Chicago is home to the 19th-century Pullman company town, now a National Monument.
George Pullman developed the planned community of Pullman on Chicago’s South Side in the 1880s for workers at his railroad-car company. The company town included housing, shops, public buildings, and landscaped streets. Architect Solon Beman designed much of its built environment, while Nathaniel Franklin Barrett planned the landscape.
Pullman became nationally significant during the Pullman Strike of 1894. Workers protested wage reductions and high rents in company housing, and the conflict expanded into a major national railroad dispute. Federal intervention ended the strike, but the episode became an important chapter in U.S. labor history.
President Barack Obama designated Pullman National Monument in 2015. It is not the same as the company’s former Palace Car Works, and the neighborhood is not a preserved village frozen entirely in the 1880s. It remains a living Chicago community with historic buildings, museums, homes, and ongoing redevelopment.