"Instead of locating his factory for building railroad sleeping cars in Chicago, George M. Pullman built a town of his own outside the city limits — the first model, planned industrial community in the United States. Pullman contained everything necessary for a self- sustaining town: civic, public, commercial, recreational and factory buildings, as well as a variety of housing types, all carefully placed in landscaped surroundings designed by Nathan Barrett. Later absorbed into the city Pullman once avoided, the residential buildings began to be sold to private owners in 1907. The company sold the original factory site in 1958." (Chicago Landmarks Website)