Lake Vista

Lake Vista. . , Lake Vista's winding park paths and low walls gave beauty to power., Architect Solon Beman designed the Pullman Palace Car Works in the Romanesque Revival style as the centerpiece of George Pullman's model company town. Landscape architect Nathan Barrett sited Lake Vista in front of the building and surrounded it with meandering paths and lush gardens. While Lake Vista provided an idyllic foreground for the elegant, imposing Car Works, it also served an important function, as it cooled wastewater from the Pullman steam plant., By 1892, Lake Vista's southern limestone wall was removed, and in 1899, the Pullman Company filled in the lake as it continued expanding the factory's production. During a 2020 restoration of the site, the foundations of the south wall and pier were discovered. They were documented, stabilized, and carefully preserved in place.,

"Pullman, as an object of interest to the visitor from abroad and as a show place to the traveler coming and going on the Illinois Central, is doomed. Radical changes embodying the destruction of the 'model town's' most distinctive features, the beauty of lake and lawn, of shrubbery and flowers, have already been decreed." , "Pullman Is Doomed," Chicago Inter-Ocean, 29 April 1899

, [Captions:] , Top Left Lake Vista in 1883 with its curved walls and paths. The foundations of the pier and wall in the center of this aerial photograph survive., Left By 1892, the above-ground portion of the curved wall had been removed., Bottom Left In the winter of 1893, Lake Vista froze and was transformed into an ice-skating rink., Bottom In the summer of 1899, laborers filled Lake Vista with sand. Pullman station was moved across the tracks.