Pullman

In the year 1880, George Pullman started building a town just south of Chicago. By that, I don't mean that he built the first building in a remote location hoping others would follow and settle in a similar spot. I mean he started building a whole town from scratch. With his own money. And not so he could sell those properties to others at a profit or something like that. He intended to hang on to every last building he built.

In the 20 years or so before 1880, George Pullman had a pretty good run in business. In the late 1850s he had an idea that folks might need a comfortable rail car to ride around in for days while exploring the United States by means of the rapidly expanding railroad network. He was right. That first car, the Pullman Old No. 9, featured a wood-burning stove, some comfortable seats and a series of bunks for sleeping overnight. The success of that first car allowed Pullman to start his own company, which he named after himself. 

Pullman rolled out a new and improved version of the Old No. 9 in 1865. The Old No. 9 was an adaptation of an already existing railroad car. The 1865 Pullman car, The Pioneer, was built from scratch as an overnight sleeper car. Gone were the wood burning stoves and added were folding bunks that allowed more space for traveling in comfort during the day. 

He kept working. An improved, longer Pullman sleeper car was rolled out in 1876. 

They kept selling. The railroads were expanding quickly. The amount of track in this country tripled between 1870 and 1890 from 53,000 miles to more than 160,000 miles. That translated into a booming business for George Pullman. Very booming. 

It is difficult to understand in the year 2021 how successful these sleeper cars were. While Amtrak still has overnight accommodations on their trains today, I can't believe they drive anything about the industry. But in the 1860s, Pullman sleeper cars were a significant and important mode of transportation. So much so that when The Pioneer was introduced with a wider body than all previous rail cars, platforms were re-built and bridges widened so The Pioneer could serve stations and fit under bridges. Pullman was a mover.

1955 Pullman Car.

So sometime in the 1870s, Pullman decided the next step for the company was to build a new factory and headquarters. Since he was going to all that trouble, he decided he may as well build housing for all his workers while he was at it. And supply them with all the conveniences that they may need in life to live in a town at that time some travel distance from the city of Chicago. After all, they would pretty much need to move out of town to keep their jobs. Welcome to Pullman!

Reaction to Pullman's gesture of building a town for his workforce was mixed. Pullman himself saw his endeavor as altruistic, giving his loyal workers a safe, family oriented community free of danger and temptation. Others saw it as a method for Pullman to exercise an unnatural level of control over the people he employed to build his sleeper cars. There is perhaps more than a kernel of truth in the latter point of view. 

In some ways, Pullman was doing for his employees just what medieval landlords and former plantation owners had done to serfs and freed slaves: giving them protection and a place to live, but setting the cost of that lodging (Pullman did charge his employees rent to live in his company housing, after all) and certain conditions about their lives. After all, you could only do in Pullman what George Pullman had put in his town. Church? Yes. Library? Sure. Stables and railway station. Umm...yeah. How else are you going to get in and out of town? Shops and a theater and a hotel? Yes and yes and yes. Saloon? No. Hard pass on that one. Pullman didn't believe in it.

Still, as long as Pullman was profitable and happy and everyone (mostly) agreed with him, I suppose it could have worked out fine forever. I mean, how badly do you need a saloon if your boss is like the ultimate philanthropist and greatest guy in the world?

The Pullman headquarters, now the Pullman National Monument Visitor Center.

Greenstone Church, Pullman.

Of course, that's not what happened. Eventually all booms bust, at least a little. And sure enough, the boom times for the Pullman Company eventually hit a snag.

In 1893, a nationwide depression hit, and demand for Pullman's sleeper cars dropped. For the first time in a long while, George Pullman was faced with a losing business situation. And his reaction was not good. 

You'd think someone who could afford to build an entire town with the profits from his company and who saw himself as a father figure of sorts for the people that he employed might be inclined to bend over backwards to keep those people who had built him a fortune safe and secure. Not so much. Not here. He decided he needed to lay off some of his workforce (who at this point lived miles from any other real viable source of employment, remember). For those that remained, working hours would increase and wages would be cut by 25%. 25% is a lot. I guess it's better than not having a job but, let's face it, it's a big cut.

And rent? Well that didn't change. George Pullman was going to pay you less to work in Pullman but still charge you the same amount to live there.

Now maybe I don't know all the factors that drove Pullman's reaction to this downturn in business but I do know this: in 1898, just half a decade after he made these decisions relative to his workforce, the Pullman Company was valued at $63.5 million. That's $2 billion in 2021 money. I have to believe Pullman had enough in the bank to ride this one out a little without taking it out of his employees. But then again, this was also the 1890s. 

Hotel Florence, named after George Pullman's daughter.

The former stables, Pullman.

The reaction to Pullman's cost cutting measures was a strike, with the American Railway Union (ARU) supporting Pullman's employees. And then things really devolved from there.

Pullman doubled down on his decision and refused to give an inch, which predictably resolved nothing. Eventually, the ARU extended the strike in support of Pullman's workers to include no longer staffing any trains nationwide that pulled a Pullman car. Some of those trains also served the United States Postal Service so not moving Pullman cars meant not moving the mail. That got the federal government involved. Troops were deployed in 1894 (on the side of Pullman, of course), a few incidental deaths happened and eventually the strike was busted. 

I can easily imagine George Pullman thought he had won, but in many ways the strike of 1893 was the beginning of a series of events that ultimately spelled the end for the Pullman Company. George Pullman died in 1897, just one year before the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that the charter issued to the Company allowed the construction of company offices, factories and support buildings but not housing. That decision forced the sale of the housing in Pullman, and not all sales were to employees of the company.

The 20th century brought more trouble for the Pullman Company. Antitrust legislation. Another labor dispute, this one with the porters who worked on Pullman's cars (we'll get to that...). The decline of the railroad and the rise of the automobile and of air travel. Despite all of that, the Pullman Company rolled out a new Pullman sleeper car model at least once a decade all the way through the 1950s. But ultimately, it was too much and then end came on January 1, 1969.

George Pullman and the company he founded are long gone. But Pullman still exists. Or at least a lot of it does. Sure, the factories are gone or abandoned; the market building is burned out; the railway station has been replaced; and the community center called the Arcade that housed the library, theater and shops is no longer there. But Pullman is not abandoned. It's a living, breathing neighborhood that carries the legacy of the Pullman Company and its founder, but has also moved well beyond George Pullman. And it's well worth a visit. We penciled it in on the last day of our recent Milwaukee to Chicago via Iowa swing over Labor Day weekend.

Now as luck would have it, it was the grand opening weekend of the Pullman National Monument on the weekend we visited. The former Pullman administration building and what's left of the adjacent boarded up and burned out factories form the initial stage of the National Monument created by presidential decree by President Obama way back in 2015. Being there for the grand opening was a blessing and a curse. While it was awesome to be a part of the event, access to both the Visitor Center (they moved us through in 15 minutes total, including the gift shop) and the Hotel Florence (we couldn't get in at all) was extremely limited.

I'm assuming the restoration of the factories may be on the horizon somehow as funding becomes available, although that's honestly a bit of a guess. Otherwise there's not a whole lot to see there beyond the Visitor Center (on the ground floor of the administration building); a landscaped plaza near the old rear erecting shops; and the Hotel Florence just to the south. Admittedly, we would have spent at least twice as much time in the Visitor Center if we weren't on the clock and being reminded every five minutes of how much time we had remaining.

If what remains of the company part of the town of Pullman is pretty cool (and it really is), the rest of the town blows it away with both quantity and quality. While the Pullman Company was in decline, the town itself was anything but. The factories are shells of what they used to be and most of the buildings built by Pullman to serve the community are gone, but the houses are (to the untrained eye at least) all still there and gorgeously cared for by people who seem to love living there.

The details of these Victorian houses are incredible and they don't look any worse for wear for the 140 years since they were built. This was not a community built with expediency and the lowest cost in mind. It is a testament to the people who built the town and the people who have lived there and cared for it that there are this many perfect looking residences in one place. There are literally blocks upon blocks of these things. It's impressive. If you can stand to walk around a town and gaze at and take pictures of strangers' houses (I clearly can), I would highly suggest a walk through the neighborhoods of Pullman in addition to visiting the National Monument.

Then before you leave, make one more stop, please. At the A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum on the north end of town. In a lot of ways, the story of the Pullman Porters is more remarkable and important than that of the company that hired them.

Back in the 1860s when you purchased a Pullman sleeper car, it came fully staffed. Call it a service contract, if you will. A way for George Pullman to offer a consistently high level of service that was expected of the Pullman brand. No matter where you traveled on a Pullman car, you would received the exact same level of personal attention and pampering that you would on any other Pullman trip. It provided Pullman a lot of control over his customers' experiences, while at the same time bringing a consistent stream of revenue to his bank account.

To staff his cars with porters, George Pullman turned to a group of people who in the 1860s had little economic opportunity. He decided he would only hire black men to perform this job for him. Another altruistic move from the Pullman Company? Maybe. Or like the housing he built for his workers miles away from anything else, maybe not. Pullman had a very specific thought process when it came to hiring black men (including many recently freed slaves) for these positions. He knew he could pay them very little, could work them long hours (up to 400 hours a month in some cases) and could expect an appropriately servile attitude likely ingrained in their psyche based on their standing in mid-nineteenth century American society. I am also sure that all sorts of abuse came with the job, which he also needed someone to take well.

Now, despite George Pullman's motivation for this decision, he did end up giving unprecedented opportunities to a lot of men. At a time when few employers would even consider hiring people of color, the Pullman Company did it regularly. In the early 1900s, they were the largest employer of black men in the nation. And the opportunity did allow some men to live lives that they couldn't have imagined 20 or 30 years prior. At a time when there were few other opportunities other than sharecropping, with its cycle of perpetual poverty, out there, being a Pullman Porter was not the worst employment opportunity to take.

The Pullman Porters display in the Pullman National Monument Visitor Center.

Having said that, they were clearly separate from the other employees at the Pullman Company, and that separation extend to union representation. When Pullman's workers went on strike in 1893, they were welcomed by the American Railway Union. But...not the porters. They were excluded, not that it would have done them any good if they had joined that strike anyway. If the Pullman Porters were waiting for an invitation to join the ARU after that, it never came. Not 10 years later, not twenty years later. Never.

So in 1925, A. Philip Randolph and Milton P. Webster helped the porters form their very own union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP), to start to advocate for the rights of the underpaid and overworked porters. It didn't work. Not at first, anyway. But the union kept at it, particularly Randolph, and eventually, 10 years after the formation of the BSCP, the Pullman Company recognized the union and began negotiation of a collective bargaining agreement that was signed two years later, improving working conditions for the union members.

The Pullman Porters had genuine status within their communities. They represented a different career track and a way out of what was pretty much no more than legalized ecomonic slavery that came in the wake of the end of the Civil War. But come 1937, they were also civil rights pioneers. 27 years before the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a major manufacturing company negotiated better working conditions with a union set up specifically to represent the rights of black employees.

If you are in Pullman, don't visit without stopping at the Pullman Porter Museum and understand their story a little better. It won't take you long to walk through and read every word (not kidding) in the Museum but it's well worth a stop. Their story includes a significant step towards being closer to equality for people of color. Although let's face it, we are not really close to being all the way there some 80 plus years later.

No pics allowed inside the Pullman Porter Museum, so I had to be satisfied with this exterior shot.

Now on a regular visit to Pullman, our day would have stopped there. We would have headed back to Chicago to eat at one of Rick Bayless' restaurants or go look at Edward Hopper's Nighthawks in the Art Institute of Chicago or hit up a blues club. But opening weekend offered us a different kind of Pullman experience: we got to walk through some genuine Pullman sleeper cars. 

Visit today and you won't have that opportunity, but to celebrate the Grand Opening, Amtrak hitched three privately owned cars to one of their engines and brought them to their birthplace for a weekend. I can't express how fortunate we were to have this opportunity, not to mention the foresight we had to get up early and get in line for some tickets that were all gone before 9:30 in the morning. I have never been in an overnight car of any train, whether historical or modern or built for sleeping or not. To do this in this place was special.

The three cars we walked through that day (in the order we walked through them) dated from 1953, 1955 and 1927. All three are privately owned and are all available for rent for short or long distance travel. All you need to do is pay a little money and make arrangements for Amtrak to hook up your rental car to one of their trains. I'll assume they don't come with porters.

The lounge area of the 1955 Pullman sleeper car.

Tight quarters: bunkbeds from the 1927 model.

I think it's fascinating to understand a little bit about how people used to travel. These days we hop on a plane or in the car (or both) and head out to where we need to go. We don't (generally) sleep in our cars and if you are a budget traveler like me, I'm sure you've had the pleasure of sleeping sitting up in a seat in coach on some overnight flight somewhere 30,000 feet or more over the globe at one time or another. But a multi-day journey over land without staying in a hotel? I've never done it. Doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Just that I've never done it.

But even if you have done it, I'm sure it's not quite like riding the rails in a Pullman car. Each car is like a mini bed and breakfast of sorts. Although one that, practically speaking, you can't really leave until you get to where you are going. In the meantime, as you travel across the country, you are sequestered in a cabin with (in all likelihood) a group of folks that you don't really know and can't really get away from. Days most likely would have been spent in the communal lounge areas of the cars (like the one in the second photograph above) because the bedrooms are too tiny to do anything other than sleep.

It's a bit of a crazy way to get from one place to another. But I guess considering the alternative would have been either wagon, horse or foot, all of which take a lot, lot, lot longer (and are a whole lot less comfortable), the Pullman cars probably represented absolute luxury that if you could afford, you did.

It's also like something out of an old movie. I could imagine as I sat in the lounge area in my cheeseburger shirt and J. Crew shorts, a cast of characters all dressed in their best clothes to travel across the prairie or some other place in the American west for days with nothing to do except get to know your fellow passengers or look out the window at countryside that you don't likely see very often. I guess air travel was around in the 1950s but this impression for sure applied when the 1927 Pullman car was first pulled across the country.

It is unlikely I will ever travel in a Pullman sleeper car. While I would love to take a rail journey across the United States someday, it would have to be when I have way more time than my current employer's time off policy allows on my hands. And of course, it wouldn't be in anything like a Pullman car, I'm sure. 

Like everything else we went through during the Pullman National Monument grand opening (except walking through the town, of course), we were rushed through these things. There was barely enough time to register exactly what you were looking at, but I guess in the end there was enough. I loved the 1927 car the best. Maybe it was because it was the least modified of the three or maybe it was because, for a few seconds, we got to step out onto the back platform of the car and imagine we were riding across what would be (even in the late 1920s) a country that was largely undeveloped west of the Mississippi River. It must have been pretty amazing, even if it might have tried my patience. I think we were quite fortunate to visit exactly when we did. Sometimes things work out like this.

More tight quarters. Maybe people weren't as big back then?

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How We Did It

Pullman is about a 20 to 30 minute drive south of downtown Chicago. There is tons of street parking and the town is super walkable. I appreciate all the "hellos" and "thank you for visiting" comments we got from residents while we were walking around the neighborhood. Maybe it was just because it was the grand opening of the National Monument but I kind of think it was more than that. This is a community worth being proud of and it shows.

The Pullman National Monument Visitor Center is open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. except for New Year's Day, Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day, when the National Monument is closed. Check their website for full details of what there is to do on site. I am sure our visit was as atypical as it gets. 

The A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum is open from Thursday to Saturday. I would check their website to make sure these hours hold. Like I mentioned in the post itself, it's not going to take that long to walk through but supporting museums like this one that tell these sorts of stories is important. Just like in the main town, we found parking plentiful near the museum.

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