#PULLMAN FACTORY TOWN FREE#

It opened in 1881 with 50 sleeping rooms, a dining room, a billiard room, barber shop, men’s and women’s parlors and the only bar in Pullman. The Hotel Florence is currently closed to the public as it undergoes renovations as part of the Pullman State Historic Site. The predecessor to the modern shopping mall, it housed a 500-seat theatre, a post office, a library, the Pullman Trust and Savings Bank, town management offices and storefront businesses. The building stands at the site where the Arcade Building once stood.

#PULLMAN FACTORY TOWN FREE#

Admission is free to the Pullman National Monument Visitor Information Center (with donations accepted) and it is where you can watch a 15-minute introductory video on the town’s history and preservation efforts, view exhibits and artifacts and pick up a copy of a self-guided walking tour brochure. The area includes 90 percent of the original buildings - the Greenstone Church, Hotel Florence, factory clocktower, private residences. The National Monument is comprised of not just one building, but a district. The area received State of Illinois landmark status in 1969, National Historic Landmark District designation in 1971, was designated as one of the first City of Chicago landmark districts in 1972 and became a National Monument and part of the U.S. Since 1973, the mission of the Historic Pullman Foundation has been to preserve and restore the original structures of the Town of Pullman and promote public awareness of the significance of the site as one of the nation’s first planned industrial communities. The community included an arcade building and church and buildings were designed in Queen Anne-style with Romanesque arches.

The first non-industrial building that was part of Pullman was the Hotel Florence. Designed by architect Solon Spencer Berman and landscape architect Nathan Barret, buildings would be all-brick construction from row houses to executive mansions. Built around the Pullman Palace Car Company, it encompassed 4,000 acres south of Chicago as an insulated community with housing and other amenities available to company workers.

It would be the first community of its kind. Construction on the industrial town of Pullman began in 1880, the vision of George M.

Pullman factory town