French Lick Springs Hotel & ….Kimball piano (#0308)

Adjacent to West Baden is French Lick, apparently the original site for the hot springs that made the area into a turn-of-the-century resort. It’s not quite clear when this building was opened – a previous hotel at the site burned down in 1897 and this was open in 1901, so it was some time between those years. Like the hotel in West Baden (adjacent picture), this boomed from the early 1900’s to the start of the Great Depression in 1929, but declined after that. Unlike the West Baden hotel, it did remain a hotel from then until now. Much of the revitalization of the structure is connected to the beginning of licensed gambling in 2003 – the Trump organization was involved with the resort for a short time around 2003, but that didn’t work out. The structure currently has 443 guest rooms.

…..

Something not mentioned and difficult to find was the fact that Kimball Piano’s were made in West Baden / French Lick – in fact 500,000 of them. One of the men most active in the gay group on campus at IU when I was there had been a piano-tuner at Kimball’s, which is how I was able to find the documentation of it’s history. I didn’t see any location in French Lick that looked like it might have been the former factory.

Sources:
Resort: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Lick_Springs_Hotel
Kimball piano: www.kimballinternational.com/our-history