Compare And Contrast Burnham And The Devil In The White City

Isaac Shaw

October 9, 2014

Hist 2020 Dr. Paulauskas

Paper #1

In the 1890’s, America was starting to experience changes leading to new revelations in the way it functioned in mass communication, mass transportation, and urbanization. In Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City, he brings the seemingly different stories of two men in this time period, one a mass murder, H.H. Holmes and, the other a grand architect, Daniel Burnham to explain how America was changing into a more modern era. First, both Burnham and Holmes used the popularity of urbanization to achieve their individual goals. In Burnham’s case, he needed to bring together large amounts of people into one place and have those people pridefully working towards one common goal.

Burnham would have failed in building the World’s Fair without the use of modern building techniques that allowed him to build structures on a grand scale. He employed the use of his deceased partner John Root’s new floating foundation technique to build the World’s Fair structure to new heights and sizes (Larson 129). On the other hand, H.H. Holmes used modern stove techniques in order to efficiently burn the bodies of his victims in his kiln. He achieved this from enlisting the help of a furnace professional to assist in obtaining a sufficient internal temperature in the kiln to burn a human body without a trace (Larson

In order to get the message out to the American people, one would need a form of mass communication in order to be effective. Holmes and Burnham exploited the fact that America had gained mass literacy and new exposure to mass media forms such as newspapers and telegraphs. Holmes ran a fairly successful business based upon customers sending and receiving medical orders through the mail system (Larson 92). He would have had to drastically alter his business model if people did not have the ability to read, write, and communicate to the business in the reasonable manner. Burnham, in a similar fashion, relied on the success of Frank Millet, his director of functions, to advertise and market to get more people through the gates of the fair (Larson 241). Frank Millet needed to get out a message to the people that the fair was the place to go, and he did this through promoting festive themed events and days such as the Midway Ball, which gained quite a bit a newspaper based press (Larson