It’s curious that two men lived at roughly the same time, both build their dream buildings, and then became famous for completely different reasons. Of course, this grossly oversimplifies Larson’s parallel biography of the serial killer H.H. Holmes and architect Daniel Burnham in The Devil in the White City. Still, it’s absolutely chilling how similar Holmes and Burnham’s lives were. Larson shows us how much stranger reality is than fiction by putting these two lives into alternating chapters in one book.
Unless one is an aficionado of American architecture or a fan of World’s Fairs, H.H. Holmes is the more familiar figure in The Devil in the White City. Which is probably why Daniel Burnham gets more screen time. Most of this book is about Burnham and his associates’ quest to build Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. We learn about the fierce campaign Chicago waged to get the Fair and about the infighting that almost sank the whole project before it even got started. Larson is painstaking in showing just how much work the Exposition required. I was exhausted just reading about it and I have a lot of sympathy for Sophia Hayden, who designed the Fair’s Women’s Building and had a breakdown before it was completed because of the interference of the Women’s Committee. I’m surprised Burnham didn’t suffer a similar breakdown, considering how much interference he received from just about everyone he had to work with.
In the background of Burnham et al.‘s great endeavor is H.H. Holmes. While Burnham has to fight tooth and nail to make progress, Holmes’ charm deflected attention from creditors and worried family members until well after the end of the Exposition. Meanwhile, he was building what later came to be known as the Murder Castle. (It’s eerie to read about the problems both men had with workers, though Burnham was paying his and Holmes was dismissing them as soon as they completed their small, strange jobs.) The end of The Devil in the White City shows how Holmes was caught, but feels rushed compared to the loving attention Larson gave to the months Burnham and Co. sweated and worried if they would make their deadlines. If you’re looking for a biography of H.H. Holmes, look elsewhere.
The Devil in the White City is clearly a book about contrasts and similarities. The White City of the Fair and Burnham are constantly played off against Holmes and the Black City of Chicago. Remarkably, Larson doesn’t crib from Dickens to write about how the early 1890s in Chicago were the best of times and the worst of times. He doesn’t need do. The parallels are easy to draw from the way Larson writes about the highs and lows of that time and that place. The Devil in the White City was not what I expected, but I was intrigued by Larson’s approach to these men’s stories.