Editing George Pullman (section)

=== Chicago ===
[[File:Street Raising on Lake Street.jpg|thumb|right|392px|Mendel lithograph of a block of buildings raised by a consortium including Pullman]]

During the 1850s, the streets in Chicago often resembled a swamp, as the city had been built to too low an elevation on the shore of Lake Michigan. The city undertook to re-engineer its sewage system to clear the surface of the unwanted and often pathogenic standing water. This project necessitated the raising of the street level an average of over a metre.

As the streets rose above the front doors of the adjacent buildings, the latter needed to be demolished and rebuilt or else [[Raising of Chicago|physically raised]] so as to meet the newly raised level of the street. In 1859 Pullman and his fellow Albion-based business partner Charles Moore moved to Chicago to raise one such building, the Matteson House, a large brick built hotel.<ref>[https://nike-of-samothrace.net/csc.html#y1859_m02_d28 ''Chicago Tribune,'' February 28, 1859]</ref> Pullman and Moore went on to raise several more Chicago buildings before becoming part of a consortium that raised the entire ninety-eight metre long block of four and five storey brick and stone buildings on the north side of Lake Street between Clark and La Salle Streets, a feat depicted by Edward Mendel in a large lithograph.<ref>[https://nike-of-samothrace.net/csc.html#y1860_m04_d02 ''Chicago Tribune,'' April 2, 1860]</ref> In 1861 Pullman contracted with the Ely and Smith partnership to raise the six storey high [[Tremont House (Chicago)|Tremont House]].<ref>[https://nike-of-samothrace.net/csc.html#y1861_m01_d22 ''Chicago Tribune,'' January 22, 1861]</ref> Pullman contracted to raise these and many other large buildings in Chicago, and his firm raised the buildings on average six feet without causing them any damage and often times while the buildings were still fully operational, with people entering and exiting them and conducting business within.