The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America

At Sixty-third and Wallace, Ned’s sister Gertrude leaves abruptly and tensions between he and Julia increase. Ned demurs signs that there was something between Holmes and his wife. Holmes sells Ned the business and offers the family life insurance. The business’ debts come to light. Convinced that there is an affair after all, the couple fight and Ned moves downtown, later divorcing Julia but failing to gain custody of Pearl. Holmes decides against his earlier proposal to Julia.

Burnham rarely saw his family, so consumed was he by the preparations for the fair. The work proceeded slowly, hampered by rocky relations between the National Commission and the Exposition Company, and the architects’ lateness in delivering drawings. Jackson Park’s unstable soil was also a hindrance. In 1891 former mayor Carter Henry Harrison lost to Hempstead Washburne, a Republican. Edison advised the fair be lit with the standard DC current, and lighting companies fought for the fair. Olmsted became ill and the park muddy in the wet weather. The drawings were finished in the summer of 1891, leaving just seven months for construction. “Buffalo Bill” and others were turned down for concessions, though the pygmy enterprise was successful. Inventors and architects, including Eiffel himself, submitted proposals for the Exposition’s answer to the Eiffel Tower. Initially rebuffed in his proposals by the Exposition’s Commissioners, Sol Bloom is rehired at an absurdly high cost.

Burnham created a new police force, the Columbian Guard, to counteract crime during the fair, and an Exposition fire department. Since the city’s water supply was compromised by flooding, Burnham planned to source a safer supply piped from the famous springs at Waukesha, Wisconsin. Burnham’s chief structural engineer, Abraham Gottlieb, conceded a potentially catastrophic error, compounded by the pace at which the work was progressing. Gottlieb resigned and was replaced by Edward Shankland of Burnham’s firm, who had a nationwide reputation for bridge construction. Bloom discovered that the Harvard professor, Frederick Putnam, entrusted with the Midway, was less than confident. Burnham instead backed the young Bloom. Hayden lapsed into a depression after sustained conflicts with Bertha Honore Palmer, head of the fair’s Board of Lady Managers. Committee interference in the fair hindered its progress more generally. Four deaths and dozens of injuries troubled construction. The fair was behind schedule, and banks and companies across America were failing.