Chicago is home to a national park unlike any other in the country. On the South Side, Pullman National Historical Park preserves the first planned industrial community in the United States, a handsome brick neighborhood built in the 1880s for the workers of the Pullman Palace Car Company — and it is a wonderful place to spend a slow, curious day.
Start at the visitor center in the Administration-Clock Tower Building, the park’s landmark, where exhibits introduce the town that industrialist George M. Pullman built from scratch: a factory, neat rowhouses, a market hall, a church and the elegant Hotel Florence, all arranged along leafy, walkable streets. Ranger programs and self-guided walking tours help visitors read the story in the architecture itself.
Pullman’s story is also a proud chapter of American labor and civil-rights history. The Pullman porters — the African American men who staffed the famous sleeping cars — went on to form the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a landmark union whose legacy the park honors throughout the district.
Designated a national monument in 2015 and later a national historical park, Pullman is easy to reach by Metra Electric train and rewards visitors with history, photography and quiet streets far from the downtown rush. Put it on your Chicago list.
Photo: U.S. Department of the Interior, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
