The Devil in the White City

The Devil in the White City is a nonfiction book by American author Erik Larson, published in 2003, that tells parallel stories about the civic pride and big-city boosterism of the Gilded Age (c. 1870–1900) and the often gruesome crimes of a con man and murderer. Using a literary, novelistic style that lends the narrative the feel of a fictional tale, Larson intertwines the story of celebrated architect Daniel Burnham and his work in organizing the construction of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago with that of serial killer H.H. Holmes—the “devil” of the book’s title, whose victims included people he met and conned during the exposition. A critical and commercial success, The Devil in the White City was a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the 2003 National Book Award for nonfiction. “By juxtaposing these widely disparate lives,” the National Book Foundation judges wrote, “the author exposes the dark side of a glittering era.”

Setting

The Devil in the White City is set mainly in Chicago between 1890 and 1893, though one section tracks Holmes’s movements through other cities, including Philadelphia, after the exposition. Larson begins his book by commenting on ironic similarities between Burnham and Holmes: “two men, both handsome, both blue-eyed, and both unusually adept at their chosen skills.” He then points out a significant connection between them:

Although the two never met, at least not formally, their fates were linked by a single, magical event, one largely fallen from modern recollection but that in its time was considered to possess a transformative power nearly equal to that of the Civil War.

That event was the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Also known as the Chicago World’s Fair, it was open for only six months, but, as Larson notes, “During that time its gatekeepers recorded 27.5 million visits, this when the country’s total population was 65 million.”

Daniel Burnham and the “White City”

Indeed, the book devotes a great deal of attention to Daniel Burnham and his monumental efforts to organize the fair. Larson introduces Burnham as a world-renowned architect who “had done his work pretty well in Chicago, New York, Washington, San Francisco, Manila, and many other cities.” Before the fair, he was instrumental in the development of the skyscraper, and, after the exposition, he designed the Flatiron Building in New York City and Union Station in Washington, D.C.

Larson describes turn-of-the-century Chicago as a hustle-and-bustle place of vice and anonymous death, which “came early and often.” As he also notes, “A thousand trains a day entered or left Chicago.” It was one of several American cities, including New York and St. Louis, Missouri, that bid to host the 1893 exposition. Chicago’s newspaper editors and a mayor-appointed citizens committee rallied to the cause to promote the city’s bid. According to a committee resolution, “The men who have helped build Chicago want the fair, and, having a just and well-sustained claim, they intend to have it.” Finally, in February 1890 the announcement came that Chicago had won the bid.

The city hired Burnham and his partner, John Wellborn Root, to organize the fair. After Root died in 1891, Burnham continued on his own as the fair’s chief of construction and director of works. To bring the project to completion by the looming deadline of the fair’s opening date—May 1, 1893—he battled seemingly endless financing issues, which were made worse by a severe economic depression that began with the Panic of 1893.

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The book also details how Burnham assembled an impressive group to build the fair’s structures, including landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, architects Charles Follen McKim and Louis Sullivan, and engineer George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr., who had conceived an amusement ride that made its world debut at the fair: the Ferris wheel. It was not the fair’s only wondrous innovation. The zipper and the first all-electric kitchen were unveiled at the event, and fairgoers were introduced to new culinary delights, such as Shredded Wheat cereal, Juicy Fruit gum, and Cracker Jack candied popcorn. Indeed, shifting from the exposition’s organizers to its attendees, Larson provides excerpts of historical accounts from visitors—for example, one Mrs. D.C. Taylor’s observations of a belly dance performance.

The fair’s other attractions included its grand structures, which helped popularize the Beaux-Arts style of architecture for public buildings and city development. The Court of Honor had whitewashed facades that resembled marble, and its appearance inspired the fair’s nickname: the “White City.”

The devil (aka Dr. H.H. Holmes)

In contrast to the architects’ civic-minded industriousness were the dark deeds perpetrated by H.H. Holmes (the alias of Herman Webster Mudgett), which Larson recounts in short yet vivid vignettes. Holmes was a bigamist who committed various types of fraud throughout his criminal career. Hailing from the eastern U.S., he had moved to Chicago in 1886 and began working as a pharmacist under the name Dr. H.H. Holmes. Describing the impression he made on many in the city, Larson writes, “As he moved through the station, the glances of young women fell around him like wind-blown petals.” Indeed, possessing charm and charisma, Holmes is alleged to have seduced many women, often with promises of marriage, and swindled them out of their life savings before killing them.

The World’s Columbian Exposition, a place of fun and pleasure-seeking, became Holmes’s hunting ground. Near the site of the fair, he had an apartment building constructed where he allegedly committed several murders. The press later dubbed it his “Murder Castle,” and rumors abounded that his lair contained secret passageways and torture chambers.

Despite the many murders he was said to have committed, Holmes was ultimately caught on charges of insurance fraud, which led to the discovery of his more grisly crimes. However, investigators had enough evidence to try and convict him for the murder of only one of his victims, Benjamin Pitezel, his accomplice in insurance fraud, whom Holmes killed in 1894. (After this murder, Holmes killed three of Pitezel’s five children to keep them from alerting the authorities about their father’s death.) Before Holmes was executed by hanging on May 7, 1896, he confessed to 27 murders, although some of the people he claimed to have killed were still alive. Larson estimates, “At the very least he killed nine,” though Larson also notes that, by some accounts, Holmes might have had as many as 200 victims. As for a motive, Larson quotes from Holmes’s written confession:

I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing.

Modern historians consider Holmes one of America’s first serial killers.

At the end of The Devil in the White City, Larson explains that researching Holmes was challenging, because the serial killer “proved an elusive character.” He also discusses how he fleshed out some of the book’s most chilling passages, even though “no one other than Holmes was present during his murders—no one, that is, who survived.” Drawing inspiration from Truman Capote’s true-crime masterpiece In Cold Blood (1966), Larson “re-created” the details of two of Holmes’s killings: “To build my murder scenes, I used threads of known detail to weave a plausible account, as would a prosecutor in his closing arguments to a jury.”

Reception and legacy

The Devil in the White City spent more than seven years, in hardback and paperback formats, on the New York Times bestseller list. Along with being named a National Book Award finalist, the book won a 2004 Edgar Award in the Best Fact Crime category. Madness in the White City, a television documentary based on the book, aired on the National Geographic Channel in 2007. As of 2025 a feature film adaptation was in development by 20th Century Studios, with Martin Scorsese reportedly on board to direct and Leonardo DiCaprio in talks to star as one of the book’s two main characters.