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

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2003

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.

Download PDF

Part 3, Chapters 20-22Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 3: “In the White City”

Part 3, Chapter 20 Summary: “Departures”

As the fair draws to a close, it is suggested that the buildings and exhibits should be set aflame rather than lying dormant. Mayor Harrison hires thousands of street cleaners to employ the 10,000 workers who would become unemployed at the end of the fair. Olmsted retires from his fair duties due to his declining health. Louis Sullivan, feted for his Transportation Building, fires the then junior Frank Lloyd Wright. Under pressure from his creditors and private investigators of his victims’ families, Holmes sets the top floor of his hotel on fire. The insurance company becomes suspicious and launches their own investigation, during which Holmes’ numerous debts come to light. They hire an attorney, Chamberlain, who invites Holmes to his office. Unbeknownst to Holmes, some two dozen creditors, their attorneys and one police officer are also present. He mollified them, but when they lean toward arrest, Holmes flees to Minnie Williams’ land in Fort Worth, Texas. Holmes brings his fiancée, Georgiana Yoke, and insures his assistant Pitezel’s life for $10,000.

Part 3, Chapter 21 Summary: “Nightfall”

Attendance at the fair rose sharply in its final month of October. Millet organized an elaborate program of events ahead of closing day on October 30th. On American Cities Day Mayor Harrison announced that he would marry his fiancée Anna in November. Prendergast was denied access to the Unity Building where Governor John Altgeld had his office. Harrison returned home to dinner with his family, before Prendergast shot him. Prendergast confessed at the nearby Desplaines police station that he had killed Harrison because he had failed to give Prendergast the job he was promised. The fair’s closing ceremony became a memorial service. With canon shots from the warship Michigan and “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the fair was over.

Part 3, Chapter 22 Summary: “The Black City”

Thousands of unemployed joined the ranks of Chicago’s homeless and dispossessed. Burnham’s photographer Charles Arnold captured the scene of devastation in Jackson Park the winter after the fair closed. Fires soon enveloped the fair’s structures. George Pullman continued to cut jobs despite his own prosperity. Two thousand workers went on strike on May 11th, 1894. The list of missing persons following the fair was lengthy; Holmes’ “castle of death” was eventually discovered.

Part 3, Chapters 20-22 Analysis

The fiery ending of both the fair and Holmes’ hotel draws the worlds of Burnham and Holmes together. The destruction of both signals the beginning of the end for Holmes, and for Larson’s book, which is in part propelled by the reader’s curiosity and anxiety about his fate. Harrison’s funeral is another sign that the story is drawing to a close: “It was a difficult ride for him. He had passed this way before, to bury John Root. The fair had begun with death, and now it had ended with death” (332). After the end of the fair, is it as though the spell is ended. Chicagoans return to unemployment, and the winter is a hard one. The gruesome realities of Holmes’ castle of death are finally discovered, and the truth about Holmes and his hotel reaches the national newspapers. With these horrific revelations, the book ends, along with the public’s innocence about the activities of one of America’s first and most notorious serial killers.