63. the DEVIL in the WHITE CITY

Erik Larson 2003

An incredible work of non-fiction about a parallel occurrence at the end of the 19th century, told in alternating format: the struggle of Chicago's architects and planners to show the world an innovative, magical and successful World's Trade Fair and the evils and madness of a serial killer, H. H Holmes, written in a very informative and absorbing way.

'The date was April 14, 1912, a sinister day in maritime history, but of course, the man in suite 63-65, shelter deck C, did not yet know it... The man was Daniel Hudson Burnham, and by now his name was familiar throughout the world. He was an architect and had done his work pretty well in Chicago, New York, Washington, San Francisco, Manila, and many other cities.'(3)


'Millet was never far from Burnham's mind, nor was the event that had brought them together: the great Chicago world's fair of 1893. Millet had been one of Burnham's closest allies in the long, bittersweet struggle to build the fair.'(4)

'A thousand trains a day entered or left Chicago. many of these trains brought single young women who had never ever seen a city but now hoped to make one of the biggest and toughest their home.'(11)

'And in Chicago a young handsome doctor stepped from a train, his surgical valise in hand. He entered a world of clamor, smoke, and steam, refulgent with the scents of murdered cattle and pigs. He found it to his liking.'(12)

'Holmes had been to Chicago before, but only for brief visits. The city impressed him, he said later, which was surprising because as a rule nothing impressed him, nothing moved him. Events and people captured his attention the way moving objects caught notice of an amphibian: first a machinelike registration of proximity, next a calculation of worth, and last a decision to act or to remain motionless. (37)


'He put up a new sign: H.H. Holmes Pharmacy. As word spread that a young, handsome, and apparently unmarried doctor now stood behind the counter, an increasing number of single women in their twenties began to patronize the store. They dressed nicely and brought things they did not need.'(46)

'Ellsworth insisted that what Chicago had in mind was something far grander than even the Paris exposition. He described for Olmsted a vision of a dream city designed by America's greatest architects and covering an expanse at least one-third larger than the Paris fair.'(49)

'He was the smoothest man I ever saw."said C.E.Davis, whom Holmes had hired to manage the drugstore's jewelry counter. Creditors, Davis said, would "come here raging and calling him all the names imanginable, and he would smile and talk to them and set up the cigars and drinks and send them away seemingly his friends for life. I never saw him angry. You couldn't have trouble with him if you tired.'(72)

'He argued that Chicago's fair, unlike any other before it, would be primarily a monument to architecture. It would awaken the nation to the power of architecture to conjure beauty from stone and steel.'(80)

'The furnace man examined the kiln. He saw that it contained an inner chamber of firebrick constructed in a manner that kept flames from reaching the interior, and he noted the clever addition of two openings in the top of the inner box that would allow gases from the box to flow into the surrounding flames, where they would then be consumed. It was an interesting design and seemed likely to work, although he did observe to himself that the shape of the kiln seemed unsuited to the task of bending glass.'(92)

'For the police there were warnings of a different sort-- letters from parents, visits from detectives hired by parents--but these were lost in the chaos. Vanishment seemed a Chicago pastime.'(102)

'How is it possible that this vast amount of construction, greatly exceeding that of the Paris Exhibition of 1889, will be ready in two years.'(119)



'He removed the apron and rolled down his sleeves. The chloroform and his own intense arousal made in him feel light-headed. The sensation, as always, was pleasant and induced in him a warm languor, like the feeling he got after sitting too long in front of a hot stove.'(149)

'But not a tower, he said. Towers were not original. Eiffel had built a tower already. "Mere bigness" wasn't enough either. "Something novel, original, daring and unique must be designed and built if American engineers are to retain their prestige and standing.'(156)

'There would be miracles at the fair--the chocolate Venus de Milo would not melt, the 22,000 pound cheese in the Wisconsin Pavilion would not mold--but the greatest miracle was the transformation of the grounds during the long soggy night that had preceded Cleveland's arrival.'(236)

'The first guests began arriving at Holmes's World's Fair Hotel, though not in the volume he and every other South Side hotelier had expected... His guest rooms began to fill with women, most quite young and apparently unused to living alone. Holmes found them intoxicating.'243)

'Despite its incomplete exhibits, rutted paths, and stretches of unplanted ground, the exposition revealed to its early visitors a vision of what a city could be and ought to be. The Black City to the north lay steeped in smoke and garbage, but here in the White City of the fair visitors found clean public bathrooms, pure water, an ambulance service, electric streetlights, and a sewage-processing system that yielded acres of manure for farmers.(247)


'The shared color, or more accurately the shared absence of color, produced an especially alluring range of effects as the sun traveled the sky. In the early morning, when Burnham conducted his inspections, the building were a pale blue and seemed to float on a ghostly cushion of ground mist. Each evening the sun colored the buildings ochre and lit the motes of dust raised by the breeze until the air itself became a soft orange veil.'(252)

'Ferris had created more than simply an engineering novelty. Like the inventors of the elevator, he had conjured an entirely new physical sensation.'(270)


'The secrets of Holmes's castle eventually did come to light, but only because of the persistence of a lone detective from a far-off city, grieving his own terrible loss.'(336)



First Vintage Books edition, 2004
390 pages
Book borrowed from BSM
Pictures from google images search