Pullman: The Man, the Company, the Historical Park

by Kenneth J. Schoon

Overview

George Pullman's legacy lies in the town that bears his name. As one of the first thoroughly planned model industrial communities, it was designed to give the comforts of a permanent home to the employees who built America's most elegant form of overnight railroad travel. But the town was more than just a residential wing of sleeper car manufacturing; its 1894 railroad strike led to the national Labor Day holiday. In the early twentieth century, the Pullman Company became the country's largest employer of African Americans, who then formed the nation's first successful Black labor union. Author Kenneth Schoon revisits Pullman's monumental history and the lessons it continues to provide.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781467149860
Publisher:	Arcadia Publishing SC
Publication date:	08/16/2021
Series:	Landmarks
Pages:	192
Sales rank:	643,798
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Ken Schoon, a Northwest Indiana native, is a professor emeritus at Indiana University Northwest, where he had taught for more than forty years. He is the author of half a dozen books about the history of the Greater Chicago/Northwest Indiana area, including Calumet Beginnings: Ancient Shorelines and Settlements at the South End of Lake Michigan, Dreams of Duneland and Shifting Sands: The Restoration of the Calumet Area. To some extent, most of these titles note the relationship between the geology of the area and its human history. He is a founding board member, past president and advisor to the Dunes Learning Center; a member of the Advisory Council of the Shirley Heinze Land Trust; and a member of the Indiana Historical Society, which gave him the Dorothy Riker Hoosier Historian Award in 2016. In 2019, he was the recipient of the Dunes Learning Center's Green Apple Award for Environmental Education Excellence.

Table of Contents

Preface 7

Acknowledgements 9

Introduction 11

1 Pullman's Geologic Beginnings 13

2 The Railroad Era Begins 16

3 George Pullman in New York 20

4 Raising Chicago and Pullman's First Sleepers 23

5 Gold Fever 28

6 Improving the Sleeper Car 32

7 The Pullman Palace Car Company 36

8 Pullman Porters and Maids 43

9 West of Lake Calumet Before Pullman 48

10 Pullman: Industrial and Commercial Assets 53

11 Pullman: Residences and Early Residents 81

12 Unrest, Annexation and Strike 95

13 Repercussions 102

14 Pullman Porters Organize 106

15 The Pullman Company and the Town 1897-1945 113

16 The Postwar Years 132

17 Citizen Involvement and Pride, Restoration and Recognition 139

Appendix: The Pullman Building Downtown 163

Notes 167

Bibliography 177

Index 183

About the Author 191