Much has been written about Chicago’s Columbian Exposition, a world’s fair held from May to October of 1893 in Chicago in honor of the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ discovery of the New World.
But until now, not much has been written about the fair’s supervising architect, Daniel H. Burnham, and the frenetic 27 months he spent building the fair — so daunting a job that a virtual railroad yard had to be built on the site to get material there, new types of weight-bearing railroad cars had to be invented, and special arrangements even had to be made to dispose of the manure deposited by the thousands of horses who pulled carts that also brought material to the site.
The elements provided problems even beyond the tight time schedule: Fire twice broke out, the weather was terrible (fires had to be lit and kept alive so that concrete would set), a windstorm destroyed much of the early work, and roofs and walls collapsed under their own weight. An 800-foot wall collapsed after one building was nearly completed. Toward the project’s end, there were as many as 20,000 workman, and they worked all night on the night before the opening, clearing mounds of construction trash and debris. The project’s cost stretched to $22 million (in 1893 dollars), over twice the $10 million projected cost.
Frederick Law Olmsted, the founder of landscape architecture (he was later to landscape the village of Pinehurst), was in charge of landscaping the fair — a hurry-up job, even though he was accustomed to projects that took decades to come to fruition. Even then, there was much he couldn’t plant early, for it would be destroyed by the railcars, the horses and the construction work. His men were putting down sod the night before the opening.
Seven construction workers died in accidents 1n 1893; others had died earlier. Olmsted’s young assistant died of appendicitis. A man sent to Africa to bring home pygmies as a fair attraction didn’t bring them; he died instead. Burnham took on almost dictatorial powers after his architectural partner died. The elderly Olmsted lived but was bedeviled by arthritis, toothaches and the pressure of other jobs, including Biltmore Estate in Asheville. In 1893, death was a consideration in any large project.
Amidst all this, an economic “panic,” or depression, hit the country, bankrupting some of the fair’s investors and forcing railroads, who were gearing up to bring millions of paying visitors, to keep their fares high.
The first Ferris wheel (named for its inventor, Pittsburgh engineer George Washington Gale Ferris), was the focus of the fair’s midway. It was so massive that the bolts in it alone weighed a total of more than nine tons. It could carry up to 2,160 passengers to a height of 275 feet in 36 closed but windowed cars.
An incredible 40 percent of the population of America visited the fair —nearly 400,000 on one day alone — making it the most-attended peacetime event, for one day and in totality, in history. The fair introduced electricity (and the electric chair), the telephone, motion pictures, automatic dishwashers, zippers, shredded wheat, Crackerjacks and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, among other innovations, to its visitors. It held the largest building ever erected up to that time, whose largest room was lighted from 50-foot chandeliers. Buffalo Bill Cody, who couldn’t gain a concession in the fair itself, set up his Wild West Show (featuring the shooting skills of Annie Oakley, later a resident of Pinehurst) on adjacent property and earned over $1 million. Every building in the fair was built along classical architectural lines and painted white (the painting supervisor having invented the world’s first spray painter in order to get the job done in time), and the fair became known as “The White City.”
Just blocks away was the World’s Fair Hotel, a bizarre “murder castle” built by Herman W. Mudgett, who ordinarily went by the pseudonym H.H. Holmes but had a dozen other pseudonyms. Holmes bought and sold furniture, letting debts pile up. He lured young women from out of town to work in his office and pharmacy, married the richest of them, took control of their riches and took out large insurance policies on them, then murdered them with chloroform or in a self-designed gas chamber. Some estimated that he killed over 200 people. Larsen, who tells Holmes’ story mostly in chapters alternating with Burnham’s, is sure that he killed at least nine. He was a serial killer more to be feared than 1887’s Jack the Ripper, who killed at least five in London. Finally Mudgett/Holmes was brought to justice through the hard and patient work of a detective from a faraway city, Philadelphia.
Then there was Carter Harrison, Chicago’s mayor on the eve of the fair, and the pall his assassination cast on the opening ceremonies. And there was Prendergast, the deranged young newspaper carrier and frustrated appointment seeker who shot him. Larsen tells their story, too.
“The Devil in the White City,” subtitled “Murder, Magic & Madness in the Fair That Changed America,” may be the best nonfiction book I have read in years. It reads like the best novels, but it’s a true story. If Larsen has a fault as a writer, it’s for too much detail — but all the details are telling, and they’re all fascinating.
Reach Cox at ccox@thepilot.com.
