-fated 1755 expedition west to Fort Duquesne.
In 1771, Rippey's son William acquired the tavern from his father and began operating the business. Active in building the Continental Army, Captain Rippey had recruited men primarily from Lurgan Township for, and had become commander of, Company No. 4 in Colonel William Irvine's Sixth Pennsylvania Regiment for the unit's march to Three Rivers, Canada. Captured with his colonel July 21, 1776 at Isle Aux Noix, Rippey later escaped, and when his enlistment was over January 1, 1777, Rippey returned home to resume running his tavern.
Rippey had occasion to serve high-ranking veterans of the Revolution at his establishment. President George Washington lunched at his Revolutionary War comrade's tavern on 12 October 1794, enroute from Carlisle to western Pennsylvania to subdue the Whiskey Rebellion. Another long-time customer of Rippey's distillery was Colonel Robert Magaw of Carlisle. On 2 November 1786, Rippey, apparently experiencing financial difficulty, wrote Magaw requesting payment for a barrel of whiskey:
Dear Sir, Nothing but bear necessity would make me write to you on this subject. I am intirely drain'd of what cash I had and I beg leave to request you to send me by the Negroe boy the amount for [the] barrel of whiskey .. ..
Rippey continued to operate the business as the Black Horse Tavern, Stone Tower Tavern, and Stone Tower Hotel until his death at age seventy-eight in 1819.
Various owners operated a tavern or hotel on the site for another sixty years. Under H. Hursh it was Hursh's Hotel; James Galbraith ran it as the Black Horse Hotel and the Branch Hotel for some years; and in 1871-72, it was again known as the Black Horse Hotel, with Jacob Hipple as owner. Other tavernkeepers included Isabella Breckenridge (from 1833-35) and Christian Zuk (from 1836-40). In 1872, W Moore of Lebanon County, Pennsylvania owned the property, and two years later, George H. Stewart, Sr. purchased the building and acreage from Moore for $4,000. Stewart intended to raze the hotel, build a home on the site, and raise his family there.
"The decisive measure of the man is how he acts in public." Snow was falling on the square at King and Railroad Streets, the center of Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, 20 February 1858. The economic focus of town had gradually moved four blocks west from King and Queen Streets since the railroad had brought passenger service in 1837.
Fire was people’s greatest fear, especially in towns where houses and buildings were often attached to each other in rows.