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| Lee Sinclair (left) and Thomas Taggart (right) were the respective owners of West Baden and French Lick Springs Hotels in the early 20th Century, and they also placed aside their political differences in the name of keeping the gambling business flourishing in the area. |
Feeling exasperated by another campaign season? If so, take
heart — you’re less than two weeks away from being clear of all those political
ads and the rest of the nonstop election chatter. And to get you through in the
meantime, we’ve got a story about bipartisan cooperation from the early days of
French Lick Resort that everyone can get behind.
This comes from the era when French Lick Springs Hotel and
West Baden Springs Hotel were competing against each other. (Whereas now
they’re united in the happy little French Lick Resort family.) Back then, the
fact they were competing hotels was amplified by the fact that the men who
owned them were also from opposite ends of the political spectrum. The two
properties even tended to run red or blue throughout different eras of
ownership.
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| The hotel lobbies at French Lick (above) and West Baden (below) in the old days. |
French Lick Springs Hotel was more left-leaning, opened in
1845 by William Bowles (a Southern Dixiecrat) and later owned by Thomas Taggart
— a former Indianapolis mayor, state senator, and chairman of the Democratic
Party National Committee from 1904-08. Up the road, West Baden Springs Hotel
tilted toward the right. Owner Lee Sinclair was a staunch Republican Party
supporter, member of the Grand Army of the Republic, and even elected to the
Indiana House of Representatives in 1886 — the only Republican candidate who
was elected in Washington County that year, in fact.
But for two men with contrasting ideologies and alpha hotels
both vying to be the biggest attraction in town, Taggart and Sinclair shared
something.
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| Thomas Taggart lived a posh life as one of the most influential politicians of the era locally and nationally. |
They found some common ground in the lucrative gambling
establishments that were scattered throughout town back in the day — specifically,
overlooking them and keeping them going. Gambling existed illegally but openly
here from about 1890 through 1949, and it was a major reason why guests
traveled from near and far to keep Taggart and Sinclair’s hotels full. The two
hotels were a little like Macy’s and Nieman Marcus, to borrow a more modern
analogy. You want their customers, but you also need the competitor to thrive
so the whole mall thrives.
It was a big enough business that more than a dozen gaming
establishments operated here. Other resorts around
the country featured gambling. But what made it different here was the widespread
scope of it, its impact on the culture and economy of the area, and the
influence of the powerful people who provided cover for it.
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| The Elite Cafe in French Lick was one of several establishments that operated under the guise of being a restaurant or hotel, while illegal gambling took place in the side rooms. |
Taggart wasn’t just well-known locally: “Until the Kennedys
took off, Taggart was the man for
Democratic politics in the nation,” said Dan Frotscher of Indiana Landmarks,
which conducts the historical tours today at the hotels. And while Sinclair
wasn’t as involved politically, he was regarded as the most economically
powerful person in the Springs Valley at the time, owning everything from grain
mills to a circus to rental properties and financial institutions — as well as
a few of the underground casinos. Taggart could’ve easily used his political connections
to take down Sinclair’s casinos, but they stayed up and running.
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| Taggart (pictured above with his family) built a palatial home that still stands and is now The Pete Dye Mansion that operates as the clubhouse for The Pete Dye Course. |
Keep in mind Taggart and Sinclair weren’t best buds
personally. They had squabbled when Sinclair was in the process of rebuilding
West Baden Springs Hotel after a fire and offered to sell his property to Taggart,
who at the time was considering building a new resort or expanding his own
hotel. But Taggart refused to buy out Sinclair at his asking price. A feud
ensued.
“At some point, Mr. Taggart and Mr. Sinclair would bury the
hatchet and realize for business reasons they had to cooperate — again to keep
the gaming in here,” Dan said.
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| Sinclair's family, including his daughter Lillian (second from right), operated West Baden Springs Hotel through 1923. |
And so it continued for decades. The Sinclair family
eventually sold West Baden Springs Hotel in 1923, and it’s probably not a
coincidence that just 2½ years after the Taggart family got out of the hotel
business and left town, all the casinos were raided and shut down by state
authorities in 1949.
Sure, it was all in the name of satisfying certain
interests. But it’s a pretty powerful example of how a pair of business and
political rivals (mostly) coexisted peacefully for years, and what can be
accomplished through cooperation on both sides of the aisle.