Along with a contemporary spa and a 51,000 square foot casino, there are riding stables and extensive trails, swimming pools, bowling, fine dining, and extensive conference space. It’s not easy making the inside of a glass spaceship feel like home, but they manage it here. A gloriously expansive main rotunda at the 243-room West Baden Springs Hotel next door embodies the sensibility of a modernist Grand Hotel. Guests today lounge in the comfort of a living museum that features Italianate loggia and flooring in the 443-room French Lick Springs Hotel. The work included a complete, meticulous restoration of the Ross course and building the brand new Dye Course. A $600 million renovation plan lifted the entire resort from years of neglect. The Depression era saw the resort slide into a serious decline, where it remained for many decades until being rescued by new ownership, the Cook group LLC. The postwar World War I era saw the property in its heyday, with a regular trade boosted by “businessmen” from the Chicago Prohibition underworld and the leadership of the Democratic Party, which met regularly at French Lick because the owner, Tom Taggart, was not only mayor of Indianapolis but chairman of the national party. An adjoining resort, the West Baden Springs Hotel, sported the world’s largest domed roof – surpassed only by the Houston Astrodome in 1965.Ī direct train line from Chicago brought guests right to the doors of the resort. But the “Road to Wellville” needed more than the curative powers of sulfur water, which is why they added a golf course in 1907 by Tom Bendelow, nine holes of which remain today, named Valley Links, in low-lying ground adjoining the hotel. The resort sprang up in 1845 as a restorative spa.

It’s also to see how history renews itself to create an enchanting contemporary experience. To visit French Lick is not only to commemorate great golf course design. The result is a rollicking layout that forever memorializes his craft.

In 2009, longtime Indiana resident Pete Dye plied one of the most intense, even exaggerated versions of his trademark earth sculpting skills. The resort’s Donald Ross Course dates from 1917 and was home to the 1924 PGA Championship, won by Walter Hagen. Here’s what’s in store:įrench Lick Resort in south-central Indiana is rightly famous for its golf, thanks to two layouts that span the last century of the game. Klein will be taking folks on a guided tour of one of the country’s most compelling golf resorts, French Lick in Indiana. On June 17-19, architecture expert Bradley S.

French lick casino owner