Terre Haute House

The Terre Haute House was a historic former hotel located in downtown Terre Haute, Indiana, USA, that was demolished despite numerous efforts to preserve it. The hotel was replaced by a Hilton Garden Inn, which opened in 2007.

Since being closed in 1970, the Terre Haute House was considered by some as a faded reminder of Terre Haute's somewhat sordid past as a midwestern “Sin City” and, in the years since its closure, it came to be viewed by some in the city as an impediment to downtown revitalization. It was not always looked upon with such scorn — it was once the social center of the city, the site of numerous formal dances, conventions, parties and other events.

The Renaissance Revival-style 10-story building, located on the northeast corner of Seventh Street and Wabash Avenue (U.S. Highway 40), was the pinnacle of high-class accommodations in its heyday, from the 1920s to the 1950s, a time when Terre Haute's well-known illegal gambling operations and other businesses of ill repute brought the highest of the high rollers to town.

The first Terre Haute House was built by prominent early Terre Hautean Chauncey Rose, who called it “The Prairie House” because it was located “in the prairie” several blocks east of the village. Rose operated this original hotel from 1838 to 1841. When federal funding for continued construction of the National Road dried up in 1840 and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who supervised construction of the highway, departed the community, the hotel was closed. In the meantime, historical information seems to indicate that the hotel was turned into a boarding house.

With the anticipated opening of the Wabash and Erie Canal at Terre Haute in 1849, Rose reopened the hotel that year and, in 1855, renamed it “The Terre Haute House.” He also added a fourth floor of guest rooms at that time.

Rose, who by 1866 was tired of the hotel business, considered donating the property for educational purposes. This didn't sit well with some members of the local business community, so they formed the Terre Haute Hotel Co. and purchased the Terre Haute House from Rose.

Two more ownership changes transpired in the 1870s. In late 1888, Charles Baur, brother of Jacob Baur, founder of Liquid Carbonics Manufacturing Company which managed the hotel after the second Terre Haute Hotel Company acquired it from the Estate of William Tuell in March 1888, leased the hotel.

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