Option 1
Tabletop transparent OLED
Compact display object with rounded acrylic shroud and glowing perimeter. One to two personas. Lowest installation burden.
Best use
Museum counter, visitor center, hotel desk, donor preview.
← Echoes Projects
United States, Springs Valley, Indiana
Echoes of French Lick / West Baden
A site-specific conversational heritage installation for the Springs Valley. Visitors speak with the layered voices of the place: hotel workers, spring-water marketers, Black baseball players, rail workers, preservation guides, resort builders.
Status
Concept. Open to host partner and pilot conversations.
Vision
French Lick and West Baden are resort towns, yes, but also mineral-water towns, railroad towns, labor towns, Black community towns, basketball towns, circus towns, preservation towns, and hospitality towns.
The strongest version of an Echoes installation here should not reduce the valley to luxury nostalgia, gangster lore, or celebrity tourism. It should hold glamour and labor together.
Why French Lick / West Baden
The valley has unusually strong material for conversational heritage.
• Mineral springs and health tourism
• Pluto Water and Sprudel Water as national and local brands
• The rivalry and relationship between French Lick Springs Hotel and West Baden Springs Hotel
• The West Baden dome and its preservation story
• Rail arrival, trolley movement, and resort infrastructure
• Hotel labor: kitchens, maids, porters, bell staff, nannies, and spa workers
• A significant Black community shaped by resort labor and segregation
• The First Baptist (Colored) Church and parallel Black institutions
• The West Baden Sprudels and French Lick Plutos baseball teams
• Circus winter quarters and Ed Ballard's entertainment world
• Springs Valley basketball memory
• Restoration after near-collapse, the Indiana Landmarks / Cook family preservation story
Installation form options
Four tiers from tabletop pilot to permanent civic monolith. The first version is most likely a tabletop or foyer object, not the full architectural commission.
Option 2
Foyer / lobby display
Larger framed screen or transparent OLED with substantial cabinet. Finishes drawn from Springs Valley material cues.
Best use
French Lick West Baden Museum, resort lobby, conference area.
Option 3
Holographic array
Volumetric display with glass enclosure. Two to four personas. Visual presence between interactions.
Best use
Major hotel interior, civic interior, museum gallery, launch installation.
Option 4
Indiana limestone monolith
Custom architectural object adapted from the Indiana monolith: Indiana limestone, French Lick brick, West Baden dome geometry, springhouse iconography. Permanent commission.
Best use
Outdoor or semi-outdoor civic / resort site, resort-campus landmark, visitor arrival point.
Proposed persona roster
The first version should avoid celebrity bait and start with voices that reveal the structure of the place.
Core proof of concept
Yarmouth Wigginton, springhouse attendant voice
Tied to the Black community, the mineral spring, and the literal place of visitor encounter. Speaks about the spring, visitors, work, race, and how health tourism looked from the service side.
Waddy House cook or clerk
Composite voice connected to Black lodging, hospitality, segregation, visiting performers, and the labor behind resort culture. Keeps the project from becoming only a glamour story.
Sprudels / Plutos baseball player-worker
Tied to the West Baden Sprudels and French Lick Plutos. Hotel work, Black baseball, competition, and local pride.
Restoration carpenter or preservation guide
Present-tense bridge figure. Speaks about saving the buildings, reading damaged materials, and the difference between restoration and nostalgia.
Strong second-phase voices
Lee W. Sinclair
Owner and rebuilder of West Baden after the 1901 fire. Ambition, engineering, spectacle, and the dome.
Thomas Taggart
French Lick developer and political figure. Pluto Water, expansion, marketing, civic influence, the resort as business machine.
Hotel kitchen worker
Composite labor voice. Coal ovens, breakfast service, laundry, uniforms, the invisible scale of hotel operation.
Railroad / trolley worker
The valley's connection to national tourism. Arrival, movement between hotels, the logistics behind leisure.
Larry Bird, Al Capone folklore, and Jim Colosimo are intentionally not first-phase personas. Springs Valley basketball memory and local rumor are present in the work, but as voices and questions rather than as headline characters.
Idle state: material sources
The idle layer is regionally authored. Between conversations, the installation remains visually alive through abstract motion drawn from the place itself.
Sulfur spring waterLimestone dustFrench Lick brick colorWest Baden dome lightMosaic tileRail lines and depot signageHotel paper, menus, labels, advertisementsPluto and Sprudel graphic languageHotel corridors and service spacesBasketball court varnish and gym light
Recommended first pilot
A tabletop or foyer installation with four voices: the springhouse attendant, the Waddy House cook or clerk, the Sprudels / Plutos player-worker, and the restoration carpenter.
This keeps cost and risk manageable, avoids reliance on celebrity or gangster lore, and gives visitors a range of tones (intimate, public, athletic, material, civic) while creating documentation for a later, larger commission.