The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America Part V, Chapter 2 Summary

Recessional

  • At age seventy-three, Olmsted fears his dementia is getting worse. His son checks him into an asylum in Massachusetts, realizing at once that he designed the grounds.
  • "They didn't carry out my plan, confound them!" he later writes.
  • Olmsted dies shortly after in 1903.
  • The Ferris Wheel remains at the fair until 1894 when it's dismantled and reassembled in Chicago's North Side.
  • But it's not as cool anymore.
  • The wheel is reused for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904 and by 1906 it's completely gone.
  • Prendergast stands trial. He's prosecuted by Alfred S. Trude, the same man who had, by total coincidence, saved his crazed postcards from years earlier.
  • Prendergast is found guilty and sentenced to death.