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Come For History, Stay for Garage Sales At 41st Annual Pullman House Tour

By Mark Konkol | October 10, 2014 5:57am | Updated on October 11, 2014 8:20am
 Pullman's chances of earning a national park desigation have improved following an economic impact study.
Pullman National Historic Park
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CHICAGO — Occasionally, curious North Siders intrigued by my historic South Side neighborhood ask me about the absolute best time to visit.

My answer is always the same: “If you’re gonna come, come for the Pullman House Tour.”

And that, my friends, is what’s on tap in ol’ Pullmantown this weekend.

A $20 ticket to this weekend's 41st annual event gets you a neighborhood tour of the sights including the Pullman Administration building clock tower, the recently half-renovated Hotel Florence, the ruins of Market Hall and a peek inside eight historic homes.

There’s music — Pullman’s own “Harmonica Jimmy” and guitarist Q Kiser are set to perform Saturday and the Mudcats Dixieland Band will play Sunday — and a classic car show, too.

This year marks the 120th Anniversary of the 1894 Pullman Strike, which centered on railroad mogul George Pullman’s decisions to reduce worker pay without lowering rents in his “perfect” company town and ended when federal troops came to town and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a strike-breaking federal injunction.

In August 1894, the Tribune, conducted a house-to-house “census” of Pullman residents to paint a pretty vivid picture of life there. Some of my neighbors' houses will sport signs that offer up details of what folks have to say.

Here’s an example: Alex Cruden, who worked in the car shops and lived in Pullman for 10 years, rented 315 Watt St. (now 11317 S. St. Lawrence) and lived there with his wife and child. He was “out of work four months and without money that whole time. Owes four months rent. Is out of food money. Depends on Relief committee,” the Tribune reported.

And many other Pullman residents told the paper similar tales of woe that earned workers sympathy and George Pullman great criticism.

I’ve always found the tiny details about Pullmanites — where they came from and the work they did — among the most fascinating bits of the neighborhood’s history.

And thanks to the Pullman State Historic Site there are plenty of details about the folks who lived in early Pullman that are easy to find online.

For instance, E.C. Tourtelot, the Pullman Palace Car Company’s Clerk and secretary of Pullman School, was one of the first people to live in my "Skilled Craftsman” row house, along with a watchman named T. Adams in 1883.

In 1889, a Pullman company laborer, foreman and finisher lived at what’s now my place. And they were followed by the family of Welsh “iron roller” Edward Williams and their 14-year-old Russian servant Amelia Schultz in the early 1900s.

Ten years later, Danish upholsterer Peter Everson, his wife, Marie, and their two borders, Swedish carpenter Oscar Anderson and Swedish steel worker Alfred Hillstrom, lived there.

Another Danish upholster, Peter Severson, and his wife lived there between in the late 1910s and early 1920s, followed by a Greek chiropractor James Femedas and his wife, Virginia.

If you come down to the house tour this year, try plugging the link to Pullman House Histories into your smart phone browser to learn a little bit more about the forgotten folks who lived there and helped build both Pullman’s train cars and, in some ways, America’s labor movement.

If minute historic details aren’t your thing, make sure you walk through Pullman’s alleys, which come alive with garage sales every house tour weekend.

Some of my neighbors will be selling some pretty cool junk.

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