The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America is a 2003 nonfiction historical thriller by American journalist Erik Larson. The book revisits the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, following the stories of two very different history-making men: Daniel Hudson Burnham, the architect of the fair, and H. H. Holmes, the notorious serial killer. The book explores themes such as the contrast between sanity and insanity; the anonymity that a large modern city affords; the gender roles of men and women at the time; and the difference between Burnham’s large circle of collaborators and Holmes’ isolation. The Devil in the White City was a New York Times bestseller, a finalist in the 2003 National Book Award, and a 2004 Edgar Award winner.

Tracing the movements of Burnham and Holmes between 1890 and 1893, the book opens by charting Burnham’s ascendancy to national prominence. He and his partner, John Wellborn Root, are chosen as the architects for the 1893 World Exposition after Chicago is selected to host. They set about their task of raising the profile of Chicago internationally and meeting the myriad challenges this task entails, which include rivaling the spectacular Eiffel Tower of the 1889 Parisian World Fair. When Root dies of pneumonia at age 41, Burnham is left to shoulder responsibility for the fair alone. Striving onward despite setbacks such as late architectural drafts, a worldwide recession, and union activity and strikes, Burnham overcomes even a string of accidents and deaths during construction to attain triumph.

After much deliberation, Burnham and his board of architects accept a proposal for the world’s first Ferris Wheel. Delays and storms hinder the progress of construction, but the fair eventually opens. Wrestling with a struggling economy, and the incomplete wheel, Burnham and his team overcome these challenges through ingenuity and determination to attract record visitor numbers to the fair and break the Parisian record. Just prior to the closure of the fair, Burnham’s cohort of architects and sponsors is able to repay their debts and pronounce the 1893 World Fair a resounding success. However, this triumph is tempered by the assassination of Mayor Carter Henry Harrison by a deranged former acolyte.

In parallel with the progression of Burnham’s epoch-defining work on the World Fair, a darker story is unfolding just moments away. Herman Mudgett arrives in Chicago in 1886, adopting the alias Dr. H. H. Holmes. The now notorious doctor promptly purchases a pharmacy in Englewood, close to the fair site. On borrowed credit, he purchases an empty lot opposite and erects a chamber of horrors disguised as apartments. Labyrinthine corridors are peppered with secret passages and chutes to facilitate the disposal of victims’ bodies. He has a capacious furnace installed in the basement for the same purpose. Capitalizing on the proximity to the World’s Fair, Holmes converts the block into a hotel. Charming many women, he marries three times and murders dozens of men, women, and children, but his activities go undetected during the fair.

Holmes’ creditors are increasingly unsatisfied by Holmes’ charm, and so he skips town, seeking safety at a former wife’s Texas estate. Finally, he is arrested and incarcerated for insurance fraud in Philadelphia. Detective Frank Geyer gradually realizes that fraud was just the beginning of Holmes’ crimewave, leading to a murder investigation that takes him across several states. Eventually, Chicago police discover the hotel and the horrors it holds. Holmes is put on trial for murder, convicted, and hanged on May 7th, 1896.