Pullman

Yes - Pullman, Illinois - where the Pullman cars were made, and where George Pullman constructed the first planned company town in the US.  So - some wonderful 1880s brick architecture (there would be more of this central building if it wasn't for an arsonist in 1998 ...), whether in the factory/administration buildings, or in the town itself.  This colonnaded square was apartment buildings ... and people came out by train during the Chicago World's Fair to stay in them.  It's been a National Park since Obama designated it as such in ... 2015? - and the NPS tour was really great - not just taking one through the architecture, but the place of the workers in US labor history, the Pullman porters on trains and the implications of the Jim Crow era in terms of their working conditions, and so on.  

Admittedly, walking round the streets themselves felt a bit like walking round the parts of Leeds that my father's side of the family came from... But what made it a really special day was that I'd managed, unplanned, to coincide with the 51st Annual Pullman House Tour - so a number of renovated homes were open to the public (including one former executive home restored over the last 21 years by people who love Victorian art and Victoriana - there was even a Queen Victoria under a glass cloche, and also a ballroom - a very small ballroom - made in 1900 on the 3rd floor, complete with a 2800 piece stained glass laylight.  Alas - but understandably - none of the homes allowed photography.

And I had an added bonus when I stopped for coffee at the Crivello Residence, and found myself talking to an elderly (88) man, Al, who told me he was one of the two men remaining in the town who'd been employed in the Pullman works, which finally closed in 1982.  He worked 8 hour days, during each day he fitted the doors onto one Pullman car (and he said he put a penny into each carriage, hidden behind a door, so that Abraham Lincoln would look after it.  Does anyone know of any other instances of AL being treated like a saint?  Al's parents came from Mexico, which might explain the votive nature of this ...).  He remembered growing up as a boy in the town, and all the tanks that were made there in WW2.  After the works closed down, he did repairs and renovations all round the town, finding all kinds of things left behind and hidden in walls, and in the Prohibition-era tunnels between houses and garages - not least money, because people didn't trust banks at that time (readers of Alice's Shortfall will appreciate that).  So that was an amazingly fortuitous encounter (he was waiting for someone - he wasn't an official part of the tour ...).

Stained glass in the church,

and in the Hotel Florence.

And some Halloween decorations...

Oh, and there was a vintage car show going on, too!  (the mural was done in 1996 by American Academy of Art students).