When a 180-foot, six-story section of West Baden Springs Hotel collapsed in 1991, it crumbled further from its glory days. Northwood College was the next tenant, from 1967 to 1983, and then the magnificent building sat unoccupied for 13 years. The Jesuits removed many of the building’s elegant appointments and operated it as a seminary for 30 years. After the stock market crash of 1929, the hotel was sold to the Society of Jesus for one dollar in 1934. While French Lick Springs Hotel remained a functioning resort over the next 100 years, the same could not be said for West Baden Springs Hotel. During the National Governor’s Conference at French Lick in 1931, Franklin Delano Roosevelt rounded up support for the party’s presidential nomination a year later he became the official Democratic candidate and won the presidency in 1932. Taggart became the Democratic National Chairman and French Lick Springs Hotel became the unofficial headquarters for the Democratic National Party. He expanded the hotel and added luxurious furnishings and marble floors, designed two championship golf courses and started bottling Pluto Water for national sale. That same year, French Lick Springs Hotel also rose to international prominence after Indianapolis Mayor Tom Taggart purchased the property. With a $414,000 budget and a one-year timeline, Sinclair erected a hotel modeled after the grandest spas of Europe, complete with the world’s largest free-span dome which stretched 200 feet. A fire ravaged the hotel in 1901 but Sinclair used the opportunity to further transform West Baden Springs Hotel into a world-class facility. He added an opera house, golf courses, church, ball field and double-decker pony and bicycle track. Sinclair transformed West Baden Springs Hotel into a sophisticated resort when he assumed ownership in 1888. He later changed the name of the hotel, and the town, to West Baden Springs after the famous mineral springs in Wiesbaden, Germany. Five years later, another doctor by the name of John Lane saw the success of French Lick Springs Hotel and decided to build his own health resort just one mile up the road and named it Mile Lick Inn. William Bowles built French Lick Springs Hotel, which drew guests from as far as 100 miles away to partake of the “miracle waters” from the sulfur springs that naturally surfaced in the area. The region of Orange County, with its small towns of French Lick and West Baden, became a famed vacation and gathering place for wealthy and prominent society members. French Lick Springs and West Baden Springs Hotels were the iconic symbols of great economic achievement back in the early 1900s for rural southern Indiana.

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