He has a capacious furnace installed in the basement for the same purpose. Labyrinthine corridors are peppered with secret passages and chutes to facilitate the disposal of victims’ bodies. On borrowed credit, he purchases an empty lot opposite and erects a chamber of horrors disguised as apartments. The now notorious doctor promptly purchases a pharmacy in Englewood, close to the fair site. Herman Mudgett arrives in Chicago in 1886, adopting the alias Dr. In parallel with the progression of Burnham’s epoch-defining work on the World Fair, a darker story is unfolding just moments away. However, this triumph is tempered by the assassination of Mayor Carter Henry Harrison by a deranged former acolyte. Just prior to the closure of the fair, Burnham’s cohort of architects and sponsors is able to repay their debts and pronounce the 1893 World Fair a resounding success. Wrestling with a struggling economy, and the incomplete wheel, Burnham and his team overcome these challenges through ingenuity and determination to attract record visitor numbers to the fair and break the Parisian record.

Delays and storms hinder the progress of construction, but the fair eventually opens. Striving onward despite setbacks such as late architectural drafts, a worldwide recession, and union activity and strikes, Burnham overcomes even a string of accidents and deaths during construction to attain triumph.Īfter much deliberation, Burnham and his board of architects accept a proposal for the world’s first Ferris Wheel. When Root dies of pneumonia at age 41, Burnham is left to shoulder responsibility for the fair alone. They set about their task of raising the profile of Chicago internationally and meeting the myriad challenges this task entails, which include rivaling the spectacular Eiffel Tower of the 1889 Parisian World Fair. He and his partner, John Wellborn Root, are chosen as the architects for the 1893 World Exposition after Chicago is selected to host. Tracing the movements of Burnham and Holmes between 18, the book opens by charting Burnham’s ascendancy to national prominence.

Devil in the white city book cover