The 1889 Paris World's Fair with its new Eiffel Tower so stunned the world that the United States immediately decided to outdo them. The leaders of Chicago banded together and the city won the right to host our 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. Chicago had a handful of months to construct around 200 new buildings and a surrounding park and populate them with exhibits from around the world. Our nation's pride was on the line, and they hadn't yet selected a site within Chicago to build the expo.
While America's greatest architects were designing the fair's famous "White City", just down the road Dr. H. H. Holmes was creating his own castle-like dream building. Inside he connected gas pipes to a soundproof, windowless room that could be locked from the outside. He filled its huge cellar with a quick lime pit and a furnace that reached 3000 degrees Fahrenheit among other things. He later confessed, "I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than a poet can help the inspiration to sing."
Erik Larson's history The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America introduces us to Daniel Burnham, one of the many geniuses who created the World's Fair, and Herman Webster Mudgett, aka Dr. H. H. Holmes, a sociopathic killer roaming the streets of Chicago. Larson writes a fascinating and frightening story surrounding Mudgett, but it's a testament to his research and writing that I was more interested in Burnham and the amazing accomplishments of those who created the fair.
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