Paul Dresser - Terre Haute, IN
Posted by: 
vhasler
N 39° 27.394 W 087° 25.019
16S E 464126 N 4367527
Composer of the Indiana state song "On the Banks of the Wabash” was born in this modest home in 1859.
Waymark Code: WM7C79
Location: Indiana, United States
Date Posted: 10/04/2009
Views: 11
From the Vigo Historical Society (second link below), we discover:
Paul was born in Terre Haute on April 22, 1859, just before the beginning of the Civil War, to John and Sarah Dreiser, in the home which the Vigo County Historical Society now owns and maintains in his honor on Dresser Drive in Fairbanks Park. In 1967, the Indiana General Assembly designated the home a State Shrine and Memorial, and the National Music Council listed it as "A Landmark of American Music". The home is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The house was constructed in 1850 and purchased by the Dreisers in 1859. The original brick structure consisted of a living room, bedroom, and lean-to kitchen. Paul's father added a front porch and second story to the house. Access to the upper story is an outside stairway, an arrangement typical of houses of the era. The house is significant as the Dresser birthplace, but also as an example of how 90 percent of Hoosiers lived in the pre-Civil War period of the 1850's. It is furnished according to the period and the economic status of the family.
Paul began his musical career on the back of a medicine show wagon in Indianapolis. He went on to become an actor, playwright, songwriter, producer, and music publisher during the late 1800's and early 1900's. He was one of the brightest lights on Tin Pan Alley, in New York City, where he composed and published his more than 100 songs. Twenty-five of those songs were such great hits that if selling sheet music could be translated into selling records, Paul Dresser would have had twenty-five Gold Records. In the late 1890's, he was the number one songwriter in America.
Themes of home, boyhood memories, mother, patriotism, and romance captured the highly sentimental spirit of the Gay Nineties. No one put these themes to music better than Paul Dresser. Although his ballads seem quaint and even humorous now, Dresser was highly regarded in his day both by the public and by contemporary musicians. He was compared to the best composers of his era.
Throughout his star-studded musical career on Tin Pan Alley, Paul remembered his friends in Terre Haute. He returned home often to visit and renew acquaintances. He dedicated several of his songs to people from Terre Haute, and he repeatedly chose themes that stirred fond memories of his boyhood on the banks of the Wabash River.