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The serial killer and the World's Fair
CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- In his new best seller, "The Devil in the White City," popular historian Erik Larson braids together three narrative strands involving serial murder, political assassination and architectural history. The murders drew him into the project, but only the architecture kept him from abandoning it. "Back in 1994, I read Caleb Carr's 'The Alienist' and was very impressed by the way he managed to evoke old New York in a serial murder story," Larson says. "I began to wonder if I couldn't do a nonfiction book about a real serial killer from the past. I began to research the history of serial murder." That research led Larson to the "devil" of his title, Dr. H. H. Holmes, the pseudonym of New Hampshire-born physician Herman Webster Mudgett, who is believed by many authorities to have been America's first urban serial killer. "Holmes was a textbook psychopath, and I was repelled by him," Larson said. "He was so over the top that I almost dropped the idea. I didn't want to write murder porn." What saved the book, released in February by Crown Publishers, was the backdrop of Holmes' main depredations: the "White City" of the World's Columbian Exposition. White City was the unofficial name for the fair, specifically the Court of Honor, which was the central core of all-white buildings the architects erected in Jackson Park. Probably the most momentous world's fair in the nation's history, the 1893 extravaganza on Chicago's South Side transformed American life in countless ways. "The fair was the first mass demonstration of electrical lighting and alternating current," Larson says. "Kodak photography first became popular there, so did motion pictures, cold breakfast cereals, pancake mix, zippers ... the list goes on and on." 'A dream of what a city could be'
In its bid for the fair, Chicago had to beat out strong competition from Philadelphia, St. Louis and particularly New York City. Once that uphill fight was won, the organizers had to battle time and nature to build their White City on the swampy shore of Lake Michigan. "The White City was a dream of what a city could be," Larson says. "I think modern urban planning was born at the fair." The fair's chief of construction was architect and urban planner Daniel H. Burnham, a man remembered for his credo: "Make no small plans, they have no magic to stir men's blood." The plans Burnham coaxed out of the nation's leading architects in 1891 were big, indeed. Much of Larson's book is taken up with the struggle to make them a reality. Burnham wasn't the only Chicagoan with big plans in 1891. Former Mayor Carter H. Harrison was planning a political comeback that would give him an unprecedented sixth term. Patrick Prendergast, an Irish immigrant, was planning to be appointed to high office by supporting Harrison, even though Harrison had never heard of him. And Holmes was planning to get rich from his World's Fair Hotel several miles to the west of the fair site. Holmes had previously done little of note except for passing bad checks, insurance fraud, bigamy, theft of services and a few scattered killings in various states. But the handsome young doctor had great hopes for the three-story hotel he had designed himself. His "castle" had little of the grandeur of the fair buildings, but it did fit the "form follows function" dictum of one of the White City architects, Louis Sullivan. The building's odd features -- the windowless and soundproofed rooms, the extra gas jets, the acid bath and industrial oven in the basement -- all fit the functions of murder and body disposal. "It was sort of a Roach Motel for humans," Larson says. "Guests checked in, and they didn't check out." 'A coward'
Holmes wasn't the first American serial killer, but his predecessors had been creatures of the frontier. Holmes was something new; an urban spider enticing victims into his web. "I think, at heart, Holmes was a coward about murder," the author says. "He did it in the most sneaky, safe and almost smarmy ways he could -- with gas, chloroform and suffocation." Some of the suspense in the book centers on whether the fair will be built on time and whether engineer George Ferris will complete the centerpiece of its Midway, the world's first Ferris Wheel. Once the fair and the wheel are up and running, the book follows a relentless course. Harrison is re-elected. The fair is a triumph. Prendergast is not appointed, and Holmes keeps killing. Then the frustrated Prendergast kills Harrison on the next-to-last night of the fair, arson strikes the abandoned White City buildings, and dedicated Philadelphia Police Detective Frank Geyer begins tracing Holmes' trail from city to city. Thanks to Geyer, Holmes was captured and hanged in Philadelphia in May 1896 for a murder there. "The old New York World estimated that Holmes had killed 200 people, but I think they pulled that figure out of thin air," Larson says. "No one is ever going to know for sure, but I'd estimate his victims at only several dozen." Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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