Pullman "was convinced that by creating artful spaces, nicely landscaped spaces, open spaces, that he would raise the moral character of the industrial worker, which was fairly grim at the time," says Mike Wagenbach, Pullman site superintendent for the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency.

Pullman's visionary ideas for a planned city crop up in such current urban planning buzzwords as "smart growth" and "sustainable communities," according to Historic Pullman Foundation president Michael Shymanski.

"It's a micro-version of the city of Chicago in its diversity," says Shymanski, an architect. "It's one of the few neighborhoods on the far south side that has retained its continuity of population over the past 40 years, and yet it is economically, socially and racially integrated."

Pullman's downfall came in 1893, when a national recession hit Chicago particularly hard. Pullman cut jobs and wages, but not rents. A nationally supported strike followed, ended by federal intervention.

The attitude that Pullman's company town was paternalistic and "un-American" culminated in an 1898 Illinois Supreme Court ruling ordering the company to sell nonindustrial property.

The company remained in business into the 1980s, and while it didn't stay at its original site, the factory buildings had industrial tenants for decades. The entire neighborhood became a National Historic Landmark in 1971.

The state bought the clock tower building and Hotel Florence in 1991, and stabilization projects kept the tower standing, Wagenbach says.

Then came that disastrous, freezing night in December 1998.

"It was just like a wedding cake in flames," says Pullman resident Tony Dzik. "Unfortunately, it burned down the best part of Pullman."

The Pullman Foundation led a mail-card campaign to restore the area. It was so successful politicians declared, "'Stop the postcards! What do you want us to do?"' says Shymanski, who has lived four decades in the neighborhood.

Then-Gov. George Ryan had just created a multibillion capital construction program that provided the money — $10 million, three-fifths of the total spent on restoration at the site.

The day in 2005 when the rebuilt tower, now with a digital clock, returned to its summit even took on a 19th-century flavor, remembers Linda Beierle Bullen, the site's curator.

"People in the neighborhood came out with picnic lunches and sat the entire day on the factory site, for about eight, 10 hours, watching that clock tower go up," Bullen says. "There was a big cheer and people had their pictures taken with the clock tower in the background."

While the future of the neighborhood is sound, questions surround what will happen to the administration building. It's a matter of finding another generous benefactor to complete the structure.