 |
| French Lick Resort historian Jeff Lane leads the way through the tunnel at French Lick Springs Hotel, which connects the lower lobby area to Pluto's Alley and the pizzeria. During 2006 construction to the hotel, crews hand-dug the original Indiana limestone foundation to convert a former crawl space into a walkable passage. |
We’re venturing into some hard spots for the second
installment of A Walk with the Historian.
Last week, French Lick Resort historian Jeff Lane took us through
the tile floor and Taggart Desk in the first round of this series, highlighting
the historic accents of French Lick Springs Hotel that you might not know
about. Today, we’re headed underground to get things started.
Lower-level tunnel
The newest part of French Lick Springs Hotel arrived more
than a decade ago during the facility’s massive renovation: a tunnel that
connects the lower lobby area to Pluto’s Alley and the pizzeria. Bit by bit
over the years, it’s expanded in area and access.
Formerly a crawl space, it grew into a walkway to allow for
convenience for both guests and hotel associates. It wasn’t an easy redo. Five
months of hand digging was required, and concrete was poured once each 4-foot
section was carved out to ensure stability while extending the foundation.
The passage is only a few feet wide, so if you extend both hands
out to either side, you can get a feel for a pretty old relic.
“One unique feature is guests can actually see and touch,
which I find amazing, the foundation from the Indiana limestone of the original
Windsor Hotel that stood on this property,” Lane says.
“This is as close as we can come to realizing these are the
foundation stones of that first hotel, so you can see where it actually was
located. And of course it was a very small building. The first hotel was built
on this property by William Bowles in 1845, and these could be stones from that
hotel as well. It’s hard to say. Because they are native limestone and they
have probably hand-hewn, and because of their shape — they’re not just going
here and there — they do have a purpose and (pattern with) square/rectangular
pieces.
“It’s just fascinating that guests can actually see those
things that they normally wouldn’t expect to see,” Lane continues. “And that’s
a lot of fun.”
And, just to clarify: Yes, you can walk through there. Dark
and shrouded, the passageway does have a feel for being an off-limits locale where
you’re not allowed to venture — and that was its intent initially, to be
accessible only by employees. Originally, doors were placed at each end of the
tunnel as well. But wanting it to be open for everyone to see, the tunnel was
soon open to everyone.
Says Lane: “It was so deep and it was so hidden for so many
years, and finally it was decided that it needed to be shown. And we’re so
happy that it was.”
Columns: elegance with a purpose
Pop quiz: Those enormous columns festooning the hotel lobby.
What are they made of?
“If a person were to look at one of those columns, they
would immediately think it’s marble,” Lane says. “And of course it’s made to
look like marble. But they’re not marble.”
If you answered “scagliola,” then give yourself a gold star.
It’s a plaster material that’s highly sanded and polished, and it originated in
Italy in the 1500s and 1600s as a substitute for ornamental marble patterns.
The scagliola (pronounced scal-ee-o-luh, with a hard “A”
sound and a silent G) exists as a feature that’s not merely decorative. Lane
guesses the scagliola columns were installed somewhere between 1910 and 1915,
after French Lick Springs Hotel had been open a few years. As the hotel
underwent expansions from its more original modest structure, the scagliola
columns arrived as a reinforcement.
“We have early photographs showing no columns on the first
floor. So as time went on, as different levels were added to the upper floors
of the building, more support was needed. And so that is why the columns were
placed here in the lobby, to act as support. That’s really why we have them,”
Lane says.
Over the years, the columns underwent a facelift. Not
necessarily for the better.
Over time, about nine layers of paint covered the columns. During
French Lick Springs Hotel’s massive renovations in the mid-2000s, the wish was
to restore the columns to their original grandeur. And it’s a specialty
vocation like none other to understand scagliola, which achieves its veined,
ornamental look by running silk through the plasterwork.
 |
| Above two photos show renovation in the mid-2000s to the scagliola columns in the lobby. |
Conrad Schmitt Inc., the contractor responsible for recreating the hotel’s ornate finishings, had a scagliola expert in Dennis Newhart, who was one of six people in the entire country who understood the technique as he oversaw the column reconstruction work.
“There are very few artists in the entire world who know how
to do that properly. We were fortunate, again, to have the right people doing
the job. Because some of those were in disrepair. And, I mean, they just look
like the day they were put up originally.”
And Lane summed it up best as he gazed around at the couple
dozen columns commanding a striking presence in the lobby: “Who doesn’t love a
column?” he says.
“It just makes it look richer … because you are, you’re in a
special place here.”