West Baden Springs Hotel
| West Baden Springs Hotel | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| National Register of Historic Places | |||
| National Historic Landmark | |||
 Inner courtyard West Baden Springs Hotel (2008) |
|||
|
|||
| location | West Baden Springs , Orange County , Indiana | ||
| Coordinates | 38 ° 34 '2 " N , 86 ° 37' 5" W | ||
| surface | 40 hectares | ||
| Built | 1901 | ||
| architect | Harrison Albright, Oliver J. Westcott | ||
| NRHP number | 74000016 | ||
| Data | |||
| The NRHP added | June 27, 1974 | ||
| Declared as an NHL | February 27, 1987 | ||
The West Baden Springs Hotel is a dome hotel and part of the French Lick Resort in West Baden Springs , Orange County , Indiana . For several decades it had the largest dome on the American double continent and, as a monument, has the status of a National Historic Landmark .
history
The West Baden Springs Hotel was built in 1901-02 for owner Lee W. Sinclair and is located in an area that has long been known for its mineral springs . For this reason, West Baden called itself the Wiesbaden (hence the place name) or Karlsbad America. The hotel replaced a previous building from 1855 by the same owner, which was destroyed in a fire in 1901. The impetus for building larger resorts in the area came from the connection of West Baden Springs to the Monon Railroad . Sinclair hired Harrison Albright as the architect and Oliver J. Westcott as the engineer for the construction of the dome. Concerned about another fire, Sinclair pretended to use as little wood as possible as a building material. In addition to the hotel, the complex included several other buildings such as an opera house, a hospital, a Catholic church, a two-story building for bicycle and horse races and some fountain houses, which were architecturally based on the drinking halls in Baden-Baden and Wiesbaden. Accordingly, the mineral water bottled there was called based on the German Sprudel Water . With the exception of two temples in the style of the Greek Revival , a temple of Apollon and one of Hygieia , which are in the hotel's garden, these additional buildings in the hotel complex were demolished over time.
The West Baden Springs Hotel was very popular and played a significant role in America's social history . Due to its proximity to a number of casinos , it was considered the Monte Carlo of the Midwest . During the 1920s in particular, many guests came to West Baden not only because of the healing water springs, but also to be able to play games of chance. In the first three decades of the 20th century many celebrities were among the guests such as General John J. Pershing , the Mayor of Chicago, William Hale Thompson, the Governor of New York, Alfred E. Smith , the writer George Ade and the Boxers John L. Sullivan and Tom Sharkey . Al Capone was a notorious regular at the West Baden Springs Hotel . In the spring, major league baseball teams such as the St. Louis Cardinals , the Philadelphia Phillies and the Pittsburgh Pirates used the large oval in the center of the almost 530 m long horse and cycling track as a training ground.
After Sinclair's death in 1916, the daughter and son-in-law took over the West Baden Springs Hotel. During the First World War , it served as a hospital for a short time from 1918-1919 . In 1922 they sold the hotel to Edward Ballard, a native of the area, who owned several casinos in Miami Beach , Saratoga Springs , Hot Springs, and Mackinac Island, as well as Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus . Under Ballard, the atrium was occasionally used for larger shows. During the Great Depression , like many other resorts in the northeastern United States , the hotel lost guests to Florida and more distant destinations due to increased mobility , but benefited from Ballard's sale of Circus Hagenbeck-Wallace a few days before Black Thursday . He therefore had capital and kept the hotel running until 1932. Since he only found buyers who wanted to convert the hotel into a casino against his will, he bequeathed the West Baden Springs Hotel to the Jesuits in 1934 , who used it as a seminary and carried out extensive structural changes. In 1964 the seminary moved to Chicago . Two years later, the Northwood Institute came into the possession of the West Baden Springs Hotel, which from then on served as a campus for this private university. At the end of 1983, Eugene MacDonald, an experienced local hotel owner, bought the building. After the property developer went bankrupt, legal disputes over the West Baden Springs Hotel ensued, which suffered from the building structure and was closed to the public in 1989 for security reasons. When part of the facade collapsed in January 1991, Indiana Landmarks , the largest monument preservation organization in Indiana, took the initiative and carried out stabilizing construction measures with the support of donors. In 1994 an investment company finally bought the West Baden Springs Hotel, after which it became the property of Grand Casinos, Inc. The Cook Group, a medical technology company from Bloomington, Indiana , finally financed the renovation of West Baden Springs and the neighboring French Lick Springs Hotel, which were combined to form the French Lick Resort. In 2007 the West Baden Springs Hotel celebrated its reopening.
On June 27, 1974, the West Baden Springs Hotel was added to the National Register of Historic Places . On February 27, 1987, it was granted National Historic Landmark status .
Building description
The brick and concrete hotel building is six stories high and has 708 rooms. On the outside it has 16 sides and inside a large, circular atrium that takes up the entire height of the building. An elliptical structured dome, made of glass and steel, spans the inner courtyard, which has a diameter of almost 60 m and a height of almost 40 m. The construction is stabilized by 24 steel girders anchored in a roller above the center. Grouped around the inner courtyard are two concentric rings of buildings on each level, connected by a corridor, in which the hotel rooms are located. At the time of its construction, the dome was the largest in steel-and-glass construction in the world and, until 1963, the largest on the American continent. It follows the architectural tradition of the steel-and-glass domes of Crystal Palace and the horticultural hall at the Centennial Exhibition of 1876.
The interior decoration and exterior design of the West Baden Springs Hotel has been changed several times. In the years 1917 to 1919, the atrium, which had been sober up to then, was decorated: the columns were painted and decorated with paintings, the low-rise walls were covered with marble and a marble mosaic floor was laid. When the Jesuits took over the hotel in the 1930s, they found many of the lavishly decorated architectural elements and buildings to be too intrusive and removed, among other things, the Byzantine-style towers on the main building and all the well houses. They also made changes to the room layout, so the lobby was separated from the courtyard and converted into a chapel. A building adjoining the hotel in the north, which contained the dining hall and a ballroom, was equipped with smaller classrooms.
Web links
Remarks
- ↑ James H. Charleton: West Baden Springs Hotel: Nomination Form . In: National Register of Historic Places database . National Park Service , June 1985, accessed on May 10, 2018 (English, 447 KB), pp. 2 f, 6 f.
- ↑ James H. Charleton: West Baden Springs Hotel: Nomination Form . In: National Register of Historic Places database . National Park Service , June 1985, accessed May 10, 2018 (447 KB), pp. 3, 7.
- ↑ James H. Charleton: West Baden Springs Hotel: Nomination Form . In: National Register of Historic Places database . National Park Service , June 1985, accessed May 10, 2018 (447 KB), p. 8.
- ↑ History West Baden Springs Hotel on the West Baden Springs Hotel website .
- ^ West Baden Springs Hotel on the National Register Information System. National Park Service , accessed May 10, 2018.
- ↑ Listing of National Historic Landmarks by State: Indiana. National Park Service , accessed July 23, 2019.
- ↑ James H. Charleton: West Baden Springs Hotel: Nomination Form . In: National Register of Historic Places database . National Park Service , June 1985, accessed on May 10, 2018 (English, 447 KB), p. 2 f.
- ↑ James H. Charleton: West Baden Springs Hotel: Nomination Form . In: National Register of Historic Places database . National Park Service , June 1985, accessed May 10, 2018 (447 KB), pp. 2, 6.