If you follow French Lick Resort on Facebook, you probably recognize the name from the comment section.
She’ll leave a “heart” on anything and everything related to West Baden Springs Hotel. She talks about it to everyone. Friends. Strangers.
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| Judith Dunlap's dorm room at Northwood Institute, which is now a third-floor guestroom at West Baden Springs Hotel. |
“It is one of my favorite subjects,” she says of West Baden
Springs Hotel. When she’s here visiting the resort and gets on one of her West
Baden kicks, “I start talking about the dome my hubby just goes to the casino,”
Judith jokes.
There’s a good reason for the love and obsession. “Judy” as she was better known to friends back then, lived and attended classes at the dome from 1976-78 when Northwood Institute inhabited the hotel prior to its restoration. And she’s got plenty of stories to share about her time there….
“That’s the first time we drove by the dome. My sister and I
were in the back of our old station wagon and we couldn’t even see how massive
(the hotel) was. It was when the Jesuits were there and my parents said we
couldn’t stop. So I didn’t get to see it see it, but that was the first time I
heard about it.
In 1974, our high school had their prom there and I was just
a sophomore but I got to come. When we got here and started walking up, I was
just in awe. I thought it was the grandest structure. A lot of people talk about
how run down it was when Northwood was there; of course it didn’t have the
grand towers and everything. But to me, seeing something like that in your own
state and so close to where you live, ‘wow this is really cool.’ When we walked
into the dome I was so busy looking up, and the floor was buckled. I actually tripped
and almost fell flat on my face but my date caught me, thank goodness. There
was a guy in his underwear standing in one of the balconies on the fourth floor,
so that was kind of a sight to see. But then we got to the dining room and that
was incredible … I saw the veranda and I could imagine walking around holding
hands on that beautiful veranda. I just thought it was so grand. I always tell
people I didn’t fall in love with my date that night, but I fell in love with
the dome that night.”
Judith and husband Kerry at the dome, then and now.
Later in high school, a weekend visit to see a friend at
Northwood turned into meeting her future husband:
“I was up on the second landing where you first come in from
the sunken gardens, and that was the place people would hang out because you
could kind of sit and watch everybody. I see this guy walking
across the atrium floor, and he’s got this long hair, I said ‘he’s really cute.’
Later we’re sitting in the middle of the atrium and this guy comes up with a
friend and asks if we want to go up to Third Cabin, people used to party and
hang out up there. He was a complete gentleman … and that’s my husband who I’ve
been married to for 44 years now. That’s how I saw him, and I decided college
life wouldn’t be so bad, and I went home and told my parents I wanted to enroll
at Northwood.”
The Northwood Institute library
Attending classes in the old hotel building wasn’t too
much of a stretch, because the Jesuits inhabited it before Northwood and had
already converted it for educational use:
“Most of our classrooms were over the old garage for the
hotel, because the Jesuits had already turned them into classrooms. The one
speech class I took was in the old ballroom (on the second floor) above the
dining room. And I had one poly sci class on the first floor where the
professors and dean had their offices. When you came in from the sunken
gardens, a room to the right was our lounge and it had a small TV sitting up on
a shelf. It was when Saturday Night Live was really new, and on Saturday nights
you’d have all the students crammed into this little lounge.”
“Where our (dorm) room was, when you come in the sunken
gardens entrance, go up the stairs and you round the corner to the left and it’s
right there. I got to stay in my room twice — I requested it because it was
easy to find.
We had the perfect view – we could see the fireplace where all the kids hung out, we could see who was walking to the dining room … we had the best view all around to see what was going on.”
The dining room, which is now Sinclair's Restaurant.
The 2nd and 3rd floors housed dorm rooms
that were (mostly) separated:
The girls were on one half of the 2nd and 3rd
floors, over on the sunken garden side, and the guys were on the other half on
the 2nd and 3rd floors. That’s how they divided us up,
and at night they would shut the fire doors you had to have a key to get on
your floor after 11:00. Of course, that didn’t keep people from sneaking in and
out. … There was one room that everyone always wanted. You could crawl out the
window to the top of the roof over the veranda, and you could walk on the top
of the roof and climb into a lounge that was on the third floor. It was used
quite a bit to sneak people in and out. It was also a perfect place to
sunbathe.”
And anything above the third floor was supposed to be off
limits unless you had a reason to be there:
My husband was one who went exploring. He and one of his
buddies found a door with a padlock on it. He peeked through the transom and
there was a statue – I think it was the statue of Jesus that used to be out in
the sunken gardens (during the Jesuit era). He got down and said ‘there’s something or someone in there, but I’m not
sure what it is.’”
Chilly memories from the Northwood yearbook.
The winter of 1976-77 was infamously chilly inside the
dome:
“The old boiler went out and so we had no heat at all. It
was freezing in that building. You had no water heater to heat up your water,
so we were eating off paper plates, and then you took cold showers. Just going
in to use the restroom on the cold seat … you didn’t want to go, and you definitely
didn’t want to take a shower but you still had to. I can still remember taking
cold water and splashing it on you as fast as you can. We were literally
sleeping in our coats and gloves and hats. I had an old bonnet hair dryer, and
I stuck the hose of the dryer under my covers and warmed up my bed. The bad
thing was, it made it so warm and toasty I never wanted to get out of bed. Kerry’s
room was on the second floor right by the fireplace, and his room was so toasty.
“You had to go up to the sixth floor, and then there was a
little door you could climb out and you’d be on top of the roof, then you’d
walk around to a ladder and climb on top of the dome. My friend and I were
afraid of heights … but we said ‘do we want to be known as the only students
who never climbed to the top of the dome?’ So we waited until spring and went
to one of the RAs who was really cool and asked if he’d take us up there. When
we got out there and I saw the ladder I’m like, ‘what did I get myself into?’ But
we went up there to the very top, and I wish I had done it sooner. Some people went up on top of the dome at night and they talked about the stars and the moon and how cool it looked.
I’m sure when you were up there it looked like you could just reach out and
touch them.”
The car show in the atrium was an annual tradition in the Northwood days.
Even after Judith graduated from Northwood and moved a
few hours away, she never really left:
I was here for when the towers came back in 1998. I told my husband, ‘all I want for our anniversary is I want to sit in the gardens and I want to watch those towers come back.’ It was unbelievable. I sat there taking pictures and had tears streaming down my face. It was just so cool to see it.”
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| A garden study session by the Apollo Spring House during the Northwood days. |
I say it all the
time, the Cook family surpassed my wildest dreams (in renovating the hotel). As much as I dreamed about
how grand I thought it would look … they totally blew my mind going into all
the little details and trying to (restore) everything the way it used to look
like.”