Summary Of The Devil In The White City

The Devil in the White City is a literary nonfiction novel that ranges from the years surrounding the building of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, which is also referred to as the World’s columbian Exposition. The World's Columbian Exposition was designed to commemorate the landing of Columbus in America. This unsequenced novel is divided into four different parts. The first three parts of this novel take place in chicago during the 1890-1893 era. Part four of the novel makes the reader feel as if they are taken to Philadelphia circa in 1895. By the way the novel is set up, the reader can tell that the author, Erik Larson uses extensive research to recreate the lives of real men, two real men, who recreate Chicago during the World's Columbian

Explosion. Throughout this novel, Larson created attempts to fill in the gaps which history let slip by.

The two men who recreated Chicago were Daniel Burnham, the architect who built the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, and H.H. Holmes, the serial killer who utilizes the fair as the place in which he finds his victims.

The story of Daniel Burnham, his building of the fair, and the struggles he overcomes in order to make the enterprise a success form one plot line. In 1890, Chicago is growing rapidly and is eager to prove itself to the more established Eastern cities of the United States. This sequence of events begins in 1890, when Chicago wins the bid for the 1893 World's Exposition. Daniel Burnham and his then partner, John Root, are given the honor of being the architects who build the fair and consequently, a more positive global reputation for Chicago. John Root is the partner of Daniel Burnham; he accepts the challenge of building the 1893 Chicago World's Fair along with Burnham. Root is the perfect partner and complement to Burnham. While Burnham has the business savvy and people skills, Root is truly the architectural genius behind the duo. Root's intelligence and depth are something that people, including

Burnham, admire. Unfortunately, Root suffers illness and dies before the fair really even begins construction. While the story of Daniel Burnham progresses, another plot simultaneously unfolds. H.H. Holmes comes to Chicago in 1886 in search of work as a pharmacist or doctor. Holmes maliciously acquires a pharmacy in Englewood, a location very close to the future site of the World's Fair in Jackson Park. Eventually, Holmes buys the lot across the street from the pharmacy and builds an elaborate construction well suited to his practice of killing people and disposing of their bodies. The antagonist of the novel, H.H. Holmes, is a psychopathic doctor, pharmacist, and serial killer from New Hampshire who comes to Chicago a few years before construction of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. In Chicago, Holmes uses his skills of manipulation, charm, and deceit to commit several crimes, including theft, insurance fraud, and murder. All of Holmes's murder spree comes to a halt in Philadelphia as his arrest for insurance fraud prompts deeper investigation into his past.
Backtracking a bit, at the time that Burnham and Root are assembling an architectural team, a young, handsome, blue-eyed doctor who calls himself H.

H. Holmes arrives in Chicago. Holmes, who was born Herman Mudgett, is immensely attractive to women, in part because he breaks the traditional rules of courtship. He has already married a woman named Clara, but he abandons her quickly. In Chicago, he enjoys the disgusting smells of the slaughterhouses that are the major industry of the city, and quickly purchases a drugstore that becomes popular because he attracts female customers. Holmes marries a woman named Myrta while he’s still married to Clara, but immediately begins to neglect her. He uses forgery and deception to buy a nearby building, which he converts into a grim hotel. Despite the fact that the building contains rooms and equipment that are clearly designed for murder, Holmes attracts very little attention, since he fires workers frequently, and since Chicagoans can’t imagine that a serial killer could live in their city. From the workers he hires, he assembles a group of accomplices that includes Benjamin Pitezal and Charles Chappell. He forges the signature of Myrta’s wealthy great-uncle, Jonathan, and invites him to stay in his new hotel. Long afterwards, Jonathan thinks that Holmes tried and failed to kill him in the middle of the night. Burnham and Root painstakingly assemble a team of renowned architects from around the country, including Charles McKim,

Frederick Olmsted, and Louis Sullivan, and they begin to work on their designs for the Fair. In 1897, Carter Henry Harrison, the popular mayor of Chicago, loses his election for a fifth term. While the World’s Fair is being built, Holmes attracts visitors from around the country to his "World’s Fair Hotel," located near Jackson Park. Burnham, who urges the architects and engineers of America to build a structure that can match the Eiffel Tower in Paris, awards a Fair concession to George Ferris, the designer of the Ferris Wheel. As the World’s Fair ends, Holmes sets fire to his hotel in order to collect a large insurance claim. Insurance investigators are skeptical, and his creditors chase him out of town. Holmes kills Benjamin Pitezal, and is eventually arrested when another insurance company investigates Pitezal’s death. Detective Frank Geyer follows Holmes’s path through Indianapolis and Toronto, and uncovers evidence that he has murdered three of Pitezal’s children. Although Holmes denies these crimes, and writes a memoir in which he tries to make himself seem sympathetic, he is sentenced to death. At the end of his life, he claims that he is transforming into the Devil, and various people associated with his execution die mysteriously.