In the same year the courthouse went up, 1816, Gaius Kibbe built a spacious three-story Georgian-style tavern and adorned it with his own name.

He sold it three years later to entrepreneur Benjamin Rathbun who renamed it the Eagle tavern and made it the finest stagecoach stop and public gathering place west of New York City.

The Eagle was on the west side of Main below Court Street [Liberty Building in 2016]. Across Main from the Eagle there blossomed Buffalo's first theater. It was called simply The Theatre, and if nothing else, it was an amenity serving notice that a more refined urban life was in the making.

Notable events that took place in the Eagle Tavern:

• In 1825, Erie Canal commissioners listened to Peter Porter (Black Rock) and Sam Wilkeson (Buffalo) argue their case for the Canal terminus.
  
  
• In June of 1825, the Marquis de Lafayette, the French hero of the American Revolution, visited Buffalo. He rode in an open carriage in a parade up Main Street. and then taken to the Eagle Tavern where he was put up for the night and royally entertained at a reception and then at a banquet
  
  
• On October 1825, Gov. DeWitt Clinton was in Buffalo to celebrate the opening of the Erie Canal. Part of the festivities included a dinner hosted by Judge Ebenezer Walden at the eagle Tavern, and another party at the Mansion House. The day ended with a grand ball held at the Eagle.

Destroyed by fire in 1865.

Text source: "Buffalo: Lake City in Niagara Land,"by Richard C. Brown and Bob Watson. USA: Windsor Publications, 1981, pp. 26, 31, 34, 36, 42