Burnham and Holmes

Part one of The Devil in the White City focuses on two contrasting figures, Daniel H. Burnham and Dr. H. H. Holmes, in the years leading up the Columbian Exposition. The book's author, Erik Larson, chooses to switch perspective between the two men from chapter to chapter in an attempt to draw parallels between the two men while simultaneously highlighting their differences.

                Burnham, in many ways, is used to represent the best of what Chicago (and perhaps the United States as a whole) has to offer. Rejected by Harvard and Yale, Burnham drifted from job to job before finally settling in the architectural field. He became good friends with another architect, John Root, and they soon started their own firm together. A few years later, they would be counted among the most respected and sought-after architects in the city Chicago. After Congress named Chicago the host for the Columbian Exposition in 1890, no one was surprised when Burnham and Root were named the lead designers.

                In contrast, Dr. H. H. Holmes (born Herman Webster Mudgett) represents the worst of what the city has to offer, though he possessed the same ingenuity and focus that made Burnham great. Much like Burnham, Holmes held a series of jobs before finally settling. Born in rural New Hampshire, Holmes worked his way out of the small town of Gilmanton and into one of the one of the best medical schools in the nation, the University of Michigan. He graduated and at the age of 24, served as a school principal in New York before finally picking up and moving to Chicago. Soon upon arriving, Holmes purchased a drug store and prospered, using his store profits to purchase the block-long building across the street.

                Fortuitously for Holmes, the location of his new building was only a short distance away from Jackson Park, the spot that Burnham eventually chose to house the fair. With the goal of outdoing France's Exposition Universelle of 1889 (which famously debuted the Eiffel Tower), Burnham brought together the country's best architects and landscapers. Managing the project was no easy task, Burnham had to give his architects room for creativity yet keep the buildings uniform enough to prevent clashing aesthetics. While his goal was to upstage the French, he also needed to be careful not to let the architects upstage each other.

                Worker's from all across the country traveled to Chicago in wake of the Exposition's announcement in hopes of finding work. Burnham hired many of these workers cheap, putting him at odds with the local unions. In need of cheap labor himself, Holmes hired many of these unemployed workers to shape his recent purchase. He frequently hired teams of workers to work on a section of the building and once that was complete, fire them and hire a new team to work on a another section. Holmes was creating a deathtrap. The hallways were disorienting and difficult to navigate. Each floor contained laundry chutes, large enough to fit a dead body, that led down into the building's basement, which housed an entirely odorless and soundproof kiln commissioned by the fictitious glass-bending company of which Holmes was the proprietor. With each construction team working on small sections, only Holmes was fully aware of the building's intricacies as well as their true purpose.