April 18, 2009 – In addition to the railroad sleeping cars, George M. Pullman created an entire city in the 1880s. Pullman, Illinois, was located 15 miles south of downtown Chicago. It had a bank, library, theater, casino, fire department, hotel, hospital, and train station. It was a factory town, where Pullman cars were built.

Lynn Becker

Architecture writer and Marina City resident Lynn Becker will present a lecture about Pullman at the Chicago Architecture Foundation later this month. Becker became interested in the town when he was a guest curator of a recent CAF exhibition.

“As I began my research,” says Becker, “I soon realized that Pullman was a fascinating topic linking today, when more and more city services are being privatized, to the time of Pullman, before zoning and government planning, when the creation of the town was pretty much the project of just one individual, George M. Pullman.”

According to Becker, Pullman’s “original optimistic but highly controlling vision” of the town quickly fell apart during the 1894 Pullman Strike.

 More information: Chicago Architectural Events Calendar for April 2009