The Devil in the White City stands out as one of my favorite books. And I live near the location of the prison in Philadelphia where HH Holmes was hanged, though it’s now the site of a grocery store. So I’m regularly reminded by the historical marker sign.

Fairly often. One idea I've been kicking around is to try and port UCLA's "digital reconstruction" of the White City to a modern game engine: https://idre.ucla.edu/wce

“To Chicago and Back” is a travelogue book by the Bulgarian author Aleko Konstantinov describing his trip to the exposition. Very famous in Bulgaria, introducing America to us. Probably why the most Bulgarian immigrants still live in Chicago (based on the number of restaurants). There’s a bust of the author inside UChicago.

I personally love walking the grounds when I visit, imagining what it must’ve been.

On a related note, I visited the St Louis Art Museum which is on the site of the 1904 World's Fair. Then it contained many ornate buildings made of plaster: https://encyclopediavirginia.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/...

The art museum is in a remodeled building that sits on the top of the same hill overlooking the pond. What it looks like now: https://nohomejustroam.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/St-Lou...

Those world's fairs were something else.

Fairly often and I'm not from Chicago. If I could time travel, 1893 would be on my short list of destinations because of the Chicago world fair.

Another one would be 1851, the year of the first world fair in London. The old fairs would already be awesome for a modern visitor, but I can't imagine what the people living then must have felt, seeing things like electricity for the first time.

I can't visit them, but I did at least dedicate 2 chapters of my game to the 1851 one: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3040110/Outsider/