In 1809, Sylvester Hosmer, one of five sons of physician Timothy Hosmer, married Laura Smith, one of the daughters of innkeeper Major Isaac Smith. The major's tavern was a log building alongside the Ontario and Genesee Turnpike, a few miles west of the Genesee River crossing near Avon, N.Y.

Following his father-in-law's death, Sylvester Hosmer became its proprietor. Accommodations and food were pronounced excellent by those who stopped at the log inn while travelling the main route through western New York.

Business was good and, in 1818, Hosmer replaced his log building with the two-story Georgian-style frame structure that now looks across the Genesee Country Village square.

The in has seven fireplaces. The brick-floored kitchen and storerooms are on the ground level and are accessible through a covered entrance on the right side of the building. The first floor includes a taproom (reached through an entrance on the left side of the building), a public dining room, a ladies' dining room and a ladies' sitting room. On the second floor are the landlord's own quarters, four private sleeping rooms, and a combined meeting room/ballroom.

The old inn was occupied as a residence in its later years, although it was being used as a granary when the museum acquired it. The yard behind Hosmer's contains a wagon shed and Hosmer's old brick-lined ice house. The ground-floor kitchen is staffed by one of the museum's talented open-hearth cooks, who prepares a meal appropriately fit for hungry former occupants who had been traveling by stagecoach.