Fire destroys historic barn designated as a landmark

Plenty of early Williamsville and Amherst history went up in flames early Monday morning, when the 187-year-old former Grist Mill on Reist Street burned almost to the ground.

The landmark red barn, perhaps the last barn remaining in the Village of Williamsville, was so old it had four names over almost two centuries: Grist Mill, Reist’s Mill, the Red Barn and Red Mill.

Once belonging to the Sisters of St. Francis, it most recently was owned by the state. The Town of Amherst is responsible for maintaining it and surrounding park property.

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The mill was built by the sons of two of Amherst’s earliest settlers in 1821, only 10 years after the Williamsville Water Mill at 56 E. Spring St. and three years after the town itself was founded.

In its heyday during the mid-19th century, the mill produced about 100 barrels of flour per day. Recently, though, the structure, which was granted landmark status in the late 1990s, was best known just as the “red barn.”