Terre Haute House - Notable People in The History of The Terre Haute House

Notable People in The History of The Terre Haute House

• Chauncey Rose. Early Terre Haute resident who, in 1831, purchased 320 acres (1.3 km2) on both sides of what is now the city's Wabash Avenue. Rose later built the first hotel on that land, the Prairie House, in 1837–38, and operated it until 1841. The hotel reopened in 1849, was renamed the Terre Haute House in 1855, and sold to the Terre Haute Hotel Co. (formed by a group of local businessmen) in 1866. Rose Polytechnic Institute (today known as Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology) was named in his honor.
• William B. Hawkins. Hawkins purchased the Terre Haute House from the Terre Haute Hotel Co. in 1872.
• William B. Tuell and George F. Ripley. These gentlemen purchased the hotel from Hawkins in 1875. Ripley managed the hotel until 1878.
• Charles Baur. Baur leased the hotel in 1884 and installed electric lights in all of its rooms, making the Terre Haute House the first hotel in the world to be so equipped, in 1886.
• William Putnam Ijams. With partners Charles and Jacob Baur, Ijams formed a corporation to purchase the Terre Haute House property in 1888. Ijams later became a partner in the Watson-Beggs Co., which purchased the hotel in 1901.
• Crawford Fairbanks. Fairbanks, a noted Terre Haute resident, purchased the hotel from Watson-Beggs in the early 1900s. At one point, he promised to build a new, grand hotel on the site. He would die in 1924 without having done so, but his heirs followed up on his promise in 1927.
• Anton "Tony" Hulman, Jr.. A prominent Terre Haute industrialist, owner of Hulman & Co., manufacturers of baking powder, coffee and other grocery items, and president of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway; Hulman purchased the hotel in 1959 and closed it in 1970 following several years of a steady decline in business.
• Richard Van Allen. Manager of the hotel during the Hulman years. Van Allen was charged with the job of telling the hotel's employees that the hotel would close.
• P. Pete Chalos. Mayor of Terre Haute from 1980 to 1996. Chalos threatened in 1984 to condemn the Terre Haute House if the Hulman family refused to sell it, and later instigated a failed Terre Haute House revival effort headed by Don Daseke (see entry below).
• Joseph Walesky. The president of Indianapolis-based Metropolitan Management Specialists, Inc., Walesky negotiated unsuccessfully to buy the hotel property in 1986.
• Stephen Cornell. In 1987 and continuing into 1988, Cornell negotiated on behalf of Chicago-based Halcor Realty & Development Co. and Anderson Realty Investment Co. to purchase and restore the hotel but was not able to secure financing.
• Don Daseke. Daseke, a Dallas, Texas, real estate developer and chairman of The Walden Group, worked with little success (as had others before him) to put together a package to purchase, renovate and reopen the Terre Haute House as a Radisson property in the mid-1990s.
• Kevin Burke. Mayor of Terre Haute from 2004 to 2008. Burke promised in his election campaign to "settle the issue" of the Terre Haute House. While he did indeed "settle the issue," he would be defeated - narrowly - in his 2007 bid for re-election, and later sued his successor, Duke Bennett, claiming Bennett was ineligible to run for office. The case wound its way through Indiana's courts until finally being decided in Bennett's favor in June 2009.
• Greg Gibson. Gibson, a Terre Haute businessman and developer, purchased the Terre Haute House and adjacent Bement-Rea and Fort Harrison Savings & Loan buildings from the Hulman family and had them demolished for redevelopment in 2005.
• Timothy J. Dora. Tim Dora, whose Fishers, Indiana-based Dora Hotel Company, LLC operates hotels across Indiana, made Terre Haute the next city served by their hotels when the new Hilton Garden Inn Terre Haute was completed on the former Terre Haute House/Fort Harrison S&L/Bement-Rea site in 2007. The company added a second Terre Haute hotel downtown, and a third hotel on the city's south side near I-70 and U.S. 41.