Daniel H. Burnham
Daniel Burnham is one of America's most skilled 19th and early 20th century architects. Based in Chicago, he and his partner John Root are given the responsibility of designing and overseeing the construction of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, officially the World's Columbian Exposition. Of the two partners, Burnham is the more skilled businessman and acts as the public relations expert for the both of them. Creating an incredible Fair and improving the reputation of the city of Chicago is a monumental task, one he accomplishes with a strong sense of determination and tenacity. He faces numerous obstacles but can be said to have carried out his task successfully and memorably.
John Root
John Root is the partner of Daniel Burnham in their architectural firm and in the endeavor of designing and constructing the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. Root is the more talented architect of the two and is admired for his intelligence. His characteristics provide a perfect complement to Burnham, as he lacks the business and social skills of his partner. Before construction can begin on the fair, Root contracts an illness and ultimately dies in 1891.
Frederick Law Olmsted
Frederick Law Olmsted is a talented and well-established landscape architect whom Burnham and Root hire to assist them in the creation of the fair. Having previously worked on New York City's Central Park and taking great pride in his profession, Olmsted agrees to help with the driving goal of validating his work. Throughout the book, Olmsted is temperamental and endures periods of depression and illness while he tackles both the Fair and outside work. Despite his struggles, he is an important contributor to the success of the Fair. After the Fair his health and mental state worsen precipitously, and he is committed by his family to the McLean Asylum, where he dies.
Herman Webster Mudgett (aka Dr. H.H. Holmes)
Mudgett was born to a religious family in New Hampshire. He grows up a clearly intelligent but strange boy, and odd things happen to those around him. He attends high school, becomes a teacher, and goes to medical school. Though he performs in a lackluster fashion, he opens a practice. His good luck and undeniable charm inure him to many people. He turns to insurance fraud to make money, though it seems that he actually does have random amounts of money. He chooses a fake name, H.H. Holmes, when he moves to Chicago. There he establishes a pharmacy after buying out an elderly woman. He purchases the lot across the street and constructs a macabre and imposing building which he decides to turn into a hotel once he hears of the imminent World's Fair; it is in this hotel he carries out numerous seductions and murders of young women. He marries many times and assumes fake names. Finally, he is apprehended when numerous creditors band together, and his other, more sanguinary crimes are revealed through the tenacious work of Detective Frank Geyer. He is found guilty and given the death sentence. Oddly, at the end of his life he claims that he is turning into the Devil himself, a ludicrous claim made slightly more compelling by the fact that numerous people associated with him meet unfortunate accidents or deaths.
Frank Geyer
Frank Geyer is a detective in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania who is assigned Holmes' case when he is brought in for insurance fraud. Geyer is immediately suspicious of Holmes and begins to investigate his past. It is at this point that he becomes convinced that Holmes is guilty of a multitude of crimes, including the murder of three children in his care. Determined to uncover the truth, Geyer goes on a journey across the Midwest, following in the footsteps of Holmes and the missing children until he finds the answers he's been looking for.
Francois "Frank" Millet
A painter and one of Burnham's close friends and allies in the planning of the Fair. He replaces William Pretyman as the director of color, and decides that the buildings around the Court of Honor should be all white. He dies in the sinking of the Titanic.
Chauncey Depew
The president of New York Central Railroad and a celebrated orator and writer.
Mrs. Holton
The elderly woman whose drugstore Holmes volunteers to purchase and turn around. She eventually goes to California after her husband dies to be with her family, though we do not know if this is true.
Dankmar Adler
Sullivan's partner in their influential Chicago architectural firm. He is bitter toward Burnham and Root and does not play a large role in the Fair.
Louis Sullivan
A deeply ambitious young Chicago architect and rival of Burnham's. He agrees to work on the Fair but is critical of it, especially later in life. He decries the "dead vernacular" of the neoclassical buildings promoted by the other architects and advocates "form follows function," a mantra he is later famous for. He designs the Transportation Building for the Fair. After the Fair he experiences trouble with his partner, Dankmar Adler, and the firm only completes two buildings in all of 1893. Later, though, he befriends Frank Lloyd Wright and the men's stars rise together.
Clara Lovering
Holmes's wife whom he married when he was going by his real name. He leaves her, but they still remain officially married.
Myrta Belknap
Holmes's second wife, a young woman he was attracted to when he was in Minneapolis for a brief time. He courts her, they marry, and she moves to Chicago. She becomes unhappy with his lack of attention to her, especially when she has their child, and eventually moves in with her parents who have relocated to the area. Holmes is then attentive enough to her and the child, but they live separate lives.
Henry "Harry" Sargent Codman
A talented young landscape architect who works at Olmsted's firm and becomes the older man's friend and confidante. Sadly, he dies at age twenty-nine, devastating Olmsted.
Patrick Eugene Joseph Prendergast
A young Irish immigrant who is subject to worsening mental deterioration. He is obsessed with the former mayor, Carter Henry Harrison, and throws himself into the campaign for the April 1891 election. He assumes he will get a position in the administration. Harrison loses but wins when he runs yet again in 1893. Throughout the campaigns Prendergast had been writing letters to Chicago's notable men, claiming to be one of them and telling them he'd be working with them soon. When it becomes clear that Harrison has no idea who he is and is not actually going to appoint him to corporation counsel, he goes to Harrison's house and shoots them. He then turns himself in, and is found guilty and given the death penalty by a jury.
Carter Henry Harrison
A former mayor of Chicago who is hoping to win again in 1891. He loses this election but does win the 1893 one. Prendergast, a man whom he's never even heard of, shoots and kills him near the end of the Fair because he is insane and thinks he deserves a patronage position.
Charles Chappell
A machinist who works on Holmes's house. Holmes discovers that Chappell has experience articulating skeletons and asks him to do this a few times. Chappell later cooperates with police and tells them about Holmes's requests.
Patrick Quinlan
Holmes's building's caretaker. He is somewhat of an unsavory sort but we do not know much about him.
Benjamin Pitezel
A carpenter Holmes hires in 1889 and who quickly becomes Holmes's friend and all-round assistant. He apparently trusts Holmes all the way up until the point where Holmes betrays him and actually kills him in order to claim Pitezel's life insurance, something Pitezel had thought was something they'd fake together.
George B. Post
A famous New York architect. He designs the Fair's largest building, the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building.
Charles McKim
A famous New York architect. He designs the Agriculture Building for the Fair. Though initially ambivalent about participating, he comes to see the Fair as a glorious thing in his life.
Richard M. Hunt
A famous New York architect of a more classical bent. He designs the Administration Building, the most important at the Fair.
Lyman Gage
A bank president and, for a time, the president of the Exposition Company.
Icilius "Ned" Connor
A jeweler who moves to Chicago with his wife, daughter, and wife's sister. Ned gets a job working at Holmes's drugstore. He has a troubled relationship with his wife and wonders if she and Holmes have taken up together. He is somewhat mollified when Holmes presents him with an enticing offer to buy out the pharmacy, which he accepts. Not long after, though, creditors begin demanding repayment of debts and Holmes tells Ned placidly that all businesses have debts. Ned finally decides to leave, as his marriage is moribund, and moves out and finds a new job.
Julia Connor
Ned's wife, mother of Pearl, and sister of Gertrude. She becomes enamored of Holmes and tired of her husband. Holmes promises to marry her but, after she gets pregnant, says he needs to perform an abortion on her and that they can have children at a later point. During this faux-abortion, Holmes kills her.
Gertrude Connor
Julia's eighteen-year-old sister who moves to Chicago and takes a job managing Holmes's mail-order medicine company. She later leaves Chicago under mysterious circumstances, which Ned assumes is due to a relationship with Holmes. She dies not long after returning home to Iowa.
Jonathan Belknap
Myrta's wealthy great-uncle who is wary of Holmes though his great-niece seems to love him. He gives Holmes a check for $2500 to help the couple with a house, and Holmes forges another. Belknap confronts him on it and forgives the contrite Holmes, but still dislikes him. He has an uncomfortable stay in the empty hotel and wonders later if there was some evil deed to be perpetrated on him.
Mrs. Crowe
A neighbor of Julia's in Holmes's building, she finds it very strange when Julia and Pearl never show up on Christmas morning to celebrate.
Augustus St. Gaudens
A famous American sculptor who works with McKim on his designs.
George Davis
The director-general of the National Commission, an organization of politicians with control over the Fair. He butts heads with Burnham many times.
Sophia Hayden
A young architect who wins a competition to design the Woman's Building. She clashes with the society matron, Berthe Honore Palmer, who desires more control over the building because she is head of the Board of Lady Managers. Hayden is driven to a mental breakdown.
Charles Atwood
An architectural designer whom Burnham reluctantly meets with to replace Root. He is not impressed at first, but then learns that Atwood's behavior is due to the fact that he is an opium addict. He hires him anyway, considering him a genius.
Lieutenant Mason A. Schufeldt
A young army officer tasked with procuring a tribe of Pygmies in Zanzibar to bring to the Fair. He dies of unknown causes there and the pygmies do not come.
Sol Bloom
A young and tenacious entrepreneur who is hired as the leader of concession selection for the Midway Plaisance. He has a knack for promotion and raises the profile of the Fair. After the Fair he is a wealthy and popular man who becomes a congressman and a signer of the United Nation's charter.
Abraham Gottlieb
Burnham's chief structural engineer, who resigns after he admits he did not calculate the wind loads for the buildings properly. He is eventually replaced.
Lieutenant William "Buffalo Bill" Cody
The famous fighter and showman who brings his Wild West show next door to Jackson Park. It is wildly successful and makes Buffalo Bill a great deal of money, but his fortunes suffer after the fair.
Emeline Cigrand
A young, friendly, and vivacious woman Pitezel had met when seeking a cure for drunkenness in Dwight, Illinois. He'd written Holmes of the 24-year-old beauty, and Holmes invites her to come work for him as his personal secretary. Excited by the glamour of Chicago, Emeline accepts and moves to the city. She and Holmes begin dating and she is infatuated with him. She agrees to marry Holmes when he asks. Holmes kills her and pretends that she has moved away to get married, even faking marriage announcement cards.
Alfred S. Trude
One of Chicago's best criminal defense attorneys. Prendergast writes him with admonitions and advice, and speaks to him like an equal. Trude finds this odd but does nothing. He eventually prosecutes Prendergast in court.
George Washington Gale Ferris
A 33-year-old engineer from Pittsburgh who runs a steel-inspection company and devises the idea for the Ferris Wheel. He is lauded for his invention. He dies a few years after the Fair's close from typhoid fever.
Dr. and Mrs. Lawrence
Neighbors and friends of Emeline's who keep asking Holmes about the young woman's disappearance. They claim to suspect Holmes killed Emeline but never go to the police or move away.
Charles Eliot
A renowned Boston landscape architect whom Olmsted brings on to help him after Codman's death.
Rufus Ulrich
Olmsted's superintendent whom he has to leave in charge of a lot of the work when he is suffering from ill health. Olmsted does not trust Ulrich very much and thinks he is to prone to micromanagement.
Minnie Williams
A young, plain woman whom Holmes had met and courted in Boston years back under a different name (Harry Gordon). She had been in love with Holmes but their relationship flagged until he started writing her again. She moves to Chicago to be Holmes's personal stenographer and soon Holmes asks her to marry him. Her sister Anna is unsure about this relationship, so Minnie is elated when Holmes suggests she invite Anna to come out to the Fair. The visit goes well, but not long after Holmes kills Minnie and Anna.
Anna Williams
Minnie's sister who is initially wary of Holmes. She enjoys her visit to Chicago and feels better about Holmes, especially when he proposes the three of them travel the country and abroad, and that he will set her up doing art, which is her particular interest. Holmes kills her by trapping her in his walk-in vault and pumping in gas.
Carrie Pitezel
Benjamin Pitezel's wife and mother to Alice, Nellie, Howard, and others. She trusts Holmes initially and believes him when he tells her Benjamin is in hiding while they get the insurance claim. She sends her three eldest children to him, something she is later to regret deeply when Holmes murders them all.
Alice Pitezel
Benjamin and Carrie's 15-year-old daughter. Holmes kills her.
Nellie Pitezel
Benjamin and Carrie's 11-year-old daughter. Holmes kills her.
Howard Pitezel
Benjamin and Carrie's eight-year-old son. Holmes kills him.
Georgiana Yoke
A young woman Holmes meets at a department store where she works as a salesgirl. She becomes his last wife, knowing nothing of her husband's depravity. He does tell her he has to use a different name on their marriage license because it's his dead uncle's whom he loved so much, and she is fine with that.
Luther Rice
The construction chief of the Ferris Wheel.
W.F. Gronau
Ferris's partner.
Charles Dudley Arnold
The single photographer to whom Burnham gives a monopoly over images of the Fair.
Theodore Dreiser
A charming young reporter who is tasked with covering the special visit of 24 teachers who'd won a contest to go to the Fair. He falls for one, Sara Osborne White, and eventually asks her to marry him.
George B Chamberlain
An attorney hired by Holmes's creditors and counsel to Chicago Lafayette Collection Agency. He claims to be the first to suspect Holmes as a criminal. He is perturbed at how smooth Holmes is, and presses to have him arrested.
William Baker
The Exposition president after Gage steps down.
John King
A journalist whom Holmes enlists to publish and market his memoir.
