The Devil in the White City

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson is one of the most eloquently written nonfiction books I have ever read (or listened to, as it is one of my drive time audio reads). His descriptions at times veer closer to poetry than prose. Phrases along the lines of "the gloomy hall was slowly cast in light from the gas lamps that made the sounds of a hissing cat" or "his words were like morning glories that rambled and weaved in and out of fence posts." At times, I forgot this was a history I was listening to and not a dramatic novel.

The Devil in the White City follows the tale of two men whose fame was attained in the events surrounding the Chicago World's Fair, also called the Columbia Expedition. Daniel H. Burnham was a Chicago architect who was charged with designing and erecting the whole of the World's Fair, a position that would either thrust him to the top of American architecture or sink him to the depths of embarrassment. The other man, H. H. Holmes, arrived in Chicago with plans darker. Through devious means, he purchased a drugstore, and then the land across the street from it, where he built a 3-story, block long building that he employed as a hotel during the Fair. During its construction, he changed contractors so often only a handful of people knew the true intent of this structure - gas lines leading to air locked rooms, an approximately human-length kiln in the basement, vats of acids, dissection tables, airtight closet-sized safes.

Larson weaves the lives of these two men, among others, into a rich tapestry of Chicago at the turn of the century. Burnham toiled to create the White City, one that would outshine the Exposition Universelle in Paris a few years earlier and prove to New York City that Chicago was not some slaughterhouse city, but had refinement and beauty equal to New York City. He enlisted the support of many architects to create the Court of Honor, a series of buildings built in the neoclassical fashion, that would come to be known as the White City. For the landscaping, he procured Frederick Law Olmstead, the landscape designer of Central Park in New York, Biltmore Estate in Asheville, and the grounds of the U.S. Capitol building, among others. Through sandy soil, fires, wind, ice and egos, these men (and one woman who designed the Women's Building), created a park that inspired the imaginations of Frank L. Baum, writer of The Wizard of Oz, and Walt Disney, whose father had been a construction worker on some of the buildings at the fair, and the invention of such things as the Ferris Wheel, Crackerjacks, Shredded Wheat and others.

During the construction of the fair, Holmes was creating a monument of his own design. Over a period of three years, Holmes selected victims from among his employees and then guests who, within weeks to months, mysteriously disappeared - gone to see relatives, was often Holmes response to inquiries. Holmes often made sure that before these friends and guests had their extended leaves of absence, that they take out a life insurance policy, noting him as the beneficiary. However, despite all this money Holmes had from both his legal and illegal income, he rarely paid any debts he owed - much of his hotel was built without paying the workers. Extremely charming, he was able to smooth his way out of most payments. However, after the World's Fair closed, creditors grew and he fled to Texas, and then other states, leaving debt and bodies in his wake. With one of his associates, Benjamin Pitezel, Holmes devised a scheme where Pitezel would fake his own death, and Holmes and Mrs. Pitezel would split the insurance money. However, Holmes murdered Pitezel and then manipulated Mrs. Pitezel to allow three of her five children to remain in the custody of Holmes. Hopscotching from city to city, Holmes eventually murdered these three children. Thankfully he was arrested for loan evasion, and soon detectives discovered the more grisly nature of this man.

One of the things I at first found most irritating about this book is how Larson would hint at something, but never tell the reader outright what that thing was. It was left to the imagination. Over the days of reading, however, I grew to enjoy and respect it. In many ways, he wrote as perhaps a newspaper would at the turn of the 20th century - too genteel to lay out the gory facts, but descriptive enough for an acute reader to infer the greater meaning. I think this enhanced the tale in many ways as I had to create a scene of a murder or construction error on my own. In a way, the history became my story to tell as much as it is Larson's.