Travel: Two Classic Resort Hotels Return to Life in Indiana

At the turn of the last century, the southern Indiana towns of French Lick and West Baden Springs were bustling resorts, thronged by visitors from all over the country coming to take the waters of the local mineral springs and play at the casinos. Today the two towns sit in one of the poorest counties in the state, but a massive grass-roots renovation project has been restoring two of their greatest hotels to all their former glory.

During the early twentieth century, the neoclassical French Lick Resort Hotel sparkled with stained glass, gilt detailing, and faux marble columns. It was rivaled only by West Baden Springs Hotel, a giant circular structure wrapped around an atrium topped by a huge dome. But the 1929 stock market crash followed by a statewide gambling crackdown halted the flood of wealthy tourists to the region. Eventually the West Baden hotel was sold to the Jesuits for a dollar, and French Lick changed hands repeatedly.

In recent years, two philanthropists, Bill and Gayle Cook, and their Bloomington-based company, Cook Group Inc., contributed to stopgap measures to keep the two hotels from crumbling, but not until the state legislature legalized riverboat gambling in 2004 could they interest other investors. “We have been involved with the vision for French Lick for eight years and believe that combining the casino with the two historic hotels is the only way to make the vision a reality,” says Stephen Ferguson, chairman of the Cook Group.

The Cook Group finally was able to partner with other development companies, as well as with the Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana, to spearhead a $382 million restoration of the properties. Work on the French Lick Hotel began in earnest in August 2005, and it opened to the public in November of this year. As the workers scraped away layers of dull paint and popped out a dropped ceiling, they found a well-appointed lobby, with traces of crumbling rosette lights. Few could be restored, but a new mold was created from the existing rosettes. An on-site plaster shop was built, and workers cast 800 rosette lights. Fully restored to its 1901 design, the creamy blue lobby is now an airy space bathed in light from its tall windows. The Beaux Arts detailing from the lobby is consistent throughout, tying the various wings of the building together, including a sprawling new casino.

The restorers of the hotel delighted in other discoveries as well during the renovation. They found a massive switchboard in an outbuilding of the hotel with great brass switches labeled for rooms in the building. It’s from 1903, when the hotel’s then owner, Thomas Taggart, electrified the property. The switchboard now forms a wall of one of the hotel’s many bars and dining rooms. Taggart served as mayor of Indianapolis and as a national Democratic party power, and he added a wing for conventions. That was where, in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt was nominated to run for President.

Pluto Water, a mineral water, put French Lick on the map. Shortly after Indiana became a state, in 1816, a physician from nearby Paoli, William Bowles, started developing the land, advertising the curative effects of the water. He eventually bottled the water and sold it nationally, claiming it could cure up to 70 illnesses. It could be found in drug stores until the 1970s, when its sale was banned because it contained trace amounts of lithium. Today’s visitors don’t drink the water, but they do take aromatic baths in the hotel’s luxurious spa, the water filtered to get rid of its sulfurous smell.

French Lick also has three golf courses by great designers. Donald Ross, the father of golf architecture, designed an 18-hole course for Taggart in 1917, and the hotel has restored its squared-off greens, unforgiving bunkers, and native grass patches, which emulate those of Scottish courses. The other two courses are by Pete Dye and Tom Bendelow.

Thanks to the tireless efforts of the Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana, the West Baden Springs Hotel is a National Landmark, and the French Lick Resort Hotel is on the National Register of Historic places. French Lick’s status doesn’t require the restoration to hew too closely to the original design, but the Cooks were adamant about keeping it accurate. “The Cook group is a big supporter of this kind of restoration,” says Sandi Woodward, program manager for the Historic Landmarks Foundation. “They are great lovers of history. They will do the research and be thorough.”

If French Lick is subdued in its elegance, the West Baden Springs Hotel is exuberant, even ostentatious, in both its design and its engineering. It was inspired by the high-spirited Beaux Arts architecture of the 1893 Chicago world’s fair, where Greek and Roman elements were combined with a celebration of modern technology and engineering. West Baden, with its outstanding dome and Pompeii-inspired atrium emulates the fair’s style, but with jaunty turrets rising above the trees that make it also part fairy-tale castle.

It was built by Lee W. Sinclair, a textile manufacturer and banker who came for the water and stayed to invest in resorts. When his original hotel burned down, in 1901, Sinclair issued an open challenge: He wanted a fireproof building topped by the world’s largest dome and decorated like a grand spa in Europe. He wanted it built in a year, and for $414,000.

Harrison Albright, a young architect who had fled scandal in Philadelphia, took up the challenge. Albright recruited a Chicago-based suspension bridge engineer, Oliver J. Wescott, to design the dome and organized the hotel beneath that enormous steel lid. The dome’s 600-foot circumference remained the largest in the world until the completion of the Houston Astrodome, in 1965. The hotel will open to the public in spring of 2007, but the Historic Landmarks Foundation already offers tours so visitors can take in the breathtaking structure.

Even before the gambling law made renovating the two structures feasible, the towns of West Baden and French Lick were protecting the remarkable buildings, shoring up crumbling walls and lobbying the state for money. Thanks to their efforts, guests can once again enjoy the full elegance and grandeur of top-of-the-line turn-of-the-century resorts.

For reservations at the French Lick Resort Casino visit www.frenchlick.com or call 888-694-4332. For tours of the West Baden Springs Hotel, contact the Historic Landmarks Foundation of Indiana French Lick–West Baden Springs Program, at 866-571-8687.