President Obama visited Chicago last week to designate the Pullman neighborhood as a national monument. This designation will help to protect the remains of the Pullman Palace Car Company’s factory in Chicago, and preserve other buildings that were once part of the quintessential planned company town.

The town of Pullman was created on 4,000 acres in the 1880s by company founder George Pullman to house his employees. Employees of the company were required to live in the company-provided housing, comfortable and modern for the time, and shop at the company store, as well as adhere to defined behavioral standards.

At its height, Pullman Palace Car Company manufactured some of the finest railway cars available. They were noted for their ornate interiors, comfortable, upholstered seating, and top-of-the-line customer service.

Once a household name, the company is perhaps most famous for a bitter 1894 strike that was marked by violence and rioting. An economic recession caused the company to cut wages while refusing to lower rents and company store prices, resulting in strike. An injunction was issued by the federal government to stop the 250,000-person strike, but after the strikers refused to disband President Grover Cleveland sent the Army to end it. After the death of founder George Pullman in 1897, the Illinois Supreme Court ordered the company to sell the town, which was then annexed by the city of Chicago.

Visit Pullman and other historic Chicago neighborhoods at the Americans for the Arts 2015 Annual Convention in Chicago from June 12-14.

Photo courtesy Newberry Library, Chicago.