Pullman, George

George Mortimer Pullman (1831–1897), an American industrialist, invented and manufactured a number of luxury railroad passenger cars, including the Pullman sleeping car and the dining car. He was born in Brocton, New York, and was trained as a cabinet-maker. Having acquired skill at carpentry as an apprentice, and at moving buildings from his father’s business, he was invited to Chicago (1859) to jack up buildings to a new level as part of a public works project. He invested his earnings from the Chicago project, in partnership with a friend, in the design and construction of the first successful railroad sleeping car, the Pioneer (1865). Pullman, as an experienced rail traveler, had become well acquainted with the deplorable conditions found in rail cars of that day and saw the opportunities for improvement. He established the Pullman Palace Car Company (1865) to build his sleeping cars, then went on to introduce hotel cars (1866), sleeping cars outfitted with small kitchens, and dining cars (1868), which were equipped with a kitchen and a dining room and were intended solely for the preparation and serving of food. In 1880 he established the town of Pullman, Illinois, near Chicago, where his cars were then built. Although intended as an industrial utopia, it became the scene of one of the bloodiest strikes in American history in 1894.