In 1771, Gerbert ordered the construction of the abbey's striking, classicism-style dome church based on plans by architects Pierre Michel d’Ixnard and Nicolas de Pigage and under the leadership of project manager Franz Josef Salzmann.

On September 26, 1808, Baden's new Grand Duke Charles Frederick ordered a review to determine whether the expensive maintenance of the dome still made sense or if the money should instead be used to build a more modest but less costly parish church.

In 1809, Zurich native mechanic and inventor Johann Georg Bodmer began to establish one of the first engineering works in Germany using the former abbey buildings.

After Baden found a potent financial backer in David von Eichthal, it granted the Societé St. Blaise the right to use the premises (which were now hosting a mechanical spinning factory) for the next 10 years.

Bodmer also ran tests with the then completely unheard of rear loading system for canons and an early version of the conveyor belt.

He ordered Frenchman Benoît Fourneyron to install what was then the most powerful reaction turbine (40 PS) in Europe and further expanded the cotton spinning factory.

Hüglin convinced Hermann Determann to oversee the spa's medical direction; he converted the resort into a highly efficient, water-based sanatorium.

Among them were the pianist and founder of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Hans von Bülow (1893), to whom the famous first piano concerto of Tschaikovsky is dedicated; the then world-renowned Polish pianist Józef Hofmann, who as a ten-year-old child made his legendary debut in New York in 1867; 15-year-old Prince Gawriil Konstantinowitsch Romanow of St. Petersburg (1902); Hermann Sudermann, the most performed dramatist of his time (1903); Otto Brahm, the head of German theater in Berlin (1903); Hugo Stinnes, an industrialist and the then-richest man in Germany (1903); the explorer Eugen Wolf (1903); the painter Fritz Mackensen (1905); the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, William IV, with his wife (1906); the writer Stefan Zweig of Vienna (1909); Paul Warburg from New York, son of the banker's family of Hamburg and co-founder of the US-Federal Reserve Bank (1910); the wife and son of Leon Sidelsky of Vladivostok, co-builder of the trans-Siberian railway (1913); Konrad Adenauer, then Lord Mayor of Cologne (1917); and many other famous names of politics, science, literature and art from Germany as well as the rest of the world.

Because of its modern spa facilities, metropolitan flair, seclusion and romantic location in the Black Forest, St. Blasien was favored by the Grand Duke of Baden Frederick I (German: Friedrich I.)