Indiana Landmarks Honors Gayle Cook’s Legacy as a Preservation Visionary

Courtesy photo

The following statement was sent to the Bloomingtonian:

“We are deeply saddened by Gayle Cook’s passing. She was an enthusiastic and generous advocate for preservation,” says Brad Ward, president of Indiana Landmarks. “Beyond the sheer number of properties they’ve restored around the state, Gayle and her family have elevated preservation in a very public way as both a social good and a practical economic activity.”

A list of the places saved by Gayle Cook, her late husband Bill, and son Carl reads like a greatest hits of Indiana architecture: scores of structures including the Monroe County Courthouse; Beck’s Mill in Salem; Cedar Farm, a plantation house on the Ohio River; university buildings; downtown anchors; and two huge turn-of the-century hotels.

Saving places with significant history and one-of-a-kind architecture sparked the Cooks’ entrée into preservation in the 1970s, including one of their first preservation projects: the 1834 Colonel William Jones House in Gentryville, built for Abraham Lincoln’s merchant employer.

As they saw jobs and business leaving downtown Bloomington—where the Cook family lives and maintains headquarters for their international medical device company—they also saw preservation as good business and an opportunity to revitalize downtown by giving new purpose to abandoned and underutilized buildings. They began in 1976 with the 1850 James Cochran House on Rogers Street, renovating it as offices for the insurance division of their company. Gayle envisioned another building, a historic warehouse, as a downtown anchor and repurposed it as Bloomington Antique Mall. Other restorations followed: a railroad depot, an eight-story former hotel, the vacant J.C. Penney building, and the linked buildings that comprise the south side of the courthouse square.

When the Monroe County Courthouse was threatened, Gayle and a small group organized to defeat the demolition proposal. She remembered seeing murals beneath the building’s domed atrium while visiting the courthouse for jury duty years earlier, but the deteriorated artworks had been removed and their location was a mystery—until Gayle and Bill discovered the canvases rolled up in a former elementary school they’d recently purchased. Gayle, an artist herself, researched and underwrote restoration and reinstallation of the long-hidden murals.

In the 1990s, the Cooks began restoring West Baden Springs Hotel, a collapsing National Historic Landmark in southern Indiana, then added the even larger National Register-listed French Lick Springs Hotel a mile away. They invested $560 million, transforming the two turn-of the-century hotels and reviving the economy of the entire region. 

In 2007, Indiana Landmarks created the Cook Cup for Outstanding Restoration, presenting the inaugural prize to the award’s namesake family in honor of its transformation of the West Baden and French Lick Springs hotels in southern Indiana. Indiana Landmarks continues to award the Cook Cup annually to property owners who follow the highest standards of restoration in transforming a significant historic building, with positive impact on the neighborhood or community. Bill and Gayle’s son, Carl, leads selection of the winning project each year and presents the prize at Indiana Landmarks’ annual award ceremony.

In 2009, Gayle and Bill undertook their last preservation project together before his death: restoring the former Central Avenue Methodist Church in Indianapolis, a vacant domed landmark in the city’s historic Old Northside neighborhood. The Cooks spent $16 million to convert the church into a state-of-the-art headquarters for Indiana Landmarks.

In recognition of more than 40 years of advocacy and direct work to save important historic places, in 2021 Indiana Landmarks’ named Gayle Cook winner of the organization’s Williamson Prize for outstanding leadership in historic preservation.

“We are grateful beyond measure for the Cook family’s ongoing support and extraordinary commitment to preservation,” says Ward. “We will miss Gayle’s warm friendship, but we take comfort knowing that her legacy will live on for generations to enjoy.”

The post Indiana Landmarks Honors Gayle Cook’s Legacy as a Preservation Visionary first appeared on The Bloomingtonian.