Not every mid-sized Rust Belt city can boast a century-old skyscraper that blends the elegance of Art Deco with the soaring grandeur of Gothic Revival, but Anderson, Indiana, can. Despite its troubled past, the striking structure once known as the Tower Hotel still rises high above the downtown streetscape. It’s home to apartments today.
Founded in 1823, Anderson has always been at least somewhat prosperous as the seat of Madison County. Still, its fortunes really picked up in the 1890s when natural gas was found in the area. The sudden influx of industry and investment turned Anderson into a boomtown practically overnight! The gas ran out around 1910, but its impact lasted: the boom brought new infrastructure and an able workforce, which helped pave the way for Anderson’s growing automotive industry.
Thanks to that foundation, Anderson stayed profitable for many years1. The city’s successes led A.T. Dye, Claude Jones, and J. Everette Jones -an investor associated with the Anderson Oil Company2– to form the Tower Hotel Company in 19303. The organization’s namesake, a $400,000 skyscraper, was planned to rise 130 feet into the sky. It would include a coffee shop and business room on the first floor; a dining room, dance hall, and reception area on the second; and 130 guest rooms in the top ten stories4.
The Tower Hotel Company turned to local architect Erwin F. Miller to design its new structure. Although he was born in Kansas and trained at the University of Illinois, Miller made his mark in Anderson after serving in World War I. Before the Tower, he’d already designed several notable buildings around town, like the 1926 Auto Hotel garage and the Delaware Court Apartments in 1927. He also helped shape education in the city through his designs for the Shadeland, Washington, and Franklin schools5.
Miller’s twelve-story Tower was designed with brick curtain walls surrounding a core of reinforced concrete and steel. Planned for the corner of West 11th and Jackson Streets in downtown Anderson, the east side featured seven bays, with the first two stories clad in limestone above a three-foot granite base. The central bays on the lower floors were set apart by elegant round-arched windows. Pointed towards 11th Street, the north followed a similar design, but included five bays instead of seven. The south and west facades of the building were purely functional in case the building needed expanded.
The upper floors of the skyscraper were finished in buff-colored brick, topped with a row of decorative terra cotta pinnacles. The building’s most distinctive features, though, were the central bays of the parapet, which showcased striking Gothic-style pointed-arch tracery. Similar tracery appeared on the recessed balconies at the corners of the twelfth floor6. Despite its height, the Tower’s use of brick and terra cotta helped it blend with other downtown Anderson landmarks, including the Auto Hotel, the Anderson Bank Building, and the Paramount Theatre.
The contract for the Tower was awarded on the very same day the eight-story Anderson Hotel opened its doors at Ninth and Meridian7. At the time, downtown Anderson already had no shortage of competition in the hotel business: the Grand had been modernized in 1924. A year later, the Stillwell underwent a similar renovation. Around the same time, the Columbia Hotel was remodeled as well8.
None of them could match the scale of the new Hotel Anderson. At $400,000 and eight stories tall, the building dominated the city’s hospitality landscape! Still, its owners, the Albert Pick Corporation, were threatened by the larger Tower project. They took it to court in 1930, hoping to stop a proposed bond issue in its tracks9!
Officials threw out the Pick lawsuit10, but legal drama isn’t what doomed the Tower Hotel- it was the Great Depression. By late 1930, the Tower Hotel Company was in financial freefall and declared bankruptcy before the building’s interior could be completed. The skyscraper was leased back to Albert Pick, but the company had no interest in letting it compete with their Hotel Anderson cash cow. As a result, the Tower never opened. Instead, Anderson’s tallest building stood silent, dark, and unfinished for nearly twenty years11.
The empty hotel was eventually acquired by the Church of God12, but Pick Hotels Corporation acquired it again in 194813. That year, the Chicago company announced plans to finish the landmark into a 69-unit apartment building. Indianapolis architects Allen and Kelly were responsible for the conversion, which featured a first-floor lobby with modern business rooms, a second floor full of offices, and ten stories of 2- and 3.5-room apartments14. Construction began in April 1949. The newly-christened “Tower Building” opened in 195015.
As the auto industry took off, so did Anderson. Between 1950 and 1970, the city’s population surged from 47,000 to nearly 71,000! Then, in 1971, the skyline changed: the First Savings and Loan Association of Madison County unveiled a sleek new ten-story headquarters that claimed the title of Anderson’s tallest building16. Fortunately, the Tower didn’t give up its crown so easily17: in a quirky act of one-upmanship, new owners added a two-story wooden penthouse with a mansard roof to give the old giant a boost with a little extra height18.
Unfortunately, Anderson’s fortunes fell with those of the domestic automotive industry. Still, life at the Tower carried on without much disruption until 1987, when a string of conflagrations brought everything to a halt. The culprit was 23-year-old Kenneth Smith, a resident of the 10th floor, who was arrested after setting seven separate fires in trash cans throughout the building. When firefighters arrived and began evacuating residents, they found Smith still inside near one of the fires19. The damage left the Tower uninhabitable, and just like that, its doors were shut.
The Tower didn’t bounce back overnight. Years of neglect left the building with serious water damage20, and for a while, it seemed like the landmark might be lost for good. In time, though, it got another chance. After standing empty for seven long years, the Tower was finally brought back to life in 2018 with thirty-one one-bedroom units and six two-bedroom apartments21. Today, it’s fully leased22.
I pass the Tower every day on my way home, and it never fails to catch my eye thanks to its striking architecture and powerful story. The skyscraper is resilient! It’s weathered bankruptcy, abandonment, fire, and flood, but the building continues to loom over downtown Anderson as a symbol of the city’s aspirations and survival. Other hotels have faded into memory, but the Tower endures. In a town that’s seen its fair share of boom and bust, the Tower is a reminder that some things are worth holding onto, even if it takes nearly a century to find their purpose.
Sources Cited
1 National Register of Historic Places, Tower Hotel, Anderson, Madison County, Indiana, National Register # 97001180.
2 (See footnote 1).
3 Building To Be Erected By Concern (1930, March 6). The Anderson Daily Bulletin. p. 1.
4 (See footnote 3).
5 Arthur B. Denning Architectural Records Collection (n.d.). Ball State University [Muncie]. Web. Retrieved June 15, 2025.
6 (See footnote 1).
7 Tower Hotel Contract Let (1930, May 18). The Anderson Herald. p. 7.
8 Good Hotels Make Anderson Efficient Host (1930, June 22). The Anderson Herald. p. 3.
9 Commission Puts O.K. On Hotel Bonds (1930, June 5). The Anderson Herald. p. 1.
10 (See footnote 9).
11 (See footnote 1).
12 (See footnote 1).
13 Tower Hotel (1948, April 7). The Anderson Herald. p. 4.
14 Tower Hotel Building Plan Is Advanced (1948, November 1). The Anderson Daily Bulletin. p. 1.
15 History Is Repeated In Tower Hotel Revamping (1950, January 29). The Anderson Herald. p. 33.
16 Open House Time (1972, January 16). The Anderson Herald. p. 49.
17 Bennett, S. Anderson/Madison County, Indiana history (2025, March 3). II can remember when they stuck that wooden penthouse on top of the Tower Apartments so it would still be considered [Comment]. Facebook.
18 (See footnote 1).
19 Anderson Man Charged In High-Rise Fire (1987, June 29). The Elwood Call-Leader. p. 6.
20 (see footnote 1).
21 de la Bastide, K. (2018, March 26). $18.6 million invested in downtown Anderson housing in 2017. The Indiana Economic Digest [Indianapolis]. Web. Retrieved June 17, 2025.
22 de la Bastide, K. (2025, May 7). ‘Second chances:’ New apartments opening in Anderson. The Anderson Herald Bulletin. Web. Retrieved June 17, 2025.
I remember walking by the place in the 80s, probably before the fires. I never guessed it had such an interesting history.
It sure does! It was fun to uncover.