Demolition starts at Lewisburg's historic Slifer House on River Road

Crews began tearing down the 165-year-old Slifer House at 80 Magnolia Drive in Kelly Township near Lewisburg on Wednesday, turning one of River Road’s most recognizable landmarks into the latest major change along the corridor. Motorists passing the site could see the demolition underway, with chain-link fencing already surrounding the property before the work started.

The house, built in 1861 for Eli Slifer, the Civil War-era Pennsylvania official who worked closely with Abraham Lincoln, was designed by Philadelphia architect Samuel Sloan and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. Over more than a century and a half, the property also known as the Administration Building-Evangelical Home served as a country home, elder-care facility, orphanage, community hospital and later a museum. The museum closed in 2022.

The demolition came after the Central Keystone Council of Governments issued a permit on May 15, 2026, and after Preservation Pennsylvania placed the Slifer House on its 2026 Pennsylvania At Risk List as one of five historic places threatened with demolition. Preservation advocates had spent months urging the owners to stop the project. A group calling itself Save the Historic Slifer House pressed RiverWoods and its parent organizations to pause the teardown and explored fundraising and other alternatives.

Asbury RiverWoods and Albright Care Services, which own the property, said they were moving ahead with a long-term plan centered on the needs of RiverWoods residents and the organization’s sustainability goals. That leaves Lewisburg and Union County facing a familiar preservation question with unusually visible stakes: what replaces a landmark on one of the borough’s main approaches, and how much of River Road’s historic character can be recovered once the house is gone.

For neighbors, commuters and visitors entering Lewisburg from Magnolia Drive and River Road, the change is immediate and physical. The Slifer House was not just another old building. It was a nationally recognized historic resource tied to Lincoln-era Pennsylvania, and its demolition marks a turning point for a site that had long linked the area’s past to its present.