Getaway: Pullman National Monument.
Neighborhood is significant
Mike Shymanski was born in an impoverished coal company town in northeast Pennsylvania, moved to Chicago to study architecture as a young man and ended up living in Pullman — another company town, albeit a much nicer one, on the south side of Chicago.
“The two communities couldn’t have been more different,” said Shymanski, who spent the first years of his life in Larksville, Pa., where the Delaware and Hudson Co. mined anthracite coal from 1871 to the 1950s.
The company owned many of the buildings in the town, paid miners in “scrip” (its own currency) and was “notorious” for its poor treatment of miners and their families, Shymanski said.
Pullman opened in 1881 as a “model industrial town” and had grown to 9,000 residents by 1885. It was built by George Pullman and his Pullman Palace Car Co. as a reaction to the slums where many immigrant workers lived. He also figured, Shymanski said, that by providing employees with a nice community and good places to live, shop, worship and play, he could keep skilled talent, gain greater productivity and avoid strikes.
The neighborhood included the Victorian-style Florence Hotel and the Clock Tower Administration Building, both of which stand today. Most of the buildings were built using brick created out of clay from nearby Lake Calumet. An exception is the Romanesque Greenstone Church, which was made of Pennsylvania greenstone.
The community earned awards for its progressive design, Shymanski said. In addition to gas, water and sanitation services, each home had front and back yards. Expansive parks and open lands provided larger, shared green spaces, he said.
Workers were paid in dollars and businesses in Pullman operated independently of the company. Maintenance of the residences was included in the rental prices, as was daily garbage pickup, he noted.
At the 1896 International Hygienic and Pharmaceutical Exposition, Pullman was honored as “The World’s Most Perfect Town.”
The town (really a neighborhood) was annexed into the City of Chicago 17 years after it was founded.
In 2015, it was designated a National Historic Monument by President Barack Obama because of its architectural significance, its place in American labor history and the role its workers played in the civil rights movement, Shymanski said.
The Pullman Co., which once had a fleet of nearly 10,000 cars operating on the country’s railroads, built the last of its famed sleeping cars in 1956.
Shymanksi said the movement to preserve the Pullman neighborhood began in the 1960s after many of the area’s steel-manufacturing jobs had disappeared.
When a developer proposed razing the neighborhood for an industrial project, residents created what eventually became the Historic Pullman Foundation and began the process of gaining historic designations, he said. Since then, it has garnered state, city and national protections. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971.
Shymanski said he first saw the neighborhood almost 50 years ago when he was working on a master’s degree in urban planning at the Illinois Institute of Technology, where famed designer Ludwig Mies van der Rohe established the architecture department.
“I came down here and fell in love with the buildings,” he recalled. “I was about to get married, needed an apartment and we’ve been here since then. For 40-plus years, I was able to take the train downtown to work. It’s an excellent example of town planning that involved a lot of innovations and progressive ideas. Most of the planning criteria and principles that were used in building Pullman are still relevant today.”
Shymanski said Pullman saw that the downside of rapid industrialization in cities led to overcrowding, squalid tenements, exploitation of people and uncontrolled development. Immigrants arrived and lived in those conditions and that didn’t contribute to what he thought society should be, Shymanski said.
In the 1870s, Pullman was shipping his sleeping cars to England for the Midland Railroad and visited some of the progressive “new towns” that were being built in England, Scotland and Germany.
“When it came time for him to build a new plant in Chicago, he emulated those communities to have good housing and amenities for the people who worked for him,” Shymanski said.
The company thrived until the great recession of 1893, which lasted four years. When rail car production dropped precipitously, Pullman cut employees’ hours and wages.
More than 4,000 workers walked out in 1894, which led to a nationwide strike by the American Railway Union that was ultimately ended by federal soldiers.
When the recession ended, business soared again for the Pullman Co. Workers were allowed to buy their homes in 1897, following the death of Pullman, who was succeeded as president by Robert Todd Lincoln, son of President Abraham Lincoln.
Shymanski said the other major labor story associated with Pullman is the creation of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in 1925, which was the first AfricanAmerican union to get a contract with a major corporation in the United States. The trade group was led by A. Philip Randolph, who pushed for civil rights reforms and helped convince President Harry S. Truman to integrate the military.
In recent decades, the neighborhood has been able to preserve itself and its community spirit, said Beverly Carli, who moved to Pullman nearly 60 years ago after she married a man who was born in Pullman and whose family ran a restaurant there.
“My husband’s family was Italian and I remember groups of Italian and Polish workers, single guys, who came to the restaurant to have dinner and talk,” she said. “It was a great place to raise a family. Now people who work at the University of Chicago are moving here because it’s close by train
and it’s still a nice place to live.”
Shymanski said visitors to the neighborhood should first stop at the visitor center to see its exhibits and watch a historical video before seeing the row houses, Greenstone Church, Florence Hotel and other buildings.
Thanks to its new designation as a National Monument, he said the Clock Tower and Administration Building should be restored by 2018 if enough money can be raised from donors. Those structures will then house the visitor center, he said.
“What people who come to Pullman will find is a diverse and charming neighborhood with a variety of architectural styles and a community with a lot of history,” he said. “New things are emerging, too, like the Pullman Cafe and a microbrewery in an old Schlitz stable.”
In addition, he said, the state has a proposal to lease the Florence Hotel to a restaurateur who would run it as a restaurant and bar.
More information: Brochures for self-guided walking tours can be picked up at the visitor center, 11141 Cottage Grove Ave. It’s open 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday.
Visit next Sunday, Dec. 11, for the Candlelight House Walk, which includes a look inside privately owned historic Pullman row houses, all decorated for the holidays. Reservations are required. See pullmanil.org or call (773) 785-8901.
For ideas on other things to see and do in Chicago, see choose chicago.com.
Getting there: The Historic Pullman Visitor Center, 11141 Cottage Grove Ave., is on the south side of Chicago, roughly 110 miles south of Milwaukee via I-94.