part of town to be far more accessible and inviting than downtown. More modern hotels and motels sprang up in that area along U.S. 41, including a large Holiday Inn that opened in 1962. With all of this competition, Terre Haute's downtown area, like so many others across the country, spiraled into a rapid decline. The Terre Haute House was not spared the indignities of this decline. The old hotel lost much of its business to the newer hotels and motels, and when the traveling public stopped coming with their former regularity, the hotel became unprofitable. According to Richard Van Allen, who managed the hotel at the time, Hulman tried to keep the hotel open despite the fact that he lost a great deal of money in doing so. Van Allen told the Tribune-Star in 1997 that, toward the end, Hulman sold food at cost and allowed local civic groups to meet in the hotel for free, just to keep people coming in. On June 18, 1970, Van Allen gathered the hotel staff in the Prairie Room and informed them that the Terre Haute House would close within two weeks. Exactly 42 years and two days after it opened, the Terre Haute House closed to guests on July 4, 1970. Even though the hotel closed, several businesses remained in the building following its closure, evidently in hopes that the hotel would eventually reopen. When that didn't happen, the tenants simply went out of business or moved elsewhere. The last holdout, World Wide Travel Service, moved out of the hotel to a location on Ohio Street (one block south of the hotel) in the fall of 1980. Attempts at revival In the 35 years between the Terre Haute House's closing and the start of demolition, numerous developers, along with at least two Terre Haute mayors, advanced plans to either renovate and reopen the hotel or demolish it and redevelop the land. Much to the chagrin of local residents, nothing ever got off the ground, and some residents and, most notably, a number of city officials eventually came to see the dilapidated hotel as the ultimate symbol of downtown Terre Haute's stagnation. In March 1984, then-Terre Haute mayor P. Pete Chalos threatened to condemn the hotel property in an attempt to force the Hulman family into selling it. This didn't work, but it did seem to spur interest among developers, who began