Paul Dresser has been a source of pride to his native Terre Haute for over one hundred years. He played a very important role in the history of American music in the Gay Nineties. He is best known for composing our state song, "On the Banks of the Wabash".

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.

Terre Haute has continued its pride in Paul Dresser over the years. The Paul Dresser Memorial Association headed by the mayor and leading citizens was organized in 1922. They planned a memorial gateway to Terre Haute on the west edge of the river bridge. That memorial was designed by Terre Hautean and internationally known sculptor, Caroline Peddle Ball.  The Banks-of-the-Wabash Association, in 1923, officially dedicated Paul Dresser Drive along the River in what is now Fairbanks Park. In 1993, the newly constructed dual bridges over the Wabash River were named for Paul Dresser and his brother, famous American author, Theodore Dreiser.

The Vigo County Historical Society is proud to own and maintain the Paul Dresser Birthplace and the Vigo County Historical Museum where the portrait of Paul Dresser, painted at the peak of his career, hangs above the Chickering piano on which Paul played and composed his famous songs.

Paul Dresser died, in 1906 at the age of 47, a poor and broken man. The failure of his publishing house and his generosity to family and friends had taken his fortune, but his fame lives on in the wonderful music he left as his legacy.