Author Erik Larson takes us to Chicago–and points south–in The Devil in the White City.

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One morning in August 1886, as heat rose from the streets with the intensity of a child’s fever, a man calling himself H.H. Holmes walked into one of Chicago’s train stations. The air was stale and still, suffused with the scent of rotten peaches, horse excrement, and partically combusted Illinois anthracite. Half a dozen locomotives stood in the trainyard exhaling steam into the already-yellow sky.

Holmes acquired a ticket to a village called Englewood in the town of Lake, a municipality of 200,000 people that abutted Chicago’s southernmost boundary. The township encompassed the Union Stock Yards and two large parks: Washington Park, with lawns, gardens, and a popular racetrack, and Jackson Park, a desolate, undeveloped waste on the lakeshore.

Despite the heat Holmes looked fresh and crisp. As he moved through the station, the glances of young women fell around him like wind-blown petals.

…

He stepped from the train into the heart of Englewood and took a moment to survey his surroundings. He stood at the intersection of Sixty-third and Wallace. A telegraph pole at the corner held Fire Alarm Box No. 2475. In the distance rose the frames of several three-story houses under construction. He heard the concussion of hammers. Newly planted trees stood in soldierly ranks, but in the heat and haze they looked like desert troops gone too long without water. The air was still, moist, and suffused with the burned-licorice scent of freshly rolled macadam. On the corner stood a shop with a sign identifying it was E.S. Holton Drugs.

Commuting Moments Vol. I

Commuting Moments Vol. II

Vladimir Girshkin Schleps to Scarsdale