Writings and Photos > 100 Parks Project

Park #47: Pullman National Monument

we headed out to an urban park – and a new one at that. Pullman National Monument was designated by President Barak Obama in 2015. Created as a planned community for the employees of the Pullman company, famous for its railroad cars, it was designed by both an architect and a landscape architect. Once called the most perfect town in the world, Pullman boasted a variety of different types of homes and community buildings. We walked the streets, following the guided map, past the executives’ homes, the foremen’s homes, the skilled workers’ homes, the other workers’ homes.

“It’s classist,” Scott said.

And indeed it seemed to be true. The types of homes were segregated by the pecking order in the company.