Aboard the Olympic
- It's April 14, 1912, and Daniel Hudson Burnham and his wife Margaret are sailing to Europe aboard the R.M.S. Olympic.
- By this time, Burnham has become a household name. He's famous for being the architect who designed impressive buildings in major cities throughout the world.
- But most importantly, he's the guy who designed perhaps the greatest event in history: the 1893 Chicago World's Fair.
- He learns that the Olympic's twin ship sailing in the opposite direction has struck an iceberg. Aboard the ship is his friend Francis Millet.
- Burnham reminisces how the two were brought together by the Chicago fair, known formally as World's Columbian Exposition (to commemorate the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus' discovery of America)—and informally known as the White City.
- The 1893 fair had lasted only six months but recorded 27.5 million visits during a time when the country's total population was 65 million.
- The fair takes over one square mile on the western border of the city and fills more than two hundred elaborately designed buildings.
- Visitors experience things for the first time, from lightbulbs to Cracker Jacks, and whole villages are imported from exotic parts of the world.
- "Everything about the fair was exotic and, above all, immense." (Prologue.8)
- Never before have so many famous people been gathered in one place: Buffalo Bill, Susan B. Anthony, Thomas Edison, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, Nikola Tesla, and Theodore Roosevelt—to name a few.
- But at the same time that good things are happening in the White City, some very bad things are happening outside.
- Burnham would later learn of the murderer who had moved among the beautiful things he had created.
- He would also learn of the letters describing daughters who had come to the city and then "fallen silent" (Prologue.9) and the man, who went by the alias Dr. H. H. Holmes and described himself as the Devil.
- Fasten your seatbelts Shmoopers, it's going to be a creepy ride.
- But for now, back on the ship, Burnham thinks about his friend Millet, one of the few builders of the fair still alive. The Olympic is at that moment speeding north to help out the sinking ship.
- That night, Burnham cannot stop thinking about the fair.