The town of Pullman meant far more in the mind of its founder than a mere industrial establishment. The dreary, water-soaked prairie was raised to high, dry land; an entire town was planned and blocked out following Mr. Pullman's own design. Architects and landscape architects worked together to carry out the plan to a harmonious and pleasing fulfillment. Among the more prominent details of this vast work were included a system by which the sewage of the town was collected and pumped far away to the Pullman produce farm; the equipment of every house and flat regardless of rental with the most modern appliances of water, gas, and plumbing; the establishment of athletic fields; the concentration of the merchandising of the town under the glass roof of the central arcade building, and the construction of a handsome market house, a fine schoolhouse to accommodate a thousand pupils, a library containing over 8,000 volumes, a savings bank and a large and artistically decorated theater. The population of Pullman in January, 1881, counted four souls. In February, 1882, there were 2,084 inhabitants, a total which had increased to 8,203 by September, 1884.
[Illustration: Preparing the steel frame for the upper section of a Pullman sleeping car]
[Illustration: Sand blasting the brass trimmings of the car before applying the finish]
A contemporary writer closes an enthusiastic description of the town of Pullman with the following paragraph:
Imagine a perfectly equipped town of 12,000 inhabitants, built out from one central thought to a beautiful and harmonious whole. A town that is bordered with bright beds of flowers and green velvety stretches of lawn; that is shaded with trees and dotted with parks and pretty water vistas, and glimpses here and there of artistic sweeps of landscape gardening; a town where the homes, even to the most modest, are bright and wholesome and filled with pure air and light; a town, in a word, where all that is ugly, and discordant, and demoralizing, is eliminated, and all that inspires to self-respect, to thrift and to cleanliness of person and of thought is generously provided. Imagine all this, and try to picture the empty, sodden morass out of which this beautiful vision was reared, and you will then have some idea of the splendid work, in its physical aspects at least, which the far-reaching plan of Mr. Pullman has wrought.[3]