I Need
Chicago, like all great cities, contains the best and worst of humankind. Man’s great dreams and achievements stand like shadows next to man’s great failures. Devil in the White City by Erik Larson captures the essence of man’s greatness in the contrast between the Columbian World Exposition of 1893 and the murders conducted in the summer of the fair’s reign by a man known as Dr. H. H. Holmes.
The World’s Fair, as the Columbian Exposition became known, represents one of the crowns in Chicago’s history. This “White City” was a dream world – a collective imagining by America’s greatest architects of the time, including landscape architect Frederick Olmsted (the man who designed Central Park in New York) and director-architect Daniel Burnham.
Erik Larson paints a picture of this beautiful city where cutting edge light bulb technology meets shredded wheat and Cracker Jacks. Annie Oakley performs impossible feats just outside the fair in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and silent boats float through the lagoons among neoclassical style buildings. People were invited to ride George Ferris’ wheel, a risky but marvelous business. How lovely to remember Ferris’ wife letting out a yell as her car, which fit almost thirty passengers, reached the top for the first time.
“The Wizard of Oz” writers based Oz off this dream; Walt Disney based his Disneyland and Disneyworld kingdoms off his father’s musings about constructing the White City. People must have truly felt they were walking through a fairytale.
Yet the White City’s fairytale had a villain. In the same pages as he describes the construction of the White City, Larson describes the way Holmes built his own hotel in the Engleside neighborhood where the fair was housed. Larson describes the way Holmes’ hotel happened to be booked when men inquired about rooms but was always available for young women. He describes the way these young women mysteriously disappeared, leaving behind only by letters of inquiry from
The World’s Fair, as the Columbian Exposition became known, represents one of the crowns in Chicago’s history. This “White City” was a dream world – a collective imagining by America’s greatest architects of the time, including landscape architect Frederick Olmsted (the man who designed Central Park in New York) and director-architect Daniel Burnham.
Erik Larson paints a picture of this beautiful city where cutting edge light bulb technology meets shredded wheat and Cracker Jacks. Annie Oakley performs impossible feats just outside the fair in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and silent boats float through the lagoons among neoclassical style buildings. People were invited to ride George Ferris’ wheel, a risky but marvelous business. How lovely to remember Ferris’ wife letting out a yell as her car, which fit almost thirty passengers, reached the top for the first time.
“The Wizard of Oz” writers based Oz off this dream; Walt Disney based his Disneyland and Disneyworld kingdoms off his father’s musings about constructing the White City. People must have truly felt they were walking through a fairytale.
Yet the White City’s fairytale had a villain. In the same pages as he describes the construction of the White City, Larson describes the way Holmes built his own hotel in the Engleside neighborhood where the fair was housed. Larson describes the way Holmes’ hotel happened to be booked when men inquired about rooms but was always available for young women. He describes the way these young women mysteriously disappeared, leaving behind only by letters of inquiry from