34 Facts About George Pullman

George Mortimer Pullman was an American engineer and industrialist.

George Pullman designed and manufactured the Pullman sleeping car and founded a company town in Chicago for the workers who manufactured it.

George Pullman gained presidential support by Grover Cleveland for the use of federal military troops which left 30 strikers dead in the violent suppression of workers there to end the Pullman Strike of 1894.

George Pullman was born in 1831 in Brocton, New York, the son of Emily Caroline and carpenter James Lewis George Pullman.

George Pullman's family moved to Albion, New York, along the Erie Canal in 1845, so his father could help widen the canal.

George Pullman's father had invented a machine using jack screws that could move buildings or other structures out of the way and onto new foundations and had patented it in 1841.

George Pullman attended local schools and helped his father, learning other skills that contributed to his later success.

In 1853, Lewis died, and George Pullman took over his business at the age of 22.

In 1856, George Pullman won a contract with the State of New York to move 20 buildings out of the way of the widening canal.

In 1861 George Pullman contracted with the Ely and Smith partnership to raise the six storey high Tremont House.

George Pullman contracted to raise these and many other large buildings in Chicago, and his firm raised the buildings on average six feet without causing them any damage and often times while the buildings were still fully operational, with people entering and exiting them and conducting business within.

George Pullman developed a railroad sleeping car, the George Pullman sleeper or "palace car".

George Pullman had cars in the train, notably for the President's surviving family.

In 1867, George Pullman introduced his first "hotel on wheels," the President, a sleeper with an attached kitchen and dining car.

George Pullman believed that if his sleeper cars were to be successful, he needed to provide a wide variety of services to travelers: collecting tickets, selling berths, dispatching wires, fetching sandwiches, mending torn trousers, converting day coaches into sleepers, etc.

George Pullman believed that former house slaves of the plantation South had the right combination of training to serve the businessmen who would patronize his "Palace Cars".

George Pullman became the biggest single employer of African Americans in post-Civil War America.

In 1869, George Pullman bought out the Detroit Car and Manufacturing Company.

George Pullman bought the patents and business of his eastern competitor, the Central Transportation Company in 1870.

In 1887, George Pullman designed and established the system of "vestibuled trains," with cars linked by covered gangways instead of open platforms.

George Pullman hired Solon Spencer Beman to design his new plant there.

The Hotel Florence, named for George Pullman's daughter, was built nearby.

George Pullman believed that the country air and fine facilities, without agitators, saloons and city vice districts, would result in a happy, loyal workforce.

George Pullman prohibited independent newspapers, public speeches, town meetings or open discussion.

The George Pullman community is a historic district that has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In 1894, when manufacturing demand fell off, George Pullman cut jobs and wages and increased working hours in his plant to lower costs and keep profits, but he did not lower rents or prices in the company town.

George Pullman's reputation was soiled by the strike, and then officially tarnished by the presidential commission that investigated the incident.

The report condemned George Pullman for refusing to negotiate and for the economic hardships he created for workers in the town of George Pullman.

On October 19,1897, George Pullman died of a heart attack in Chicago, Illinois.

George Pullman's monument, featuring a Corinthian column flanked by curved stone benches, was designed by Solon Spencer Beman, the architect of the company town of Pullman.

George Pullman was initiated into Freemasonry in Renovation Lodge No 97 in Albion, New York.

George Pullman was member of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry and received the honorary 33rd degree within that body.

George Pullman was identified with various public enterprises, among them the Metropolitan elevated railway system of New York.

The George Pullman Company merged in 1930 with Standard Steel Car Company to become George Pullman-Standard, which built its last car for Amtrak in 1982.