The Devil in the White City

by Erik Larson

It was this big talk, not the persistent southwesterly breeze, that had prompted New York editor Charles Anderson Dana to nickname Chicago “the Windy City.”

Once built, the Montauk was so novel, so tall, it defied description by conventional means. No one knows who coined the term, but it fit, and the Montauk became the first building to be called a skyscraper.

Events and people captured his attention the way moving objects caught the notice of an amphibian: first a machinelike registration of proximity, next a calculation of worth, and last a decision to act or remain motionless. When he resolved at last to move to Chicago, he was still using his given name, Herman Webster Mudgett.

After a foiled raid on a graveyard in New Albany, Indiana, on February 24, 1890, Dr. W. H. Wathen, head of the Kentucky Medical College, told a Tribune reporter, “The gentlemen were acting not for the Kentucky School of Medicine nor for themselves individually, but for the medical schools of Louisville to which the human subject is as necessary as breath to life.” Just three weeks later the physicians of Louisville were at it again. They attempted to rob a grave at the State Asylum for the Insane in Anchorage, Kentucky, this time on behalf of the University of Louisville. “Yes, the party was sent out by us,” a senior school official said. “We must have bodies, and if the State won’t give them to us we must steal them. The winter classes were large and used up so many subjects that there are none for the spring classes.” He saw no need to apologize.

A Princeton professor of political economy named Walter Wyckoff disguised himself as an unskilled laborer and spent a year traveling and working among the nation’s growing army of unemployed men, including a stint at Jackson Park.

Competition for the few jobs available had intensified as thousands of unemployed men from around the country—unhappily bearing the label “hobo,” derived possibly from the railroad cry “ho, boy”—converged on Chicago in hopes of getting exposition work.

Millet quickly proved his worth. After some experimentation he settled on “ordinary white lead and oil” as the best paint for staff, then developed a means of applying the paint not by brush but through a hose with a special nozzle fashioned from a length of gas pipe—the first spray paint. Burnham nicknamed Millet and his paint crews “the Whitewash Gang.”

On Saturday evening, May 7, 1892, McElroy loaded a special train with pipes, picks, shovels, and three hundred men and set off for Waukesha to dig his pipeline under cover of darkness. Word of the expedition beat the train to Waukesha. As it pulled into the station, someone rang the village firebell, and soon a large force of men armed with clubs, pistols, and shotguns converged on the train. Two fire engines arrived hissing steam, their crews ready to blast the pipelayers with water. One village leader told McElroy that if he went ahead with his plan, he would not leave town alive.

The dedication had been anticipated nationwide. Francis J. Bellamy, an editor of Youth’s Companion, thought it would be a fine thing if on that day all the schoolchildren of America, in unison, offered something to their nation. He composed a pledge that the Bureau of Education mailed to virtually every school. As originally worded, it began, “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands …”

“I have on hand a great project for the World’s Fair in Chicago. I am going to build a vertically revolving wheel 250’ in dia.”