Pullman National Historical Park!

What Is Pullman National Historical Park?

Pullman National Historical Park (f.k.a. Pullman National Monument) preserves the 19th century company town of the Pullman Car Company!

What Makes It Historical?

Having made his fortune devising a way to raise Chicago’s buildings high enough to install a new sewer system, George Pullman turned his attention to railroad travel, specifically comfortably sleeping cars for long voyages! His first car, the Pioneer, transported the body of President Lincoln to Springfield, Illinois in 1864, and by 1867, he launched the Pullman Palace Car Company!

Demand grew and grew, and by 1880, Mr. Pullman decided to build a whole town for his employees around his factories. He bought 4,000 acres of land and hired architects, Solon Spencer Beman and Nathan Barret, to plan and build his new town! Starting with the towering Administration Building and the Florence Hotel, the builders installed rows of brick houses with indoor plumbing and back alleys for trash collection! They created a Market Square and public parks as well! Within two years, this town housed 8,000 Pullman employees!

The four year Panic of 1893 caused orders to drop at the Pullman factory, and with that came a drop in wages without a drop in rent! That year, the American Railway Union (ARU) formed to negotiate better working conditions, and its ranks swelled to 150,000 members! The next year, the Pullman workers went on strike! When the company started to replace strikers with other workers, the strike went national, and soon all Pullman cars were without employees!

The Pullman Company responded by attaching Pullman cars to mail cars, and once that started to affect mail service, the federal government stepped in with US Marshalls and the army, and after some violence and arrests, the strike came to a halt. While this was a defeat for the union, and made nationwide strikes illegal, it did cost the Pullman Company their town, which had to be sold. Under later leadership by Robert Todd Lincoln, whose father rode in the first Pullman Car, unions gained no headway for decades!

The Pullman Company was the largest employer of African-Americans, mostly as porters, and a new union rose among them in the 1920s. Called the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) and led by A. Philip Randolph, the union pushed for higher wages and more job security, eventually winning a deal with the company in 1937. This turned out to be history’s first major labor agreement between an African-American union and a corporation, and unlike the first Pullman strike, it happened without army interference!

How Can I #HelpTheHelpers?

Become a member of the Historic Pullman Foundation!
Donate to Pullman National Historical Park!
Be a responsible visitor! Remember the old adages: Pack out what you pack in! Take nothing but pictures and leave nothing but footprints!