oh great white city

Final thoughts on The Devil in the White City: Reading non-fiction makes me feel like I'm accomplishing something. This book was super interesting although a little arduous at times; I didn't care about the details like how much the steel beams used to build foundations over Chicago's silty ground weigh. If something weighs over one ton I have no grasp of it, anyway. Of course the serial killer chapters of the book were more captivating than those dedicated to the architect. But all in all, I learned a lot about Chicago and the World's Columbian Exposition and about life at the turn of the century. He did use a sort of corny but effective trick that irked me a little bit but did give me goosebumps as it was obviously intended to do: He introduces a character or an idea of a character that piques the readers' curiosity and then ends the paragraph/chapter with "his/her/its name was Helen Keller/Frank Lloyd Wright/George Ferris/Pabst Blue Ribbon." He also sort of forces in details that are unnecessary, presumably because he went through a hell of a lot of trouble, reading dozens of books and poring over correspondences to learn these details, and he didn't want them to go to waste. One example, though it happens to be one that I actually did enjoy only becuase of its relavence to my life, is a separate sentence just to inform the reader that H.H. Holmes traveled up Broad Street from the prison to City Hall for his trail. Philadelphia, what what.


This book got really exciting at the end when the serial killer was incarcerated at a prison in South Philly at 10th and Reed Streets. As it turns out, the South Philly Acme stands on a lot where an enormous castle-like prison used to stand. That's why 11th Street bends in that weird way that confused me for the first six months I lived here. We sit in that grass and drink iced drinks from B2. A portion of a wall remains along Reed Street with a chainlink fence atop it.

me: yeah, it's so weird.

like he was hanged there

where the acme is

Greg: which aisle, i wonder

wikipedia says:

Moyamensing Prison was a prison in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that was erected in 1835.

The prison's cornerstone was laid April 2, 1832, and it was finished in 1835. For nearly 140 years the Moyamensing, or New County, Prison dominated 1400 South 10th Street, at the southwest intersection with Passyunk Avenue and Reed Streets in South Philadelphia. It was an eclectic, romantic structure, that included a particularly fine Egyptian Revival wing, later combined with the main prison in 1868 and used to house women prisoners.

On July 1, 1849, when Edgar Allan Poe was in Philadelphia, he drank, became drunk and hallucinatory, and made a suicide attempt. He was detained for public drunkenness and incarcerated for one night in Moyamensing Prison.

On May 7, 1896, serial murderer H. H. Holmes was hanged at the prison. Holmes' neck did not snap immediately; he instead died slowly, twitching over ten minutes before being pronounced dead 15 minutes after the trap was sprung.

The prison was destroyed in 1968. Today, all that is left is a low heavy masonry stone wall remaining from the prison of the 1830s on the site along Reed Street.

Here's a final quote that I really liked from the last few pages of the book, when the author is telling what happened to all the major fair planners:

Sol Bloom, chief of the Midway, emerged from the fair a rich young man. He invested heavily in a company that bought perishable foods and shipped them in the latest refrigerated cars to far-off cities. It was a fine, forward-looking business. But the Pullman strike halted all train traffic through Chigaco, and the perishable foods rotted in their traincars. He was ruined. He was still young, however, and still Bloom. He used his remaining funds to buy two expensive suits, on the theory that whatever he did next, he had to look convincing. "But one thing was quite clear..." he wrote. "[B]eing broke didn't disturb me in the least. I had started with nothing, and if I now found myself with nothing, I was at least even. Actually, I was much better than even: I had had a wonderful time."

A man after my own heart.