West Baden Springs Hotel

The Hotel

The West Baden Springs Hotel is the more remarkable of the two grand hotels that make up French Lick Resort in rural southern Indiana, ninety minutes by car west of Louisville and two hours south of Indianapolis. The building was designed in 1901 by the West Virginia architect Harrison Albright and constructed in less than a year on the site of an earlier hotel that had burned to the ground; the engineering centrepiece, an unsupported two-hundred-foot dome by Oliver J. Westcott, was the largest free-span structure in the world when it opened in 1902 and held the record until the construction of Houston's Astrodome more than sixty years later. The hotel closed in 1932 during the Depression, served as a Jesuit seminary and a private college before falling into severe disrepair, and was very nearly demolished in the early 1990s.

The current property is the result of a roughly five-hundred-and-eighty-million-dollar restoration completed in 2007, led by Indiana Landmarks, Bill Cook of Cook Group, and a state legislative effort that paired the restoration with a new casino licence at the neighbouring French Lick Springs Hotel. The work is the single most successful American hotel restoration of the past quarter century: the dome's mosaic floor was lifted and reset, the original Rookwood tile fountain on the atrium floor was re-glazed, the six storeys of balconies were rebuilt in the original lattice ironwork, and the historic guestroom layouts were preserved while the bathrooms and mechanical systems were rebuilt to modern standards.

The 243 guestrooms are arranged on six floors around the atrium. The most desirable inventory is the forty balcony rooms that face onto the central dome itself; standing on a private balcony at dusk, with the atrium lit and the dome's painted plaster glowing above, is the property's signature five-minute experience. Standard atrium-side rooms run roughly 280 to 340 square feet; the exterior-facing rooms and the suites run larger, with the Presidential Suite stretching to roughly 1,800 square feet across the corner of the sixth floor. Decor in all categories is Edwardian historicism done with restraint: dark mahogany, brass fixtures, period drapery, and modern bathrooms with marble vanities.

Dining centres on Sinclair's, the property's named-dining-room steakhouse, the Casual Atrium for plated breakfast and lunch under the dome, and a small bar on the lobby floor; the broader resort adds a chophouse, an Italian restaurant, and a casual market across the road at French Lick Springs Hotel. The spa is the original Indiana mineral-spring tradition operating at full strength: pyrolite mud wraps, sulphur baths, hot and cold immersion suites, and a deep treatment menu. The Pete Dye and Donald Ross golf courses, the small casino across the road, a working trolley service between the two hotels, and a 250-acre resort campus complete the offer.

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