Coordinates: 38°33′11″N86°37′12″W / 38.553°N 86.620°W
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Nov 13, 2018 Our Flying Life visits the French Lick Resort at West Baden. We traveled between the two resorts, gambled at the Casino, sampled the local fare, and took in some night life. Under the tree is a barn/garage where Larry's. Larry Bird's childhood home in French Lick, IN (Google Maps) This is where Larry Legend honed his formidable skills.
French Lick Resort | |
---|---|
Address | 8670 W. State 56 French Lick, Indiana |
Opening date | 2006 |
Theme | Las Vegas |
No. of rooms | 443 main hotel 243 resort hotel |
Total gaming space | 38,000 sq ft (3,500 m2) |
Signature attractions | Two golf courses; designed by Donald Ross (1917) & Pete Dye (2009) |
Notable restaurants | 1875: Steakhousehagans |
Casino type | Land-Based |
Owner | Orange County Holdings |
Website | frenchlick.com |
Location in the United States
Location in Indiana
French Lick Resort is a resort complex in the central United States, located in the towns of West Baden Springs and French Lick, Indiana. The 3,000-acre (12 km2) complex includes two historic resort spa hotels, stables, a casino, and three golf courses that are all part of a $500 million restoration and development project.[1][2]
Casino[edit]
The casino opened for business on November 3, 2006, after a gaming license originally intended for Patoka Lake was transferred to French Lick. Honoring state law allowing only water-based gaming, it was originally designed as a riverboat and surrounded by a small pond (commonly nicknamed the Boat in the Moat).[3] In 2008, the moat was filled in and the casino boat was converted into the state's first land-based casino.
The casino features more than 1,300 slot machines, and table games including blackjack, craps, roulette, and poker derivatives.
French Lick Springs Hotel[edit]
The site was originally known as the French Lick Springs Hotel, a grand resort that was a mineral spring health spa. The hotel catered to guests seeking the advertised healing properties of the town's sulfursprings, three of which were on the hotel's property. William A. Bowles built and opened the first hotel on his property around 1845. Subsequent owners enlarged the original hotel, but it burned in 1897. Rebuilt and expanded on an even grander scale, especially under the ownership of Thomas Taggart, a former mayor of Indianapolis and chairman of the Democratic National Committee, the popular resort attracted many fashionable, wealthy, and notable guests.[4][5][6] In the 1920s and into the 1930s the resort became known for its recreational sports, most notably golf, but the French Lick area also had a reputation for illegal gambling. The hotel was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003. The restored hotel, with its exteriors of distinctive, buff-colored brick, reopened in 2006.[7][8][9]
West Baden Springs Hotel[edit]
The historic, 243-room luxury West Baden Springs Hotel, in the adjacent town of West Baden Springs, 1 mile (1.6 km) from the French Lick Springs Hotel, is also part of the casino resort complex. The present-day West Baden hotel was built in 1902 (118 years ago) to replace an earlier hotel. The new hotel became known for the 200-foot (61 m) dome covering its atrium.[10][11] It held the title of the largest free-spanning dome in the world from 1902 to 1913, and remained the largest dome in the United States until the completerion of the Coliseum in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1955.[citation needed] The hotel was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974, and became a National Historic Landmark in 1987.[12] It is also designated as a Historic Civil Engineering Landmark.[13] In 2008 readers of Condé Nast Traveler ranked the West Baden Springs Hotel twenty-first on its list of the top resorts on the United States mainland.[14]
Golf[edit]
The casino complex includes three golf courses: the Valley Course, the Hill Course, and the Pete Dye Golf Course at French Lick.
Beginning in the early twentieth century, when golf was gaining popularity, the French Lick hotel began to expand its modest golf facilities. Valley Course, the resort's first golf course, is adjacent to the hotel and casino. It was enlarged to an 18-hole course on 120 acres (49 hectares) around 1907. The larger course design, attributed to Tom Bendelow, featured a combination of wooded hills and flat turf.[15] It has been altered and reduced to a 9-hole course as a result of the casino construction.[citation needed]
Donald Ross and his associates designed the 18-hole Hill Course, the resort's second golf course, around 1917. Completed in 1920 on approximately 300 acres (120 hectares), the championship course was located about 2 miles (3.2 km) from the French Lick hotel. The course hosted the PGA Championship tournament in 1924, which Walter Hagen won.[16][17] It also hosted the LPGA Championship tournament in 1959 and 1960, and the Midwest Amateur from the 1930s through the 1950s. In 2006–07, the course was restored to its original specifications in cooperation with the Donald Ross Society.[citation needed]
Larry Bird French Lick Casino And Hotel
Pete Dye, a renowned golf course designer from Indiana, designed the resort's third course. The 18-hole Pete Dye Golf Course at French Lick opened in June 2009, and hosted the PGA Professional National Championship in June 2010.[18] Mount Airie, Thomas Taggart's 1928 Colonial-style home, was purchased and transformed into a clubhouse and pro shop that overlooks much of the course. This site hosted the Senior PGA Championship in 2015.[citation needed]
Tee | Rating/Slope | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Out | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | In | Total |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Gold | 80.0 / 148 | 519 | 413 | 641 | 251 | 391 | 513 | 611 | 213 | 532 | 4084 | 391 | 456 | 529 | 208 | 575 | 383 | 301 | 518 | 657 | 4018 | 8102 |
Black | 76.2 / 139 | 465 | 382 | 610 | 211 | 350 | 458 | 534 | 183 | 469 | 3662 | 378 | 429 | 430 | 181 | 504 | 359 | 220 | 465 | 626 | 3592 | 7254 |
Blue | 73.3 / 135 | 420 | 369 | 554 | 191 | 345 | 397 | 500 | 170 | 410 | 3356 | 350 | 394 | 388 | 162 | 504 | 344 | 183 | 431 | 589 | 3345 | 6701 |
White | 70.6 / 130 | 360 | 328 | 501 | 165 | 340 | 387 | 480 | 155 | 360 | 3076 | 314 | 378 | 361 | 152 | 474 | 330 | 170 | 359 | 501 | 3039 | 6115 |
Red | 65.4 / 118 | 314 | 289 | 442 | 122 | 271 | 315 | 421 | 111 | 326 | 2611 | 268 | 330 | 320 | 111 | 397 | 258 | 113 | 296 | 447 | 2540 | 5151 |
Handicap | 7 | 13 | 1 | 11 | 15 | 5 | 9 | 17 | 3 | 14 | 10 | 4 | 18 | 8 | 16 | 6 | 12 | 2 | ||||
Par | 4 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 36 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 36 | 72 |
Notes[edit]
- ^'French Lick Resort'. Inside Indiana Business. 2008-11-03. Archived from the original on September 23, 2009.
- ^Marsh, Betsa (2010-09-04). 'Revived Indiana Resorts Mirror Their Gilded Pasts'. Dallas Morning News. Retrieved 2016-05-23.
- ^'Two Landmark Hotels Saved, Two Others Need Saving'. Hotel Interactive. Archived from the original on 2008-06-18. Retrieved 2008-10-15.
- ^Steelwater, Eliza (2002-08-15). 'National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form: French Lick Springs Hotel'(pdf). United States Department of the Interior/National Park Service. pp. 12–15, 18–20, 53–56. Retrieved 2016-05-26.
- ^'French Lick Springs Hotel: Overview'. Historic Hotels of America; National Trust for Historic Preservation. Retrieved 2016-05-24.
- ^Fadely, James P. (1997). Thomas Taggart: Public Servant, Political Boss: 1856-1929. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society. pp. xii, 57, 61, 65–68. ISBN9780871951151.
- ^Fadely, pp. 74–76.
- ^'National Register Information System'. National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. March 13, 2009.
- ^'Hotel History'. French Lick Resort. Retrieved 2016-05-24.
- ^O'Malley, John W. (December 1958). 'The Story of the West Baden Springs Hotel'. Indiana Magazine of History. Bloomington: Indiana University. 54 (4): 370–72. Retrieved 2016-05-23.
- ^Rhodes, A. J. (1904). The Pedigree of West Baden(PDF). French Lick and West Baden, History and Story, From 1810 to 1904. pp. 8–9.
- ^Charleton, James H. (June 1985). 'National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination: West Baden Springs Hotel'. National Park Service.
- ^'West Baden Springs Hotel'. American Society of Civil Engineers. Retrieved 2016-05-23.
- ^'West Baden Outranks High Profile Resorts'. Inside Indiana Business. Archived from the original on September 23, 2009. Retrieved 2008-11-07.
- ^Steelwater, p. 58.
- ^Steelwater, pp. 33–36; 59–60.
- ^Fadely, p. 72.
- ^'The Pete Dye Golf Course at French Lick'. IndianaGolf.com. Retrieved 2016-05-31.
References[edit]
- Fadely, James P. (1997). Thomas Taggart: Public Servant, Political Boss: 1856-1929. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society. ISBN9780871951151.
- 'French Lick Resort'. Inside Indiana Business. 2008-11-03. Archived from the original on September 23, 2009.
- 'French Lick Springs Hotel: Overview'. Historic Hotels of America; National Trust for Historic Preservation. Retrieved 2016-05-24.
- 'Hotel History'. French Lick Resort. Retrieved 2016-05-24.
- Marsh, Betsa (2010-09-04). 'Revived Indiana Resorts Mirror Their Gilded Pasts'. Dallas Morning News. Retrieved 2016-05-23.
- O'Malley, John W. (December 1958). 'The Story of the West Baden Springs Hotel'. Indiana Magazine of History. Bloomington: Indiana University. 54 (4): 365–380. Retrieved 2016-05-23.
- Office of Code Revision Indiana Legislative Services Agency. 'Riverboat Gambling,' IC 35-45-5-10.
- 'The Pete Dye Golf Course at French Lick'. IndianaGolf.com. Retrieved 2016-05-31.
- Rhodes, A. J. (1904). The Pedigree of West Baden(PDF). French Lick and West Baden, History and Story, From 1810 to 1904.
- 'National Register Information System'. National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. March 13, 2009.
- Charleton, James H. (June 1985). 'National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination: West Baden Springs Hotel'. National Park Service.
- Steelwater, Eliza (2002-08-15). 'National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form: French Lick Springs Hotel'(pdf). United States Department of the Interior/National Park Service. Retrieved 2016-05-26.
- Turkel, Stanley (2007-06-01). 'Two Landmark Hotels Saved, Two Others Need Saving'. HotelInteractive.com. Archived from the original on 2008-06-18. Retrieved 2007-09-01.
- 'West Baden Outranks High Profile Resorts'. Inside Indiana Business. Archived from the original on September 23, 2009. Retrieved 2008-11-07.
- 'West Baden Springs Hotel'. American Society of Civil Engineers. Retrieved 2016-05-23.
External links[edit]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to French Lick Resort Casino. |
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Correction Appended
WE glided on ancient steel rails alongside a clear, slow-moving river, past golden fields and red barns, a canopy of green overhead. The view from the Pullman car’s windows looked very much like it did 90 years ago, when Parke Flick used to ride the train with his father, who was on his way to work at the West Baden Springs Resort near French Lick, Ind.
“People called this the Monte Carlo of America back then,” said Mr. Flick, now 94, watching as a little diesel engine pulled five vintage passenger cars into the town’s depot. It stopped just short of the resort, with its mammoth red dome flanked by three white towers. “It was magnificent.”
The train was how visitors usually arrived in the Roaring Twenties — a dozen or more trainloads a day — when French Lick was one of America’s most famous, and infamous, party towns. Back then French Lick and the surrounding Springs Valley had 30 hotels and 15 clubs. The town, which got its name from the French traders who founded it and the salty mineral deposits that attracted wildlife, was a lawless hangout for a generation of politicians, entertainers, sports idols and gangsters.
“When I went into the Army and told people I was from French Lick, they all knew it, mostly for two things: Pluto Water and gambling,” Mr. Flick said. The mineral water from Pluto Springs may no longer be bottled, but the gambling, after more than a half-century’s absence, is making a comeback.
A $382 million makeover of the area’s two famed Beaux-Arts hotels has just been completed. The hotels, the French Lick Springs Resort and the West Baden Springs Resort, both of which originally opened a few months apart in 1901 and ’02, are national historic landmarks. West Baden’s six-story atrium had the world’s largest free-span dome until the Astrodome opened in 1965.
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Continue reading the main storyThe restoration of West Baden Springs is the last major piece of a plan to return tiny French Lick, also known as the hometown of the basketball star Larry Bird, to its long-lost status as one of the Midwest’s biggest resort destinations. West Baden’s 246 guest rooms and suites are expected to open in May, when the hotel will welcome its first paying guests since the Depression.
The neighboring French Lick Springs Resort, rechristened the French Lick Resort Casino, has been open since last fall. It had been closed for two years for a painstakingly thorough refurbishing of its 443 rooms, lobby and other public areas.
And since November at the French Lick resort, gamblers have been able to try their luck at the town’s first licensed casino, one every bit as grand as the big illicit casinos of French Lick’s heyday. The resort’s 84,000-square-foot casino features 1,200 slot machines and dozens of table games like blackjack, roulette, craps and poker.
The restorations evoke memories of French Lick’s long-lost past.
“My father kept up the grounds around the West Baden resort — they were like the of Versailles,” Mr. Flick remembered. “I worked my way into a front office job, and ended up as the auditor. Dad and I were probably the last two people out before they closed years ago. I never thought it would open again. No sir.
“I thought they’d tear it down, if it didn’t fall down first.”
But preservationists saved the West Baden resort, which was near collapse 15 years ago. Guided tours have been available in recent years, but now the whole resort has been restored to its former glory.
At the French Lick resort, “they went first class with everything: linens, furniture, fixtures and all,” said Judi Kimmel, chairwoman of the committee planning the celebration of the town’s 150th anniversary, which takes place this year. “The lobby of the hotel is just absolutely out of this world. It is one of the most ornate things you will ever see. It seems like it’s all gold.”
In fact, much of it is. According to Eric Whitson, a vice president of the resort, the restoration used 6,000 square feet of gold leaf, about a million dollars’ worth.
“The place is a diamond,” said Larry Vormbrock, a retiree from Taylorsville, Ky., who has already visited the new casino several times. “It’s a little bit still in the rough, but when West Baden opens up, it will be a dream place to visit — one of those must-see places.”
THE French Lick Resort Casino also features eight new restaurants, designer shops, a bowling alley, a video game arcade and a swimming pool complete with four life-size dolphin statues spitting water. (The casino, oddly, is built in the shape of a riverboat and is surrounded by a moat, which somehow meets the letter of a 1993 state law allowing gambling on only riverboats.)
Mr. Vormbrock was honored as the winner of the first dollar paid out by the casino, at its grand opening in November.
“They really are to be complimented for hiring the friendliest staff I’ve ever seen,” he said. “I only live seven miles from the Caesars Indiana casino. But this is worth driving the extra 52 miles.”
At its Prohibition Era peak, French Lick boasted 13 casinos, all of them illegal. One of them was even owned by ’s Democratic Party boss, Thomas Taggart, a former mayor of Indianapolis and eventually a United States senator. Another was owned by the impresario and circus owner Ed Ballard, who was the state’s Republican Party chairman. “That’s how the casinos managed to stay open,” Mr. Flick said. “They were protected on both sides of the aisle at the Capitol.”
“It used to be said the road to the White House ran through French Lick,” said Ms. Kimmel. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman and Adlai E. Stevenson were among those who came courting the power brokers in the fabled smoke-filled rooms at the French Lick Springs Resort, prior to their presidential nominations.
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Other famous guests from the town’s glamour days included the Marx Brothers, Joe Louis, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.
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“My wife and I walked through there one Sunday afternoon after they opened up,” Mr. Flick said, referring to the Boat in the Moat, as French Lickers call the new casino, “and I said if old Tom Taggart could come back and see this, he wouldn’t know what to think.”
Taggart died in 1929, but then his son Tom Jr. took over. The Depression closed West Baden, but the other casinos in town operated until 1949. That year a new governor, Henry F. Schricker, who had won election as a reformer pledged to clean up French Lick, ordered a police raid on the town to shut down the gambling parlors.
The raid took place while French Lick was packed for Kentucky Derby weekend. Adlai Stevenson, then the governor of Illinois, was in town, as was Eddie Rickenbacker, the president of Eastern Airlines.
“We’ve put a lid on French Lick, once and for all,” Schricker said after the raid. “The gamblers have been told to straighten up and clear out. Indiana will never see the likes of them again.”
But this tiny town of around 2,000 proved tough to tame. Through the 1990s, many groups presented increasingly innovative ideas for legal casinos, including entities headed by Mr. and Donald Trump. Finally in 2003 Bill Cook, an Indianan who owns a company that makes medical devices and whose net worth is estimated at $3.2 billion, his wife, Gayle, and the Lauth Property Group of Indianapolis, won approval for the Boat in the Moat proposal.
The Cooks are also restoring French Lick’s status as a major destination. The historic Donald Ross-designed golf course a few miles west of town reopened for play last fall after an almost archaeological-caliber re-excavation and restoration.
The Donald Ross Course again looks much as it did in 1924, when it was known as the Hills Course and was the site of a United States Open won by Walter Hagen. A second 18-hole layout, designed by Pete Dye, is being built a mile north of the resort and is to open in spring 2008. An almost forgotten course designed by the legendary Tom Bendelow nearly a century ago — adjacent to the old trolley tracks between the two resorts — is also being revived and reconfigured for nine holes, along with indoor and outdoor practice facilities.
That casino trolley is just a memory now, as are the rail lines that once delivered Pullman-loads of hedonists from Louisville, Ky., 55 miles east, and Indianapolis, about 100 miles north. But the French Lick, West Baden & Southern Railway still operates a short sightseeing run from the resort’s historic depot, which also houses the Indiana Railway Museum.
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Transportation is the next challenge this area must overcome. The local private airstrip is large enough for small jets, but the nearest commercial airport is in Louisville. A superhighway to Indianapolis is planned but so far unbuilt. Two-lane roads must suffice for now.
The return of the big resorts could be a boon for French Lick and the surrounding Orange County, which has experienced hard times since the ’49 raid. The county’s days of having the state’s highest unemployment rate and lowest median household income appear to be ending. “We were slowly becoming a ghost town,” said Jerry Denbo, a French Lick native and state assemblyman who supports legalized gambling.
Now, of the more than 1,000 resort employees who have been hired, well over half are from Orange County.
Colorful names adorn towns throughout this part of southern Indiana — places like Beanblossom, Pumpkin Center, Santa Claus, Hindustan, Buddha and Gnaw Bone. But none has a history as colorful as French Lick’s, or, perhaps, a future as bright.
VISITOR INFORMATION
THE two closest major airports to French Lick are in Louisville, Ky., about an hour away, and Indianapolis, about two hours distant. Greenwood Aviation (317-605-9144; www.greenwood-aviation.com) offers a charter service from Indianapolis for $99 round trip to French Lick’s general aviation airstrip.
Rates for lodging at the 443-room French Lick Resort Casino (8670 West State Road 56; 812-936-9300; www.frenchlick.com) start at $139 a night for a king and climb to $1,200 a night for the luxurious Pool Suite; the smaller F. D. R., Governor’s and Walter Hagen suites go for slightly less.
The West Baden Springs Hotel has the same contact information, and uses the same address. Reservations are being accepted for June 1 and beyond, although the hotel’s 246 rooms might be open a week or two earlier. Room rates start at $229, or $350 for suites. Tours ($10) are offered of the lobby, the formal and the huge atrium. Big night out: the presidential-size Cook Suite, a multi-room mini-mansion that rents for $5,000 nightly.
A quaint alternative is the Beechwood Country Inn (8315 West State Route 56; 812-936-9012; www.beechwoodin.com), the former mansion of the gambling and circus tycoon Ed Ballard, who once owned the West Baden Springs Hotel and its casino. The inn has a restaurant and just six rooms, ranging from $129 for the maid’s quarters (better than it sounds) to $229 for the baronial Ballard Suite. Of special note: the Room, where Irving Berlin and Cole Porter each composed tunes. The inn’s owners, Tami and Ray Thompson, may also regale you with tales of other famous visitors, including Howard Hughes, Joe Louis and a gangster or two.
Would-be dudes and dudettes may prefer the Wilstem Guest Ranch (812-936-4484; www.wilstemguestranch.com), the Ballard family’s former cattle spread, six miles east on Route 150. (Watch out for slow-moving Amish buggies.) The ranch’s cabins have 12 units and the property is 1,100 acres, big enough for 30 miles of horse trails, a pond and a convention-size barn.
Correction: March 30, 2007 Larry Bird House French Lick
Casinos French Lick Indiana
An article on March 16 about the reopening of resorts at French Lick, Ind., misstated the name of a golf tournament that Walter Hagen won there in 1924. It was the PGA Championship, not the United States Open.