While the Pullman Company still owned all the housing stock, company employees performed landscape maintenance. A variety of trees were planted along the parkways. This "serpentine" pathway, as Barrett called it, provided yet more juxtaposition against the formal grid system.īarrett designed Pullman to resemble a suburban park - a radical notion for a working class community. Barrett was fond of such pleasing "juxtapositions" - pitting the formal against the informal.Ĭottage Grove, originally, was a narrow, winding carriage path that snaked its way from 107th Street (where there was another intersection circle bed) between Lake Vista and the Clock Tower, and to the front door of the Arcade Building. There were several such intersection circle beds in Pullman to soften the strict formality of the grid system of the rest of the town. Originally, there would have been a large circle-shaped, formal flowerbed in the middle of what today is 111th Street and Cottage Grove. In Lake Calumet was Athletic Island, which had on it ball fields, a running track, and grandstands, from which people could watch the regattas run on the lake. The street, paved with macadam, was lined with maple trees, creating a formal alley all the way down to Lake Calumet, whose shoreline extended to where the police station is located today. The lakeshore and the adjoining Clock Tower landscape were planted primarily with lawn, and dotted artistically with low trees and shrubs in order to accentuate, not to obscure the view of the Clock Tower. Cottage Grove Avenue now runs through the middle of what used to be Lake Vista, which served a dual function - it collected the condensation from the great Corliss Engine that powered the machinery in Pullman, and it also served as a reflecting pool for the Clock Tower. Pullman's "front yard", therefore, faced the railroad tracks, and was centered around the Pullman train station, which was located on 111th just west of the Metra Electric Tracks. Unlike today, where most people arrive to Pullman by car, in the 1880's people arrived by train. Pullman hired Solon Beman to design the town and factory of Pullman and Nathan Barrett to design the integrated landscape design.
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