The sprawling Pullman rail car factory on the Far South Side took just one year to build in the 1880s. But seven years after a fire damaged the historic factory, it still hasn’t been put back together.
Ambitious plans for the landmark have languished as state historians focused on the $150 million Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield. A museum to celebrate Pullman’s monumental industrial and labor heritage are as far away as founder George Pullman’s vision of a utopian community.
“Pullman is one of the top 10 sites for 19th Century history in the United States, and it has been treated like an orphan child,” said David Bahlman, president of the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois.
Plans to put a new roof on the 200,000-square-foot factory and seal the fragile building from the elements have changed dozens of times. The roof is now two years overdue.
The lead contractor on the restoration pledges to meet a Sept. 30 deadline on the roof. But many of the 3,000 residents of South Pullman’s tidy rowhouses are wary.
“I’ll eat my hat” if a clock tower actually gets installed this fall, said Kris Thomsen, has lived directly across from the factory on 111th Street for 20 years. A retired teacher, Thomsen volunteers as tour guide and filing clerk at the Pullman State Historic Site office.
Two years ago, “we were going to plan some sort of champagne party to celebrate the new clock tower,” but it never came, said Thomsen, 62. “At this point, I just hope somebody will push my wheelchair over here for the champagne.”
It’s a long way from the ambitious vision of a task force of high-powered politicians and business people who dreamed that from the ashes of the 1998 factory fire would rise a major transportation and labor museum with restaurants and shopping, at a cost of as much as $100 million.
Their idea was to preserve a unique piece of Americana. The Pullman Palace Car Co. factory is a centerpiece in the Pullman Historic District, designated a national landmark in 1969 because of the area’s contributions to labor and urban planning history. When he built the factory to help meet the country’s burgeoning 19th Century demand for rail travel, George Pullman also built a meticulous company town of shops, parks and schools. But strife quickly replaced neighborhood serenity as an 1894 strike at the plant helped spark the modern labor movement.
“Small plans are not worthy here,” said former Gov. James Thompson, who led the Pullman factory task force in 1999.
Now there is no clear plan of how to use the factory once the new roof, clock tower and windows are in place, acknowledged Mike Wagenbach, the state’s official site historian. There’s also no plan to acquire additional private or government funds to build a museum.
Instead, there is plenty of finger-pointing.
After watching the site sit dormant for months at a time, Pullman residents blame the state Capital Development Board, which oversees the restoration contract. State bureaucrats largely blame the contractor, Chicago Heights Construction Co. Project records reviewed by the Tribune show at least 28 instances in which overseeing architects determined the contractor failed to live up to the state contract.
Last summer, as the state briefly considered firing Chicago Heights, it was “painfully obvious” that the company “will continue to under-staff the project and under-perform on contractual responsibilities,” Robert Coomer, the director of the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, wrote to other officials.
Dan Bergin, president of Chicago Heights Construction, countered that the project has been “absolutely bizarre.”
Contractor criticizes state
The company’s work originally was scheduled to be completed in late 2003. Twice, though, Bergin said, his subcontractors walked off the job because of slow payment from the state. There have been more than 50 changes to the scope of the work and more than 100 instances in which Bergin’s team asked for clarification because of unclear state work plans.
Design of the new clock tower “took 14 months of back and forth,” Bergin said. “The clock tower could have been up there a year ago had things worked out properly.”
Maynard Crossland, whom Coomer replaced last summer as head of the historic preservation agency, said the burdens of the Lincoln library were partly to blame for the Pullman mess.
“There just isn’t any political support to push (Pullman) along,” Crossland said, adding that the Lincoln project “was the one thing that mattered. There were so many other historic sites that suffered greatly.”
Other officials said the renovation design, created largely from old photographs, was extremely difficult. New historically significant architectural details continually emerged in the fire cleanup.
“The Capital Development Board is doing everything it can to restore the Pullman factory in a historically accurate manner,” said Jan Grimes, the agency’s acting executive director. “Is it more important to do the project quickly or to do it right? The answer was obvious to us. Others may not have understood the issues involved.”
Neighborhood woes arise
Community infighting also hurts restoration efforts.
Neighborhood leaders spent the last three years debating the nearby $50 million Salem Baptist Church House of Hope mega-church. The African-American church, which opened in July, is on the eastern edge of the predominantly white South Pullman neighborhood. Many residents fought the church construction, fearing it would overwhelm the community with traffic congestion.
A five-minute walk from the fenced-off factory site, the charred remains of Market Square serve as evidence that community leaders haven’t mastered preservation much better than state bureaucrats. The square burned down more than three decades ago. The Historic Pullman Foundation, despite another $1.1 million grant, has failed to install a new Market Square roof because of contractor squabbles and engineering problems.
Some concede the recent track record in Pullman creates a credibility problem for any pursuit of additional funds.
“If you were a sports team with this many losing seasons, the management would be gone,” said John Cwenkala, who was president of the Pullman Civic Organization last year.
Funding prospects aren’t as bright as the late 1990s, when the hot economy helped spur the Pullman museum idea. State funds are tight.
Nationwide, the federal government has poured $218 million into 726 preservation projects in the last five years. But the Save America’s Treasures program doesn’t come close to funding all the requests from preservationists, and it is under an annual threat of budget cuts.
Still, some politicians continue to assess the Pullman restoration with platitudes.
“My vision is a transportation museum,” said Ald. Anthony Beale (9th), who represents Pullman. “Rome was not built in a day, and it’s going to take some time. We just need to keep our eye on the prize.”
With the Lincoln library finally open, the Capital Development Board in May proudly announced it’s next major preservation effort: renovating Springfield’s Union Station to its original 1898 appearance. The $10 million project is scheduled for completion in 2007.
Its centerpiece?
A clock tower.
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jbebow@tribune.com
