Thursday, April 29, 2010

ROAR #5: The Devil in the White City

The Devil in the White City by: Erik Larson
p. 320 - the end

While going towars the end of this book the Fair is also ending and everyone in the fair is movin out of Chicago because they have finally been aware that the mass disapeerences of people have been gettin bigger. But on the bright side the Fair ended up raising over 1.5 million dollars to pay of the exposition debt. Holmes was the reason of all the murders they were going to hang him because he was found guilty and he said he killed 2 people but in reality he killed over 200 people because of all the disapperes that have been going on for a while. He was sentenced to be hanged and before he was hung he confesed of all his sins that he did. He killed his children and buried them in the backyard. He imprisoned people then killed them. So all of the mysterious murders during the Fair was all his fault. But he wasnt the only one killing people, on the other hand. Prendergast wanted to run for city council but when he went to go check if he could they told him kno and he got very angry and decided to take it out on the mayor. Towards the end of the fair they had a ceremony in memory of the Mayor as well.

"Grahams also brought to the courtroom the wart Holmes removed from Benjamin Pitezel's corpe and a wooden box containing Pitezel's skull" (Larson 384).

This book overall was a pretty good book, it wasnt what i expected but it made a good impression on me. I knew that it was Holmes behind all the killings it was so ovious because since he was incharge of everyone he had the acess to hide that it was him and he only let women stay in the hotel. Especially when he had to travel to get money he was pretty shaddy comin back to Chicago. But i wonder if he was in the group of the scariest men in Chicago, and if he was how did he enter the group? I enjoyed this book my anticipation rose everytime i read it.

ROAR #4: The Devil in the White City

The Devil in the White City by: Erik Larson
p. 245- 320
Despite of all the due dates of the big fair, the day was finally here, and people from all over the world came to visit the most exordinary event in the United States. In the beginning of the fair Burnham made the opening statements and the event started. It was everything that people expected, a job well done. More than 25 million people attended this event. The fair wasnt all good news peopele were scared to go becuase after the first day their stock went down and that made economic problems for people to participate. A lot of people wanted to attend to look at the exhibits but couldnt because they knowingly didnt want to out themselves through money crisis. In a result the fair didnt make a lot of money. Holmes was a very suspicious man, he only let women stay in the hotel and his waitress had disapeered, but he didnt really pay any mind to it. Holmes wondered if the fair was even going to make a good profit but it was to far to tell. On July 4 people came to come and see the exhibit but they still they didnt make a good profit, this dispointed Holmes. They were several problems hitting the fair, econmic problems, technical diffilculties, and weather made it extremely hard for them to run the fair because on a rainy day the ferris wheel had an accident and ended up coming up in flames and Mr. Burnhams was arrested becuase he was responsible for the fair. SOme people can to fix some of the problems at the fair. The same day of the incident which was July 6, Infanta Eulalia, the youngest sister of spains dead king Alfonso XII and daughter of exiled Queen Isabel II. Newspapers called her the Queen of the fair becuase she was a famous person who came to the fair. The Queen of the fair had such a good time at the fair that in the end she didnt want to leave due to the great attention and treatment she was gettin she was going to leave on wednesday with regret.

"Royalty at best is a troublesome customer for republicans to deal with and royalty of th spanish sort is the most troublesome of all. . . It was their custom to come late and go away early, leaving behind general regret that they had not come still later and gone away still earlier, or, better still perhaps, thst they had not come at all" (Larson 263).

It seems to me that this fair was a bad idea is some ways but it brought some possitivity to Chicago as the same time. Some of the problems that the Fair brought to chicago were the economic problems because the fair didnt really bring a lot of money because the stock was going down for some people so they had to be careful. Secondly, people kept coming up missing and since this big event was going on they didnt pay attention to them. As chicago was in the beginin of the book findin out that someone is missing wasnt a big surprise to those people at the time. Some positive feedbacks were famous poeple came to the Fair which made chicago look really good and they trete them so well that the famous individuals did not want to leave they wanted to leave with regret. This was good because they were giving a good name to Chicago apposed to what other people said about Chicago and scary murderest place.




Sunday, April 11, 2010

ROAR #3: The Devil in the White City

The Devil in the White City by: Erik Larson
p. 175 - 245

Holmes continued to construct what the Fair was going to look like and it was coming together but they came up with a new idea, they want to make it possible for the Hotel to be higher than then the eiffel tower. The only problem with making the building taller was how much they had to spend. Jobs started to get cut because of how much they have to spend on the new part of this area of the hotel and they thought that they couldnt meet the deadline of making the building. In order for Holmes to make money he decided to find the cure of alcoholism. He had to do that in order to cure Pitezel and to make it to then sell it. While Holmes was doing his job Burnham stayed in Chicago to keep up with the deadline because if they didnt finish it would be trouble for all people who were hired to make this fair a spectacular event that the U.S has ever seen to display the history of Christopher Columbus.
AS we back away from the fair a little Holmes gets married to a wealthy women and he does it in secret so that no one knew, but he seems to find himself in troublesome places whenever he tries to get involved in such things like that. Millie left her family and lived with Holmes. As Holmes was trying the find the cure he used Emelines body and then she was never seen again and he disposed of her body. More disaperences were happening in the fair and the everyday when the workers would go to work it would rain so they couldnt get much done.

"He spent $25,000 on drawings and additional specifications and used them to recruit a cadre of investors that included two prominent engineers, Robert Hunt, head of a major Chicago firm, Andrew Onderdonk, famous for helping construct the Canadian Pacific Railway" (Larson 179).

This part of the book made me question who Holmes really was. Was he a secret murderer or was he just an architect that was building the World's Fair. Emelines body disapeered and he was the last person with her so he must have used her body as a practice dummy and thats how she bacame a ghost tothe world because no one could find her. Is Holmes really focused on finishing the World Fair because i dnt see him trying too i just see him trynna make money which wasnt really hepling him because it wasnt making money? The eiffel tower is the compotition so why couldnt they decide to make it taller in the beggining so they didnt have to try to make it fit in the end?


ROAR #2: The Devil in the White City

The Devil in the White City by: Erik Larson
p. 69 - 175

   As I countinued reading The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson they finally decided that they were going to do the fair in Chicago. Since they were going to do the fair in Chicago they were making sure that the fair was going to be perfect, they decided that whoever was going to design the fair was going to be well skilled. Since France was a perfect, they made it a competition if the fair isnt the best people all over the world were goign to hate whoever built it, but whoever designed the best fair ever was going to become very famous. The architects that agreed on building the masterpiece were McKim, Post, and Peabody. The book goes into their past history and explains how they had arrived where they were at that momment, aggreing whether they were going to build the fair. Ideas were being thrown out into the workplace to see if anyone can come up with anything. Then suddently Holmes said why dont the fair be a hotel. More ideas started coming out afterwards. For example to make sure the Hotel was affortable to people who want to visit Chicago for this big event. They were finally coming to a glance for this fair but it didnt seem big enough for the event which was an impediment. While Holmes was hired to design this fair he realized that they have been an increase on how many people have been missing but, he didnt let that get in his way because he only came to Chicago to become rich and famous. The Fair was coming on to it's highlight at this point.

"Patients stayed in the three-story Livingston Hotel, a red-brick building of simple appealing design, with arched windows and a veranda along the full length of its facade, a fine place to rest between injections of Dr. Leslie Enraught Keely's "Gold cure" ( Larson 161).

In this part of the book it has come to my attention that people in Chicago have become to ust to the disapearences that they have forgotting that it is a huge crime for somebody to kill and be kidanpped. Since a big event is coming into this part of the city they trying to not make it a big deal because they didnt want to make Chicago look bad , do to the people who voted for the fair to be in Chicago. The the weird thing is Chicago in general sounds dangerous and people decided to have this famous fair there. As for Holmes, how can he jus countinue his work withought caring for the other lives that are being taking away. I know money is a big deal in this world but it didn have to go that far when people know about the killings and not say a word.