Intersecting Histories, or Travel Notes for the Next Trip to Chicago

I recently finished reading Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City. The book, published in 2003, is an account - basically nonfiction, with a little novelistic speculation included - of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, intertwined with the story of America's first known serial killer, Dr. H.H. Holmes. It's a very compelling piece of storytelling. The Chicago World's Fair brought us electric street lighting, the Ferris Wheel, and a certain vision of urban design. The fair itself was called the White City, because the huge, neoclassical buildings that filled Jackson Park were covered with a sort of white stucco. It was a monumental accomplishment to build, and must have been amazing to see.

Most of the buildings built for the fair were designed to be only temporary structures, but two were permanent - the Palace of Fine Arts, which is now the Museum of Science and Industry, and the World's Congress Building near Grant Park, which is now the Art Institute of Chicago. We visited both of them when we were in Chicago this summer - I had no idea that they were built for the World's Fair.

While we were there, I did read a book of Chicago ghost stories, which had a chapter about the murderous Dr. Holmes. Holmes (whose real name was Herman W. Mudgett) built a three story, block-long building at 63rd and Wallace, not far from Jackson Park. There he rented out rooms to an unknown number of people and many of them disappeared. His hotel had rooms that appeared designed for asphixiation, and a crematory and quicklime pits that could destroy bodies were in the basement. Holmes killed many people in Chicago, but didn't come to the attention of law enforcement while he lived there. He was finally arrested in Boston and jailed in Philadelphia for insurance fraud in 1894, and a relentless detective named Geyer found evidence, in a cross-country investigation that extended into Canada, that Holmes had murdered three children. That led to the grisley discoveries in Holmes' vacant hotel in Chicago. Not long after the police found evidence of the crimes committed there, the building burned to the ground under suspicious circumstances. The site was vacant until a Post Office was built there in 1938.

The weekend before last I had a bad cold and didn't feel like doing much so I spent more time that I would have otherwise working on Tom's family history. Both sides of his father's family emigrated from Germany and ended up in the Chicago area during the 19th century. I had been unable until a couple of months ago to find any records from his father's mother's family - we couldn't find anyone named Buesdorf anywhere - but I went back and reviewed the earliest census record that listed his grandparents as a married couple and they were living at 14 Kroll Street with the Bewersdorfs. Once I had the name spelled correctly, I could find records. The earliest record I could find for Tom's great-grandfather Charles Bewersdorf was in an 1894 Chicago city directory that listed him as a carpenter, living at the Kroll Street address. We used Google Maps to look for Kroll Street in modern day Chicago and couldn't find it. We figured it didn't exist any more, that it must have been destroyed in some round of urban renewal.

So last weekend I found a list of street name changes for Chicago, and found that Kroll Street had become Seeley. Because the 1900 Census went from 23rd Street to Kroll, I think Kroll Street is now the 2300 block of South Seeley, in the Pilsen neighborhood in Chicago. It was settled by German and Irish immigrants in the mid-19th century, who were replaced by Czech immigrants, who were replaced by Mexican-Americans. This block of South Seeley contains a mixture of multifamily and single family homes, all built in the late 19th century; I don't know which one is the one where the Bewersdorfs lived, but I've seen pictures of the street from Google Maps. One of those houses is - I think - where Charles Bewersdorf, the carpenter, lived in 1894, with his family.

It was interesting thinking, as I read the book, that some of Tom's ancestors were in Chicago while these events were taking place. Charles was a carpenter - was he one of the thousands of workmen who helped build the White City? Did they attend the fair on Chicago Day? Thankfully, they probably never stayed at Holmes' World's Fair Hotel.

In 1907 Charles bought property in Melrose Park, and by the 1910 Census, that's where he lived, along with his wife Wilhelmina. But I still wonder about 14 Kroll Street. Maybe the next time we are in Chicago we can try to find it. And I might just have to go visit that Post Office, too.