HH Holmes' Murder Castle: Where a Notorious Serial Killer Operated

During the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, Herman Webster Mudgett — known as H.H. Holmes — operated a three-story hotel he had designed himself at 63rd and Wallace Streets in Englewood. He called it the World's Fair Hotel. Police called it the Murder Castle. In 1895, newspapers and police claimed Holmes had designed the building for a single purpose: killing guests and disposing of the bodies. By their accounts, rooms had gas pipes that could be controlled from his office, trapdoors led to chutes that deposited bodies in the basement, and the basement held a kiln for cremation, a dissection table, and vats of acid and lime. He was said to have sold skeletons to medical schools. Historians now consider many of these details exaggerated or unproven. Holmes confessed to 27 murders before his 1896 execution, but the confession was partly false — some of the people he named were still alive — and only about nine killings are reasonably confirmed. The building was damaged by fire under suspicious circumstances in 1895; it was repaired and stood until 1938. Today the Englewood Post Office, at 611 W 63rd Street, occupies the site. Erik Larson's book The Devil in the White City brought Holmes back into public consciousness in 2003.