611 W. 63rd St, Chicago, IL 60621
In 1886, a man named Herman Webster Mudgett arrived in Chicago under the alias Dr. Henry Howard Holmes. Within a few years, he had taken over a pharmacy in the Englewood neighborhood and began construction on a massive, three-story building that would come to be known as the "Murder Castle." Timing the completion of his project with the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, Holmes intended to use the influx of tourists as a steady stream of potential victims.
The building was a masterpiece of macabre engineering. Holmes frequently fired contractors during construction, ensuring that he was the only person who understood the full, labyrinthine layout. The upper floors were filled with windowless rooms, stairways that led to nowhere, and doors that opened into brick walls. Many of these rooms were reportedly rigged with gas jets, allowing Holmes to asphyxiate his guests from a control panel in his own bedroom. Other rooms were soundproofed or lined with iron plates to prevent escape.
Below the floorboards, Holmes installed chutes that led directly to the basement. There, investigators later found a dissection table, vats of acid, and a crematorium. Holmes, a trained physician, was rumored to have stripped the flesh from his victims' bodies to sell their skeletons to medical schools. While Holmes eventually confessed to 27 murders, some estimates of his actual body count range as high as 200, though modern historians believe the number is likely closer to nine confirmed deaths.
His spree finally ended not in Chicago, but after a failed insurance scam involving the murder of his business partner, Benjamin Pitezel, and three of Pitezel’s children. Holmes was hanged at Philadelphia County Prison on May 7, 1896.
Just a few weeks after H.H. Holmes' execution in 1896, an arsonist destroyed the Murder Castle. The remnants sat until 1936, when the site was cleared and a post office was built to replace the site of countless horrors.
The site is located just west of where I-94 splits with I-90 in South Chicago. Heading west on W 63rd St, the post office will be on your left as soon as you pass over the railroad tracks, at the corner of W 63rd and S Lowe Ave.
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