Pullman Planned Plumbing

Innovative Dual Drainage System at the Pullman Company Town

Pullman, Illinois, a planned "company town" now an outlying neighborhood of the city of Chicago, was the site of some significant sanitation history.

Built in the 1880s as the housing for the workers at George Pullman's passenger rail car company, it was an early experiment in separated drain systems. Such systems have two independent drainage networks, one handling the sewage or septic waste, and the other carrying rainwater runoff directly to a natural stream or lake. When I first visited Pullman over 140 years later, the city where I lived had just finished a lengthy, expensive, and disruptive conversion of its drainage system from simplified but unsanitary unified or combined drainage to a separated system. Combined drains are easier and cheaper to build, but the longer they exist, the harder and more expensive it will be to convert them to a proper separated system.

In the late 19th century, when public health was generally quite poor, mortality statistics for Pullman's company town showed that it was one of the healthiest locations in the world.

In a combined system, when it begins raining the water will be absorbed into the dry ground. But as the rain continues, the accumulating water will have to flow into municipal drains which feed into the septic drains carrying sewage and other waste. The wastewater treatment plant will eventually become overwhelmed, and the mix of rainwater and sewage will simply overflow the plant and be dumped without treatment into natural bodies of water.

In a separated system, rainwater is directed into a nearby stream, lake, or ocean, while infectious sewage continues to be treated before release.

For more on wastewater treatment in a large metropolis, and the need for separated rather than unified drainage, see the several pages on the wastewater treatment plants in New York City.

Visiting the Site

The Pullman site is almost 20 kilometers south of the Loop, meaning downtown Chicago. I got there by taking the Red Line to its southern end, at 95th Street / Dan Ryan, and then taking CTA bus #115 east and then south along South Cottage Grove Avenue to 111th Street.

The Metra Electric Line also runs from downtown with stations at Kensington / 115th and Pullman / 111th.

Chicago and George Pullman

The city of Chicago was built along the shore of Lake Michigan. During the Last Glacial Maximum of 26,000–22,000 years ago, the Laurentide Ice Sheet extended south over this area. When the glacier retreated to the north around 15,000–18,000 years ago, the exposed terrain had been scraped almost perfectly flat.

The Algonquian peoples had lived here for millennia before French traders arrived in the 17th century CE. The French recorded the Miami-Illinois language word šikaakwa as checagou in their records around 1679. Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, a Frenchman of European and African descent and the first non-native settler of today's Chicago, built a farm at the mouth of the Chicago River in 1788 1790. A surveyor's plat was filed in 1830, marking the European recognition of Chicago.

The city grew quickly, and messily. By 1850 the supposed streets of Chicago were tracks through a swamp, because the settlement was just barely above the water level of Lake Michigan, what the Ojibwe called ᒥᓯᑲᒥ or mishigami. The standing water was full of pathogens from all the human waste.

The new city's government set out to re-engineer its sewage and drainage systems, and that soon led them to realize that the streets needed to be elevated by more than one meter, well above the doorways of existing buildings.

Here's where it got weird. George M. Pullman had grown up in Albion, New York, along the Erie Canal, where his father had invented a machine using jack screws to move buildings out of the way of a canal expansion. In 1859, Pullman and a business partner moved to Chicago and raised a large brick hotel, going on to raise several more large Chicago buildings by an average of almost two meters each while people continued to conduct business within them.

Pullman Palace Cars

Pullman had traveled to Chicago by train, sleeping in seats overnight. That led him to the idea of a sleeper car, what he called a "palace car", based on the Erie Canal packet boats. The prototype was completed in 1864. After Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in April, 1865, Pullman arranged for Lincoln's body to be transported from Washington, D.C., to Springfield, Illinois, on board a Pullman sleeper car. Hundreds of thousands of people lined the route and saw the new development. Railroads began to order Pullman's new car.

Two years later, in 1867, Pullman extended this to the President, a "hotel on wheels", sleeper cars attached to a car incorporating a kitchen and dining area. The food and service were based on what one would find in the finest restaurants of the day.

Pullman decided that the sleeper and dining cars needed to be operated by his company. Pullman employees would check tickets and convert day coach seating into berths. One of the company's engineers developed the "vestibuled train", in which cars were linked by enclosed gangways without open gaps. That meant that passengers could easily and safety travel through the train to dining cars, where Pullman staff prepared and served meals.

It was 1867, two years after the end of the Civil War, and Pullman believed that former house slaves from the plantations of the Confederacy possessed the needed combination of knowledge and skills to serve the well-off white businessmen who were the market for his "Palace Cars". Plus, he could get away with paying them almost nothing, making them reliant almost entirely on the tips of travelers. The Pullman Company quickly became the largest single employer of African Americans in the U.S.

The Company Town

In 1880, Pullman bought 16 square kilometers of land about 20 kilometers south of downtown Chicago. The tract was close to the western shore of Lake Calumet. The western edge of the tract was formed by the Illinois Central Railroad, and the Rock Island Railroad entered the Pullman complex from its northeast.

The Canadian National Railway Company bought the Illinois Central in 1998. Below you see a freight train running south on the CN line past the site of the Pullman Company's shops.

Chicago's Metra commuter rail line runs parallel to the CN line on its 51-km run south from downtown to University Park. Amtrak's City of New Orleans, overnight train 58/59 with sleeper cars, runs daily past here on the CN line between Chicago and New Orleans. Amtrak's Illini (390/391) and Saluki (392/393) also run past here on the CN line on their 500-km route between Chicago and Carbondale, near the southern tip of Illinois.

Three years before Pullman's purchase of the site, the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 had begun after the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad had cut wages for the third time within a year. It was the first U.S. strike that spread across multiple states. The railroad called for the assistance of armed police units, federal troops, the National Guard, and the always dangerous unofficial militias. It ended 52 days later, after about 100 people had been killed. The Posse Comitatus act, forbidding the use of federal troops for domestic law enforcement, was established the following year.

Wanting to avoid labor unrest, Pullman built a company town immediately south of his new factory complex. No agitators, saloons, or vice districts would be allowed. The company town included housing — duplex homes for higher management at the north edge, close to work, changing to row houses and other multi-family structures and then tenement-like housing as you moved further south. The town also included shopping areas including what effectively was the first shopping mall in the U.S., a church, and a library. The 1,300 structures in the town were all designed by Solon Beman, the same architect who designed the factory buildings. And, Beman collaborated with sanitary engineer Benezette Williams, who designed the water supply and separated drain system.

Much housing at the time, even within large cities, had their toilets as outhouses set above cesspits behind the building. But all the homes in this planned community had indoor toilets. They fed into a septic drain network that was pumped first to a large holding tank beneath the factory's main water tank, and from there to nearby company farm fields.

Storm drains sent excess rainwater off in a different direction to flow into Lake Calumet. The houses were all connected to freshwater and gas supply lines.

The museum has an original toilet with modern replacement seat, lid, and elevated tank.

For the residents, the indoor toilets with separated drainage were the high point of life in Pullman.

Pullman ruled his town like a figure out of feudal times. Rents were fixed at a high rate, leaving very little money for food and any other expenses. The Chicago Tribune described the rents in 1888 as "excessive—if not extortionate." There were two shopping areas within the town, but they were the only shops in the area and Pullman kept the food prices high. Pullman prohibited independent newspapers, public speeches, town meetings, and charitable organizations. He frequently sent his inspectors into homes "to monitor cleanliness", terminating workers' leases on ten-day notice for any perceived violations. There was a church structure, but it sat empty and idle because he would consider only a narrow range of denominations and none of them were willing to pay the high rent he demanded.

The World's Columbian Exposition was held in Chicago in May through October of 1893. Pullman's planned and oppressively controlled community was a major attraction for the exposition's visitors. If, like most visitors, you didn't look too closely, it was impressive. The national press praised Pullman.

The Hotel Florence, named for Pullman's daughter, was across the street from the main entry into the manufacturing area.

Only white men could rent rooms in the hotel, and factory laborers were not allowed to enter it.

The hotel contained the town's only bar. But given the low wages, most employees could barely afford food.

The town was built in the 19th century, so of course there was a large stable for the horses.

These duplex homes were across the street from the hotel, and would have been occupied by highly placed employees.

The green stone church was undergoing renovation during my visit, which sort of aligns with it having sat empty for much of Pullman's rule of the town.

Here is a current storm drain along the gutter in a street, and a fire hydrant attached to a main water line.

Further away from the north edge, the structures shift to multi-unit buildings.

I don't know about the utility cover marked "LAWN", maybe it's for a separate supply dedicated to lawn sprinklers.

I do recognize CDWM on the cover seen above. That's the Chicago Department of Water Management, which handles water purification and transmission to homes and businesses. CDWM manages the sewage pipes, transferring the waste to the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago for them to clean up.

So many utility covers.

And, so many storm drains and fire hydrants.

There are also a few storm drains in the alleys running through the centers of blocks.

The Factory

Only the section of shops connected to the north end of the administration building are still standing in what looks like decent to good condition, at least from the outside.

The arches on the shops extended down to ground level, and sets of rails ran out beneath the doors.

The material on display clearly has been gathered from multiple sources. Some quotes original and official Pullman Company material, claiming that George Pullman personally developed each of the innovations. Other material tells who really had the ideas and did the work. By the end of my visit I wondered who had really done the work jacking up those buildings in central Chicago.

For example, the mechanical engineer Norman W. Robinson invented the very wide-gauge transfer table used to rotate newly built cars by 90° and transfer them onto standard-gauge tracks. All of this was powered by steam until electrical systems began taking over in a multi-year process.

The erecting shops, where car bodies and their interior details were built on top of steel frames, are in poor shape but were undergoing some rehabilitation.

1894 Strike

The Panic of 1893 began in February 1893. It was history's worst economic depression until the U.S. stock market crash and the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Pullman had promised his investors a 6% annual return on their investments in his company. It never reached that, maxing out at about 4.5%. Then the depression. What was Pullman to do?

Pullman cut wages by 30%, but he did not reduce the already high rents and prices at the company stores. A factory worker might make only $9.07 for a two-week period. His rent of $9.00 would be deducted from his paycheck, leaving him just $0.07 to feed his family for two weeks.

"The Condition of the Laboring Man at Pullman", a political cartoon in the Chicago Labor newspaper of 7 July 1894, from Wikipedia.

Employees filed a complaint. Pullman refused to consider it and then fired the workers who had submitted it. The rest of his employees went on strike on 11 May 1894. Pullman appealed to U.S. President Grover Cleveland, who sent federal military troops to break up the strike after about two weeks.

Many of the Pullman factory workers had joined the American Railway Union, and asked the ARU for support during its annual convention in Chicago. The ARU founder and leader, Eugene V. Debs, warned against any general ARU action, because of the recent history of U.S. government hostility, and sometimes violence, against striking workers.

The ARU membership ignored his warning, and decided to launch a boycott on 26 June 1894. ARU members would not handle a train that included Pullman cars.

Pullman then locked up his factory and home, and fled the area.

The railroads refused to negotiate. Then they inserted at least one U.S. Mail car into every passenger train and immediately reported to the federal government that the ARU was interfering with the mail.

U.S. Attorney General Richard Olney had been a railroad attorney and had a $10,000 retainer from the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad, more than his $8,000 federal salary. He proposed, backed by a majority of the President's cabinet, that federal troops be sent to Chicago to end what he called a "rule of terror" and forcibly restore railroad operation.

The Governor of Illinois complained after learning that 12,000 federal troops had been sent to Illinois with no consultation with state or local officials.

30 striking workers were killed and 57 were wounded before the strike ended on 20 July 1894.

A federal charge against Debs for involvement in a conspiracy to obstruct the mail was dropped, but he was convicted for disobeying a Supreme Court order and sentenced to six months in prison. He left prison a committed socialist, founded the Socialist Party of America and ran for U.S. President five times as that party's candidate, once from prison.

"FOR PRESIDENT – CONVICT NO. 9653" — Campaign button for the 1920 Presidential election during which Debs was imprisoned.

A federal Strike Commission set up later in 1894 ruled that the nice architecture was of no assistance to its impoverished occupants. "The aesthetic features are admired by visitors, but have little money value to employees, especially when they lack bread." They blamed Pullman's feudal-style rule for the strike, condemned him for refusing to negotiate at multiple stages of the combined strikes as well as for the economic hardships he created for his workers, and described the company town of Pullman as "un-American".

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George Pullman died in 1897, and his family feared that former employees might dig him up. They placed his remains into a lead-lined mahogany coffin. At the cemetery, a large pit had been excavated to contain his grave. Its base and walls were lined with 18 inches of steel-reinforced concrete. The coffin was lowered into place and covered with asphalt and tar paper. More concrete was poured in to fill the pit and cover the coffin.

Then a layer of steel rails, bolted together in a rectangular grid, was laid on top of what already existed. Finally, another layer of concrete was poured on top of that. The whole process took two days.

Try to live your life so your corpse needs no Pharaoh-style protection against disgruntled former employees or associates.

Once Pullman was dead and placed in his ferro-concrete tomb, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that the Pullman Company had been operating well outside its charter as a manufacturer of rail cars by also operating an entire town. The company had to sell off the town. The city of Chicago annexed Pullman Town and surrounding areas in 1899. Within ten years, the city had sold all the homes in Pullman to their occupants.

Because this story somehow isn't strange enough yet, Robert Todd Lincoln, the son of Abraham, became the company's president.

Dashiell Hammett was an operative for the Pinkerton Detective Agency, at least until they asked him to take part in the assassination of a labor organizer in Montana around 1917. Hammett quit and began writing, turning his experiences into those of "the Continental Op" in numerous stories and his novel Red Harvest.

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The novel became the basis for several movies, including Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo and Sanjuro, and Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More.

Pullman in the 20th Century

There were name changes and absorptions and purchases of competitors, and the Pullman company grew. Its peak was in the middle of the 1920s. In 1925 the Pullman fleet, totaled across all North American railroads, was 9,800 cars staffed by 28,000 conductors and 12,000 porters. In 1943 the federal government brought an antitrust suit against the company, ordering it to divest itself of one of its two lines of sleeping car businesses.

The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was founded in 1925 as the first labor organization led by African American citizens.

Here are some Pullman advertisements through the 1900s. First, a newspaper advertisement from 1937:

Time magazine of 20 October 1947 carried this full-page detailed ad:

Focusing on just a part of that ad, private cabins were common by the 1940s. Or, for a lower cost, a curtained bunk within what they called "a Pullman section accommodation" with "ample toilet facilities" at the end of the car.

And look, even in 1947 Time was willing to run an advertisement mentioning that you could get your own private toilet along with a wash basin and air conditioning.

In 1952 the Pullman advertising explicitly mentioned "your own private toilet facilities." Notice that all of these ads are for the Pullman company that built and operated the cars and not the railroads on whose lines they ran.

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Then, in 1959, Alfred Hitchcock's movie North By Northwest was almost a movie-length promotion for Pullman rail travel.

A large segment in the middle (and, of course, the final scene) was set on board the 20th Century Limited. That was an express passenger train on the New York Central Railroad, running in each direction daily from 1902 to 1967 between Grand Central Station in New York and Chicago. This was the flagship NY Central train, advertised as "The Most Famous Train in the World".

In the 1920s there were still top-and-bottom bunks with just a curtain between your bed and the corridor. By 1959, the 20th Century Limited was all Roomette or better. A very limited number of stops, and only the higher classes of service.

In the first shot, Cary Grant's character Roger Thornhill has just left the toilet in the club car after hiding in there to avoid conductors. He will turn to his left, walk through the club car and past the bar, and continue into the dining car.

Roger is ushered to a seat in the dining car across from Eva Saint James' character Eve Kendall.

He abruptly gets up and hurries toward Eve Kendall's private sleeper compartment, threading his way through several waiters.

He hides in the bathroom of Eve Kendall's roomette, but of course we have to infer that from the steel sink, the fixtures, and toiletry items. It was 1959, Hitchcock wasn't going to show us an actual toilet.

As usual in movies, the compartment is shown as being enormously large. Eve is sitting on the lower bunk, while the upper bunk is folded up above her.

Later, we see the upper bunk folded down.

Advertisement for the Pullman Company's sleeping car service, from the December 1962 timetable of the Seaboard Railroad.

North By Northwest came out in 1959, within about a decade of the end of the original Pullman sleeper car travel in the U.S. Pullman Company terminated its operation of all sleeper cars on 31 December 1968, and on the next day the company was dissolved and all assets were liquidated. That transferred Pullman-built cars to many railroads, but increases in auto and air travel had already led to sharp declines in passenger rail travel.

1970 was the last full year of national passenger service by individual railroads. Amtrak was founded in 1971. It operates sleeper compartments on some trains. While they'll probably know what you want if you ask for "a Pullman ticket", Amtrak sleepers haven't been actual Pullman-built cars for some time.