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On the evening of October 18, 1897, George Mortimer Pullman hosted a dinner at the Chicago Club for the heads of the Pennsylvania Railroad, toasting them with fine wines and Pearl de Montana cigars. It was his last hurrah. The next morning he died of a massive heart attack. At the end the sixty-six-year-old tycoon was not merely confused and embittered but paranoid, perhaps rightfully so. Fearing that disgruntled ex-employees might snatch his corpse, he left instructions to be entombed in a wall of steel and stone. The funeral party waited until the safety of darkness to set off from the Pullman mansion on Prairie Avenue. George's mahogany casket had been lined with lead, and he was lowered into a grave wrapped with tar paper and covered with quick-drying asphalt. Another layer of concrete was added, along with heavy rails laid at right angles. The process took two days, leaving him more secure than the pharaohs of ancient Egypt.

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Larry Tye "Rising from the Rails" (2004)