Pullman: The Company Town Where Workers Lived, Worked, and Paid Rent to One Man

In 1880, railroad car magnate George Pullman built an entire town from scratch on Chicago's far South Side — and named it after himself. Every building, every house, every church, every store was owned by the Pullman Palace Car Company. Workers didn't just work for Pullman; they rented their homes from him, shopped in his company store, attended services in his church, and were spied on by his supervisors. Rents were set to return the company a 6% profit. The only bar in town was in Pullman's own Hotel Florence. In 1894, after Pullman cut wages but not rents during a financial panic, workers went on strike. The strike spread nationally and was crushed by federal troops sent by President Grover Cleveland. Eugene Debs, leader of the striking union, was jailed; decades later, imprisoned again for opposing World War I, he ran for president from prison in 1920. The Pullman neighborhood was designated a National Monument in 2015 — the first such designation in Chicago — and became Pullman National Historical Park in 2022. The Florence Hotel, where Pullman himself stayed, still stands, closed for a long-running state restoration.