Historic Auburn Hotel Has a Colorful Past

On the southwest corner of the town square in Auburn, Indiana is a landmark - a large, old hotel. Construction began in the 1860s, and by the 1870s it was called the Swineford House, offering up 36 guest rooms. One report I read said that it had primarily been built for traveling salesmen. By 1919 it was remodeled into the Auburn Hotel. Auburn started booming with its carriage and then automobile factories, and this hotel developed a reputation of being one of Indiana's finest.

Th Historic Auburn Hotel is open for business today, but it gets most of its occupancy during the annual Auburn Cord Duesenberg festival, held Labor Day weekend. At a recent downtown business event, I was surprised to learn the hotel is now open for business year-round, and some of the customers are regulars with extended stay deals, rather than the conventional nightly arrangements.

Rooms in the hotel look much like they would have in the 1920s, 30s and 40s. There are some cracks in the walls; much of the furniture and rugs are antiques, and not all the rooms have bathrooms or showers. But even with all that being said, the place has a wonderful charm. I was fascinated to see it. It looked like a perfect, authentic set for an old movie. I could have roamed the halls of the three floors and peeked in doors for hours.

While there, a young manager gave me a tour, and showed me a typical corner room, with a birds eye view of the downtown square. He then asked me if I knew the history of the criminal John Dillinger in Auburn, and I told him I did not. He then told me a gripping tale which I will recount for you here.

It seems as though some of Dillinger's associates rented that very corner room, and spent nearly a week spying on the town, watching the comings and goings at the local police station which was easily visible down the block. Dillinger, who had been born in Indianapolis, was locked up in a jail in Lima, Ohio. Apparently, some of JD's gang broke him out of said jail by posing as Indiana State Troopers. The bunch then hightailed it back to Auburn. JD's prison breakout was on October 11, 1933.

By having watched the Auburn Police Station in secret, the henchmen knew the schedules, habits, comings and goings of the local officers. On October 14, the gang knew just when to try to catch the Auburn police unaware. They busted into the station, held up the deputies at gunpoint, and forced them into a jail cell. They then got the keys to the arsenal and took bullet-proof vests, a Tommy gun (machine gun), about eight rifles and revolvers, and a lot of ammunition.

Here I had trouble collaborating the details of the rest of the story, but I will tell it the way the hotel manager told it to me. At this point, JD and his gang ran around Auburn, robbing banks and otherwise causing mayhem before leaving town. JD had a 'Robin Hood' reputation at the time, and may have gone into a poorer section of Auburn to dump a bag a cash for the delighted citizens there. Then, according to the story I was told, most of the gang members took off for Chicago in a car, while JD surreptitiously made his way north through Indiana and then Michigan by hitchhiking on his own.

From Michigan, he took a ferry to Wisconsin, and eventually showed up in Chicago. Of course, a year later, he was killed in the famous shoot-out at the movie theatre in Illinois. Thus ended the career of JD, and so ends my story. My next blog post will be another story about delightful Auburn, Indiana - so stay tuned.