West Baden Springs Hotel
Marriage of Engineering and Luxury in Rural Indiana
Refurbished 1902 hotel offers elegant accommodations and amazing architecture
Historic Hotel Reopens
The beautifully restored West Baden Springs Hotel in Indiana offers all the luxury resort amenities-golf, gambling, fine dining, shopping, spa services, entertainment, and plush new guest rooms, but it is much more than simply a lavish resort. When its door opened in 1902, The West Baden Springs Hotel was dubbed by journalists the “Eighth Wonder of the World”. What made the hotel so wondrous was not the mineral springs said to cure everything from paralysis to pimples, the luxurious furnishings, the double-decker bicycle and pony track or the opera house. The Eighth Wonder was so dubbed because of its dome. At one hundred feet high and 200 feet in diameter, it was the largest free standing dome in the world until the Astrodome was built 63 years later.
Colonel Sinclair & His Engineering Miracle
Lee Sinclair was more than your average wealthy entrepreneur-he was a man with pockets deep enough to match his extraordinary vision. At the turn of the century, competition was fierce to fill his hotel built around the medicinal mineral springs in Orange County, Indiana. There were dozens of hotels in the area including the elegant and popular French Lick Springs Hotel. Sinclair needed an edge, and when the existing wooden hotel burned to the ground in 1901, he found it. Constructed in a mere 270 days, his new hotel boasted 708 guest rooms each with a private bath and a 7 story atrium topped by an immense dome and 10,000 square feet of glass.
Architect Harrison Albright of West Virginia took the commission because he had no others, but shrewdly hired an engineering firm specializing in bridges to design the atrium. The self-supporting dome was designed with near perfect weight distribution and a series of rollers on the tops of the 24 perimeter columns to accommodate the constant freeze-thaw-freeze of Indiana winters.
Marvelous Architecture Merits Exquisite Interiors
Renovations to the atrium after Sinclair died in 1916 added elegance to engineering. The hotel was given a Classical theme, and the buildings and grounds were transformed into a bit of ancient Rome. The Atrium became a lush Pompeian Court with statues of Apollo and the three Muses. A mosaic floor was installed, and murals of classical subjects adorned the 7 story columns. A one-of-a kind Rookwood fireplace was added, large enough to burn a 14 foot log. The New & Improved West Baden Springs Hotel had its grand reopening in 1917 with a keynote speech by Helen Keller.
From Hotel to Hospital to College & Back
Curtailed leisure travel during WWI, and the cost of the renovations coupled with the less than capacity crowds created cash flow problems, so, from 1918 to 1919, the hotel was leased to the US government and became Army Hospital #35. By 1922, the hotel was busy again as wealthy guests came for the mineral waters and a bit of gambling. Guests included Al Capone who was said to have maintained a suite at the hotel, which flourished until the crash of ’29. The hotel limped along until 1932 when it was closed. In 1934, the building and grounds were sold to the Jesuits for use as a seminary for $1. The Jesuits used and maintained the property until 1964, when lack of funds and dwindling enrollment forced them to close. The property was purchased in 1966 and donated to The Northwood Institute, a private college based in Michigan, but the college went the way of the Jesuits, closing its doors in 1983.
Historic Landmark Foundation & The Cooks
In 1992, The Historic Landmarks Foundation spent $200,000 on a property they didn’t own to make it weather tight, and shore up failing structures with the hopes that someone would come forward with a plan for the property and the funds to implement it. Finally, in 1996, The Landmark Foundation teamed up with preservationists Bill and Gail Cook of The Cook Group Incorporated. The property was lovingly and expertly restored and opened to the public as part of the French Lick Springs Casino and resort in June of 2006.
