Pullman: The Rise and Fall of Chicago's Perfect Company Town

In 1880, George Pullman built a perfect town on Chicago's far South Side: brick row houses with running water, a hotel, a glass-roofed Arcade, a library, a church, a pond that mirrored the clock tower. There was one catch. The company owned all of it — every house, every shop, even the church — and nobody who lived there could own a square foot of it. This is the story of the neighborhood, not the mansion: the seamstress who had to pay her dead father's back rent out of her wages, the pay checks for two and seven cents, the professor who learned the truth through his wife's boot buttons, the timekeeper who became mayor of Chicago, the 1894 strike the town began, the 1898 court ruling that no company may own a town, the Pullman porters who built their own union, and the residents who saved Pullman from the bulldozers in 1960. And what still stands today in Pullman National Historical Park. Chapters: 0:00 Cold open: Jennie Curtis's bill 1:47 A town built in secret (1880–1884) 4:57 Everything under one roof 8:30 Nothing in Pullman is free 11:31 The crash of 1893 14:30 The town walks out (May–June 1894) 17:24 The soldiers come 20:20 No one may own a town (1898) 22:59 The men called George: the Pullman porters 26:04 Saving Pullman 29:01 What's left Did someone in your family work at the Pullman shops, live in one of the row houses, or ride the cars with a porter they never forgot? Tell us in the comments. Sources: U.S. Strike Commission, Report on the Chicago Strike of June–July 1894 (1895), including the testimony of Jennie Curtis; Richard T. Ely, "Pullman: A Social Study," Harper's New Monthly Magazine, February 1885; Rev. William H. Carwardine, The Pullman Strike (1894); People ex rel. Moloney v. Pullman's Palace Car Co., Illinois Supreme Court (1898); National Park Service, Pullman National Historical Park; Historic Pullman Foundation; Newberry Library; U.S. Department of Labor; Office of the Governor of Illinois (February 2026). Image credits (all public domain or CC0): Library of Congress (Historic American Buildings Survey and Historic American Engineering Record; Farm Security Administration / Office of War Information photographs by Jack Delano and Gordon Parks; Detroit Publishing Company); National Park Service; Newberry Library; Harper's Weekly and Harper's New Monthly Magazine (1885, 1894); Henry R. Koopman photographs (1890s); Sanborn Map Company (1897); Fire Insurance Map of Pullman (1901); Chicago Daily Tribune (1894); Chicago Labor (1894); The Messenger (1917); B&O Employees Magazine (1920); Appletons' Cyclopaedia (1900); Eastman Johnson portraits of Grover Cleveland (1891) and Florence Pullman (1892); Carleton Watkins stereograph (about 1870); Foss Etching & Photo Co. (1894); Chicago Daily Journal portrait of John P. Hopkins; CC0 photographs via Wikimedia Commons. Scenes marked ILLUSTRATION are AI-generated reconstructions of empty rooms and streets, or invented people seen from a distance; no real person is depicted by AI. All other images are archival photographs, documents and maps. Music: original score. Narration: AI voice.