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

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2003

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Part 2, Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2: “An Awful Fight”

Part 2, Chapter 7 Summary: “Dedication Day”

Olmsted struggles with illness and work is behind schedule to meet the first October 1892 deadline. Leaving deputies in charge, he retired to Europe to convalesce. Here he inspected the Paris Exposition, but his health did not improve. Bloom’s Algerians mistakenly arrived a year early for the fair. Despite redoubling resources, high winds tore down some progress on the fair’s structures. Burnham summoned the eastern architects to increase the pace of progress. He also hired painter Francis Millet as the Director of Color. The fair had to contend with yet another storm. Despite protests, Burnham pressed on with the Waukesha pipeline. Another storm destroyed part of the Agriculture and the Liberal Arts building, with just four months until Dedication Day. In August alone three men died on the building. The same month, Burnham was named director of works, freeing him from time-consuming rifts with director general Davis. Olmsted returned, no better than when he had left, his deputy Harry Codman now also sick. Olmsted however returned to a changed park. 140,000 Chicago residents gathered for a ceremony in the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building.

Part 2, Chapter 8 Summary: “Prendergast”

On November 28th, 1892, Prendergast sent a crank letter to Alfred S. Trude, one of Chicago’s best criminal defense attorneys.

Part 2, Chapter 9 Summary: “I Want You at Once”

After several previous attempts to pitch the project, George Washington Gale Ferris’ great wheel was finally accepted as the focal point of the fair.

Part 2, Chapters 7-9 Analysis

The word “power” recurs throughout the book: “America’s pride in its growing power and international stature had fanned patriotism to a new intensity” (15). The engine of growth was propelling America to a new economic status on the world stage. New technologies, machines, and sources of energy powered the country. Larson’s vision of Chicago shrouded in smoke suggests a city hell-bent on success, willing to sacrifice morality at times in pursuit of industrial and economic attainment and political power. Burnham is the driver of the fair in Larson’s portrayal:

Burnham intensified his drive for more power. The constant clash between the exposition company and the national commission had become nearly unbearable. Even the congressional investigators had recognized that the overlapping jurisdiction was a source of discord and needless expense (178).

Ferris’ wheel, which has become a symbol of enjoyment and pleasure, was the focal point for the fair, America’s riposte to Eiffel. Ferris was suddenly catapulted to fame, like so many other figures in American society. Yet the fortunes of these powerful men fluctuated, Larson shows, like the revolutions of Ferris’ wheel. Prendergast was a man obsessed with such meteoric rises, convinced that his accession to power was nearly underway. Though insane, he is just one of the power hungry “devils” in Larson’s rendition of the Chicago Exposition. Journalism at the time both possessed and chased real power: “Prendergast read widely and possessed a good grasp of the grip-car wrecks, murders, and City Hall machinations covered so fervently by the city’s newspapers” (183). Larson refers self-referentially to the power of writing itself and its place in America’s cultural landscape.