About 30 minutes south of downtown Chicago is the Pullman National Monument. According to the National Park Service (NPS), “The town of Pullman (1880-1898) was designed and built as a total planned community with the intent to attract the most skilled workforce and to insulate Pullman’s workers and their family’s from the social ills which had plagued industrialized cities across the nation.”
Inside the Visitor Center is quite a bit of information about George Pullman who founded the Pullman Palace Car Company to manufacture sleeping cars in 1867. “Through a focus on luxury and customer comfort, Pullman gained a large market share in the railroad car sector.”
The Visitor Center also has a short 20-minute film which explained the history of George Pullman, the Pullman Cars, and the town he built. The current building, constructed as an American Legion hall in 1960, sits on the site of the Pullman Arcade (1882-1927), a building which covered the entire block and included an indoor shopping mall, bank, post office, theater, library, meeting halls, and offices.
At the Visitor Center a park ranger provided us with a map for a walking tour of the town. This mural is on the back of the building.
These homes along Arcade Row were some of the most desirable houses in Pullman. They faced Arcade Park, which was a formal garden featuring a bandstand for summer concerts. Today these are private homes.
We learned during our walking tour that, “there were a wide variety of housing styles used in the Town of Pullman including single family row house cottages and apartment buildings.” It was interesting to learn “rents for housing were roughly $4.00 per room per month which equated on average to $16/month for the typical house”.
The Greenstone Church was the town’s first church building. It took several years of population growth to have a congregation large enough to use the church. The Methodist have occupied this church for over a century.
Hotel Florence – this building was opened in Nov. 1881 and continuously operated as a hotel until 1975. A renovation of this building is underway.
After exploring the historic Pullman District we drove around Lake Michigan to the Indiana Dunes National Park. This site just gained National Park status in February 2019. Stretching nearly 25 miles along southern Lake Michigan, this park contains approximately 15,000 acres, including beaches, sand dunes, bog, wetlands, woodland forests, and a working 1900-era farm.
We realize we didn’t plan enough time to explore our newest National Park so we will have to go back sometime in the future.
The Hoosier State…..Thanks for the memories!!