The Crescent Hotel

For three years this hotel was run as a cancer hospital by a man with no medical training whatsoever.

The Crescent opened in 1886 at 75 Prospect Avenue in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, designed by the St. Louis architect Isaac S. Taylor as an elite resort with electricity and elevators. It struggled almost immediately, fell into disrepair, and for years opened only through the summer season. In 1908, chasing revenue, it reopened as the Crescent College and Conservatory for Young Women, teaching domestic arts, music, history, science, mathematics, theatre and literature. That closed in 1934 and the building went back to being a summer hotel.

Then in 1937 it was bought by Norman G. Baker. Baker was a millionaire, an inventor and a radio personality, and a con man. He styled himself a doctor without ever having trained in medicine, claimed to have discovered cures for a number of ailments including cancer, and used his broadcasts to attack organised medicine as corrupt and profit-driven while calling his new hospital a castle in the air. The cure he sold consisted mainly of drinking the local spring water. In 1940 federal charges were filed against him for mail fraud and he served four years in prison. The hotel sat ownerless until 1946.

John R. Constantine, Herbert E. Shutter, Herbert Byfield and Dwight Nichols bought it that spring. The fourth floor burned on 15 March 1967. Marty and Elise Roenigk bought the place in 1997 for 1.3 million dollars and ran a six-year restoration, putting historical furnishings back and restoring the basement spa. Marty Roenigk died in a car crash in 2009 and Elise remains the owner. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016.

In 2019 an excavation on the grounds turned up medicine bottles from Baker's tenure. It is a Historic Hotels of America member, and appears on that programme's annual most haunted list.