View of the World's Fair Hotel (labelled as 'Holmes' 'Castle',' but also known as the 'Murder Castle,' after it's actual purpose became known) (on W. 63rd Street), Chicago, Illinois, mid 1890s. The structure was designed by serial murderer Herman Webster Mudgett (better known by his alias H.H. Holmes), a phramacist who built the structure to lure his, mostly female, victims from the World's Columbian Exposition, then occuring in Chicago. The interior was a mazelike, with rooms for torturing his captive victims, as well as both a lime pit and furances in the basement, which were used to dispose of the bodies. Holmes was convicted of four murders, but he confessed to 27 and there was widespread, and credible, speculation that he could have been responsible for several hundred. The building bured down in 1895. The photo originally appeared in the book 'The Holmes-Pitezel Case, a History of the Greatest Crime of the Century' (by Frank P. Geyer). (Photo by Chicago History Museum/Getty Images)
