Ironic fire

Although the World Fair brought lots of excitement to Chicago, it left the city in ruins. This characterizes how if something is good on the outside, but "wicked" on the inside, the it will result in ruins anyway, just like Chicago. I thought there was extreme irony present in the last 3-4 chapters, because the building up of the fair was not what attracted the most people, the near destruction of the fair is what attracted the most. The end of the fair not only marked a milestone in the history of Chicago, but it also ended the section and represented the Gilded Age with the result of a complete epidemic of  disorder. The assassination of Harrison, Burnham's end to the fair, the escape of Holmes, the increased depression, the low economy, and the resulting low quality of life and widened income gap was all that was left of the City. Holmes escape and the success of the World Fair as a whole both resulted from a fire, which is ironic because throughout the book till now, fire symbolized evil and foreshadowed wicked events. Even Pendergast was used as an ironic metaphor of evil along with Holmes, representing the darker and more negative aspects of the Gilded Age. However, the only questions that constantly flowed through my mind after the reading were: Why did the fire attract more people than the fair itself? Why was there more people at the fair after the fire than even at the mayor's memorial and what does this say about Americans' sense of nationalism?