Historic Pullman neighborhood proposed as National Monument by Obama

[schlimm]

dakotafred

 

 

CSSHEGEWISCH

 

trackrat888

The Pullman District is composed of middle income black familys that have been there for generations. Giving this a "National Monument" Status made have the unintened consequesnce of making this a trendy neighborhood and leading to WGLBT yuppie gentrification pricing out the working class black familys for a National Monument that was supposed to celebrate there heritage as the grandsons of Pullman Porters.

 

 

 

Are you implying that the employees of Pullman who actually lived in the neighborhood and built the cars have no role in the heritage of Pullman the carbuilder?

 

 

 

 

How any sensible person could read what you did into trackrat's post is hard to understand. Obviously, he is talking about black descendents being "gentrified" out of their homes, and his disapproval is implicit.

 

1.  Much of what Trackrat posts suggests this is just the latest pseudonym of the troller,  previously known as: Polish Falcon, OhioRiver, Trainfinder, etc.

2. The Pullman neighborhood (the historic area) has been on various registers of landmark historic status since 1972.

3 The historic neighborhood has these demographics:  2001 Census date of homebuyers: 75% Caucasian, 19% African-American, 6% Other (Hispanic, Asian, etc.). The historic areas are generally more diverse than the full community area. For example in 2000, Census Tract 5003.00 was 53.5% White and 26.7% African-American, and 36.1% of Hispanic Origin of any race.

Facts are actually useful things and inconvenient for some.

[schlimm]

There was a good column by Mary Schmich in today's Trib.  I will post the article rather than the link because it is locked to non-subscribers:

 Of all the places you might take a visitor to Chicago, my favorite has always been Pullman.

Drive far south on I-94, through scenery too bleak for a tourist brochure, into an impoverished part of Chicago, and just when you start to worry that you might wind up in Indiana, exit.

A few blocks later, there it sits, a village from another place and time, like a stage set for some happy Americana musical.

There's a greenstone church, an old hotel with a wraparound porch, red-brick row homes and a picture-perfect park. Across a big road sits the factory where workers who lived in George Pullman's company town made Pullman railroad cars.

 

Going to Pullman is like stepping back in time, but part of the charm is that you've also stepped into a living community. That's why I like to take visitors there.

Its tourism efforts have always seemed pleasantly homegrown — like the locally produced Sunday brunch, now defunct, at the old Hotel Florence — and as a visitor, you could feel not just history, but a living struggle and a living pride.

Tourism in Pullman is about to change.

On Friday, the day after President Barack Obama came to town to proclaim Pullman a national monument, I took the familiar drive down to see the new place.

It looked pretty much like the old one, except for the National Park Service ranger manning the desk at the old visitor center.

"Not me," he said when I said I was looking for someone who'd been there for a while.

 

 

 

He'd been on the job since Thursday.

But Jeanne Schulman was sitting in a little office behind the front desk.

"My dad was Big Strong John the Blacksmith," she said. "Twenty five years in the shops."

Four generations of Schulman's family have lived in Pullman. It's that kind of place, where memories are long and roots grow deep.

"If you've only been here 10 years," she said, "whippersnappers."

Schulman cried Thursday as she watched the presidential ceremony on the live stream in the visitor center.

Finally. Pullman would get the recognition it deserved. 

Schulman describes it, Pullman has had its ups and downs, but it's the kind of place where neighbors wave at each other, and if your family has trouble, they bring a casserole.

 

 

 

 

 

As she was saying this, a ranger appeared.

"I've got a couple here want to pay a fee?"

"Five dollars," Schulman said.

He disappeared and she laughed. "This is all brand new."

Until now, much of the work of trumpeting Pullman to the world has fallen to volunteer residents like Schulman.

Jim Caffrey, who had stopped by to give Schulman his "daily hug," is another.

•  

 

"Pullman grabbed me like a big hug and said, 'You need to be here,'" said Caffrey, who moved to the neighborhood nine years ago and volunteers as a tour guide.

"My sister lived on the North Side," he said. "It was really snooty, everybody honking."

In Pullman, he said, everybody knows everybody, and everybody contributes.

The heart of residential Pullman is only four blocks by four blocks. There are 2,000 or so residents who, in the job-starved Far South Side, with the Pullman factory long closed, have to travel farther to find work than Schulman's father and grandfather did.

Remember the lessons of Pullman

"One of my goofiest childhood memories," Schulman said, leaning back in her chair, "is my mother in her cotton housedress, and she took a quart of beer, and Dad came to the wrought iron fence and she handed it to him through the fence."

As she reminisced, another ranger appeared at the doorway.

"Sorry to interrupt. Are the posters for sale?"

Schulman isn't sure what her role will be in the new Pullman but she's convinced the change is for the good.

"I don't see how it can be bad," she said.

It will, however, be different.

"A lot more people," said Mike Shymanski when I asked him to imagine a summer day in Pullman two years from now.

Shymanski, an architect who led the push for national monument status, remembers riding an old commuter train, the kind with wicker seats, to the neighborhood shortly after he and his wife got engaged in 1967.

They felt they'd stepped into a time warp. They stayed. His children and a granddaughter live there now.

"People in the neighborhood like to fantasize it's like living in a small New England town," he said with a laugh. "That's the good news and the bad news."

In his picture of a summer day two years from now, there will be volunteers meeting visitors at the Metra stop. There will be new restaurants and commercial activities and improvements not only in what's thought of as "historic Pullman" but also in the troubled surrounding areas. Residents will remain a big part of the place.

"It's going to be a destination," he said.

With luck, the destination will preserve not only Pullman's history and its buildings, but the community that worked so hard to make it happen.

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[Paul_D_North_Jr]

Regarding the "Antiquities Act", see this for some facts, and pros and cons:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiquities_Act  

Compare with the "Midnight Forests" designations, also by TR, with some help from Gifford Pinchot:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_forests 

As always, "Be careful what you wish for . . . " (good advice for both sides !)

- Paul North.