The Chicago World's Fair of 1893 was one of the most spectacular exhibitions the world has ever seen. This is the story of its realization, and of the two men whose fates it linked - an architect and a serial killer. The architect as Daniel H. Burnham, who created the White City, a magical landscape of white buildings set in a wonderland of canals and gardens. The killer was H.H. Holmes, a handsome young doctor with striking blue eyes, who used the attraction of the great fair - and his own devilish charms - to lure scores of young women to their death. Holmes would stroll through the fair at night, when an electric dynamo transformed it into an incandescent fairyland, with an unsuspecting victim on each arm. While Burnham was overcoming politics, personality clashes and the ferocious Chicago winds to bring about the transformation of swampy Jackson Park into the White City, Holmes had a building project of his own just west of the fairground. He called it the Worlds Fair Hotel; in reality it was a torture palace, complete with a gas chamber and crematorium. This is the story of the men and women whose lives were irrevocably changed by the Chicago World Fair, and of Burnham and Holmes. Spicing the narrative are the stories of a cast of historical characters including Buffalo Bill, Scott Joplin and Theodore Dreiser.
| ISBN | 0385602057 | | DEWEY | 607.34773110922 | | ISBN13 | 9780385602051
(What's this?) | | DEWEY edition | DC21 | | Publisher | Transworld Publishers Ltd | | Pages | 464 | | Imprint | Doubleday | | Published in | London | | Format | Hardback | | Height (mm) | 234 | | Publication date | 03 Mar 2003 | | Width (mm) | 156 | | Library of Congress | HVL499 | | Academic level | General |
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The Chicago World Fair was the greatest fair in American history. This is the story of the men and women whose lives it irrevocably changed and of two men in particular: an architect and a serial killer. The architect is Daniel Burnham, a man of great integrity and depth. It was his vision of the fair that attracted the best minds and talents of the day. The killer is Henry H. Holmes. Intelligent as well as handsome and charming, Holmes opened a boarding house, which he advertised as 'The World's Fair Hotel'. Here in the neighbourhood where he was admired and liked by all, he seduced, tortured and murdered young women, incinerating them in the furnace he had built in the basement of his hotel. Spicing the narrative are the sad, charming and funny stories of a supporting cast of historical characters including Buffalo Bill, Scott Joplin, Theodore Dreiser and George Ferris, the steel tycoon whose mammoth wheel became America's answer to the Eiffel tower. The interweaving and juxtaposition of these two men's different 'missions' - one good and one evll - provides the core to a non-fiction suspense drama of the highest order.
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