The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair That Changed America

by Erik Larson

  The great fair had begun.

  Although Burnham recognized that much work lay ahead—that Olmsted had to redouble his efforts and Ferris needed to finish that damned wheel—the success of the exposition now seemed assured. Congratulations arrived by telegraph and post. A friend told Burnham, “The scene burst on me with the beauty of a full blown rose.” The official history of the fair estimated that a quarter of a million people packed Jackson Park on Opening Day. Two other estimates put the total at 500,000 and 620,000. By day’s end there was every indication that Chicago’s fair would become the most heavily attended entertainment in the history of the world.

  This optimism lasted all of twenty-four hours.

  On Tuesday, May 2, only ten thousand people came to Jackson Park, a rate of attendance that, if continued, would guarantee the fair a place in history as one of the greatest failures of all time. The yellow cattle cars were mostly empty, as were the cars of the Alley L that ran along Sixty-third Street. All hope that this was merely an anomaly disappeared the next day, when the forces that had been battering the nation’s economy erupted in a panic on Wall Street that caused stock prices to plummet. Over the next week the news grew steadily more disturbing.

  On the night of Thursday, May 5, officials of the National Cordage Company, a trust that controlled 80 percent of America’s rope production, placed itself in receivership. Next Chicago’s Chemical National Bank ceased operation, a closure that seemed particularly ominous to fair officials because Chemical alone had won congressional approval to open a branch at the world’s fair, in no less central a location than the Administration Building. Three days later another large Chicago bank failed, and soon after that a third, the Evanston National Bank, in Burnham’s town. Dozens of other failures occurred around the country. In Brunswick, Georgia, the presidents of two national banks held a meeting. One president calmly excused himself, entered his private office, and shot himself through the head. Both banks failed. In Lincoln, Nebraska, the Nebraska Savings Bank had become the favorite bank of schoolchildren. The town’s teachers served as agents of the bank and every week collected money from the children for deposit in each child’s passbook account. Word that the bank was near failure caused the street out front to fill with children pleading for their money. Other banks came to Nebraska Savings’ rescue, and the so-called “children’s run” was quelled.

  People who otherwise might have traveled to Chicago to see the fair now stayed home. The terrifying economy was discouraging enough, but so too were reports of the unfinished character of the fair. If people had only one chance to go, they wanted to do it when all the exhibits were in place and every attraction was in operation, especially the Ferris Wheel, said to be a marvel of engineering that would make the Eiffel Tower seem like a child’s sculpture—provided it ever actually worked and did not collapse in the first brisk wind.

  Too many features of the fair remained unfinished, Burnham acknowledged. He and his brigade of architects, draftsmen, engineers, and contractors had accomplished so much in an impossibly short time, but apparently not enough to overcome the damping effect of the fast-degrading economy. The elevators in the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building, touted as one of the wonders of the fair, still had not begun operation. The Ferris Wheel looked only half finished. Olmsted had yet to complete grading and planting the grounds around the Krupp Pavilion, the Leather Building, and the Cold Storage Building; he had not yet laid the brick pavement at the fair’s train station or sodded the New York Central exhibit, the Pennsylvania Railroad exhibit, Choral Hall, and the Illinois State Building, which to many Chicagoans was the single most important building at the fair. The installation of exhibits and company pavilions within the Electricity Building was woefully behind schedule. Westinghouse only began building its pavilion on Tuesday, May 2.

  Burnham issued stern directives to Olmsted and Ferris and to every contractor still at work. Olmsted in particular felt the pressure but also felt hobbled by the persistent delays in installation of exhibits and the damage done by the repeated comings and goings of drays and freight cars. General Electric alone had fifteen carloads of exhibit materials stored on the grounds. Preparations for the Opening Day ceremony had cost Olmsted’s department valuable time, as did the planting and grading required to repair the damage the day’s crowd had inflicted throughout the park. Many of the fair’s fifty-seven miles of roadway were still either submerged or coated with mud, and others had been gouged and trenched by vehicles that had used the roads while they were still sodden. Olmsted’s road contractor deployed a force of eight hundred men and one hundred teams of horses to begin regrading the roads and laying new gravel. “I remain fairly well,” Olmsted wrote to his son, on May 15, “but get horribly tired every day. It is hard to get things done; my body is so overworked, and I constantly fail to accomplish what I expect to do.”

  First and foremost, Burnham knew, the fair had to be finished, but in the meantime lures had to be cast to encourage people to shed their fears of financial ruin and come to Chicago. He created the new post of director of functions and assigned Frank Millet to the job, giving him wide latitude to do what he could to boost attendance. Millet orchestrated fireworks shows and parades. He set aside special days to honor individual states and nations and to fete distinct groups of workers, including cobblers, millers, confectioners, and stenographers. The Knights of Pythias got their own day, as did the Catholic Knights of America. Millet set August 25 as Colored People Fete Day, and October 9 as Chicago Day. Attendance began to increase, but not by much. By the end of May the daily average of paying visitors was only thirty-three thousand, still far below what Burnham and everyone else had expected and, more to the point, far below the level required to make the fair profitable. Worse yet, Congress and the National Commission, bowing to pressure from the Sabbatarian movement, had ordered the fair closed on Sundays, thus withdrawing its wonders from a few million wage-earners for whom Sunday was the only day off.

  Burnham hoped for an early cure to the nation’s financial malaise, but the economy did not oblige. More banks failed, layoffs increased, industrial production sagged, and strikes grew more violent. On June 5 worried depositors staged runs on eight Chicago banks. Burnham’s own firm saw the flow of new commissions come to a halt.

  The World’s Fair Hotel

  THE FIRST GUESTS BEGAN ARRIVING at Holmes’s World’s Fair Hotel, though not in the volume he and every other South Side hotelier had expected. The guests were drawn mainly by the hotel’s location, with Jackson Park a short trip east on the Sixty-third Street leg of the Alley L. Even though the rooms on Holmes’s second and third floors were largely empty, when male visitors asked about accommodations Holmes told them with a look of sincere regret that he had no vacancies and kindly referred them to other hotels nearby. His guest rooms began to fill with women, most quite young and apparently unused to living alone. Holmes found them intoxicating.

  Minnie Williams’s continual presence became increasingly awkward. With the arrival of each dewy new guest, she became more jealous, more inclined to stay close to him. Her jealousy did not particularly annoy him. It simply became inconvenient. Minnie was an asset now, an acquisition to be warehoused until needed, like cocooned prey.

  Holmes checked newspaper advertisements for a rental flat far enough from his building to make impromptu visits unlikely. He found a place on the North Side at 1220 Wrightwood Avenue, a dozen or so blocks west of Lincoln Park, near Halsted. It was a pretty, shaded portion of the city, though its prettiness was to Holmes merely an element to be entered into his calculations. The flat occupied the top floor of a large private house owned by a man named John Oker, whose daughters managed its rental. They first advertised the flat in April 1893.

  Holmes went alone to examine the apartment and met John Oker. He introduced himself as Henry Gordon and told Oker he was in the real estate business.

  Oker was impressed with this prospective tenant. He was neat—maybe fastidious was the be
tter word—and his clothing and behavior suggested financial well-being. Oker was delighted when Henry Gordon said he would take the apartment; even more delighted when Gordon paid him forty dollars, cash, in advance. Gordon told Oker he and his wife would arrive in a few weeks.

  Holmes explained the move to Minnie as a long-overdue necessity. Now that they were married, they needed a bigger, nicer place than what they currently occupied in the castle. Soon the building would be bustling with visitors to the fair. Even without the guests, however, it was no place to raise a family.

  The idea of a large, sunny flat did appeal to Minnie. Truth was, the castle could be gloomy. Was always gloomy. And Minnie wanted everything as perfect as possible for Anna’s visit. She was a bit perplexed, however, as to why Harry would choose a place so far away, on the North Side, when there were so many lovely homes in Englewood. She reasoned, perhaps, that he did not want to pay the exorbitant rents that everyone was charging now that the world’s fair was under way.

  Holmes and Minnie moved into the new flat on June 1, 1893. Lora Oker, the owner’s daughter, said Gordon “seemed to be very attentive to his wife.” The couple went on bicycle rides and for a time kept a hired girl. “I can only say that his behavior was all that could be wished during his sojourn with us,” Miss Oker said. “Minnie Williams he introduced as his wife and we always addressed her as ‘Mrs. Gordon.’ She called him ‘Henry.’”

  With Minnie housed on Wrightwood Avenue, Holmes found himself free to enjoy his World’s Fair Hotel.

  His guests spent most of their time at Jackson Park or on the Midway and often did not return until after midnight. While present in the hotel they tended to stay in their rooms, since Holmes provided none of the common areas—the libraries, game parlors, and writing rooms—that the big hotels like the Richelieu and Metropole and the nearby New Julien offered as a matter of routine. Nor did he supply the darkroom facilities that hotels closest to Jackson Park had begun installing to serve the growing number of amateur photographers, so-called “Kodak fiends,” who carried the newest portable cameras.

  The women found the hotel rather dreary, especially at night, but the presence of its handsome and clearly wealthy owner helped dispel some of its bleakness. Unlike the men they knew back in Minneapolis or Des Moines or Sioux Falls, Holmes was warm and charming and talkative and touched them with a familiarity that, while perhaps offensive back home, somehow seemed all right in this new world of Chicago—just another aspect of the great adventure on which these women had embarked. And what good was an adventure if it did not feel a little dangerous?

  As best anyone could tell, the owner also was a forgiving soul. He did not seem at all concerned when now and then a guest checked out without advance notice, leaving her bills unpaid. That he often smelled vaguely of chemicals—that in fact the building as a whole often had a medicinal odor—bothered no one. He was, after all, a physician, and his building had a pharmacy on the ground floor.

  Prendergast

  PATRICK PRENDERGAST BELIEVED HIS APPOINTMENT as corporation counsel was about to occur. He wanted to be ready and began making plans for how to staff his office once the appointment came through. On May 9, 1893, he got out another of his postcards and addressed it to a man named W. F. Cooling, in the Staats-Zeitung Building. Prendergast lectured Cooling on the fact that Jesus was the ultimate legal authority, then gave him the good news.

  “I am candidate for corporation counsel,” he wrote. “If I become corporation counsel you shall be my assistant.”

  Night Is the Magician

  DESPITE ITS INCOMPLETE EXHIBITS, rutted paths, and stretches of unplanted ground, the exposition revealed to its early visitors a vision of what a city could be and ought to be. The Black City to the north lay steeped in smoke and garbage, but here in the White City of the fair visitors found clean public bathrooms, pure water, an ambulance service, electric streetlights, and a sewage-processing system that yielded acres of manure for farmers. There was daycare for the children of visitors, and much fun was made of the fact that when you left your child at the Children’s Building, you received a claim check in return. Chicago’s small but vocal censorians feared that impoverished parents would turn the building into a depository for unwanted children. Only one child, poor Charlie Johnson, was ever thus abandoned, and not a single child was lost, although anxiety invested the closing moments of each day.

  Within the fair’s buildings visitors encountered devices and concepts new to them and to the world. They heard live music played by an orchestra in New York and transmitted to the fair by long-distance telephone. They saw the first moving pictures on Edison’s Kinetoscope, and they watched, stunned, as lightning chattered from Nikola Tesla’s body. They saw even more ungodly things—the first zipper; the first-ever all-electric kitchen, which included an automatic dishwasher; and a box purporting to contain everything a cook would need to make pancakes, under the brand name Aunt Jemima’s. They sampled a new, oddly flavored gum called Juicy Fruit, and caramel-coated popcorn called Cracker Jack. A new cereal, Shredded Wheat, seemed unlikely to succeed—“shredded doormat,” some called it—but a new beer did well, winning the exposition’s top beer award. Forever afterward, its brewer called it Pabst Blue Ribbon. Visitors also encountered the latest and arguably most important organizational invention of the century, the vertical file, created by Melvil Dewey, inventor of the Dewey Decimal System. Sprinkled among these exhibits were novelties of all kinds. A locomotive made of spooled silk. A suspension bridge built out of Kirk’s Soap. A giant map of the United States made of pickles. Prune makers sent along a full-scale knight on horseback sculpted out of prunes, and the Avery Salt Mines of Louisiana displayed a copy of the Statue of Liberty carved from a block of salt. Visitors dubbed it “Lot’s Wife.”

  One of the most compelling, and chilling, exhibits was the Krupp Pavilion, where Fritz Krupp’s “pet monster” stood at the center of an array of heavy guns. A popular guide to the fair, called the Time-Saver, rated every exhibit on a scale of one to three, with one being merely “interesting” and three being “remarkably interesting,” and gave the Krupp Pavilion a three. For many visitors, however, the weapons were a disturbing presence. Mrs. D. C. Taylor, a frequent visitor to the fair, called Krupp’s biggest gun “a fearful hideous thing, breathing of blood and carnage, a triumph of barbarism crouching amid the world’s triumphs of civilization.”

  Mrs. Taylor adored the Court of Honor and was struck by the oddly sober manner people adopted as they walked among its palaces. “Every one about us moved softly and spoke gently. No one seemed hurried or impatient, all were under a spell, a spell that held us from the opening of the fair until its close.”

  In the Midway she found a very different atmosphere. Here Mrs. Taylor ventured into the Street in Cairo, open at last, and witnessed her first belly dance. She watched the dancer carefully. “She takes a few light steps to one side, pauses, strikes the castanets, then the same to the other side; advances a few steps, pauses, and causes her abdomen to rise and fall several times in exact time to the music, without moving a muscle in any other part of her body, with incredible rapidity, at the same time holding her head and feet perfectly rigid.”

  As Mrs. Taylor and her companions left the Street, she sang quietly to herself, “My Country ’Tis of Thee,” like a frightened child easing past a graveyard.

  The fair was so big, so beyond grasp, that the Columbian Guards found themselves hammered with questions. It was a disease, rhetorical smallpox, and every visitor exhibited it in some degree. The Guards answered the same questions over and over, and the questions came fast, often with an accusatory edge. Some questions were just odd.

  “In which building is the pope?” one woman asked. She was overheard by writer Teresa Dean, who wrote a daily column from the fair.

  “The pope is not here, madame,” the guard said.

  “Where is he?”

  “In Italy, Europe, madame.”

  The woman frowned. “Which
way is that?”

  Convinced now that the woman was joking, the guard cheerfully quipped, “Three blocks under the lagoon.”

  She said, “How do I get there?”

  Another visitor, hunting for an exhibit of wax figures, asked a guard, “Can you tell me where the building is that has the artificial human beings?”

  He began telling her he did not know, when another visitor jumped in. “I have heard of them,” he said. “They are over in the Woman’s Building. Just ask for the Lady Managers.”

  One male visitor, who had lost both his legs and made his way around the fair on false limbs and crutches, must have looked particularly knowledgeable, because another visitor peppered him incessantly with questions, until finally the amputee complained that the strain of answering so many questions was wearing him out.