Company Town

What Is a Company Town?

A company town is a settlement in which one employer owns most or all of the land, houses, and businesses, and its workers rent their homes from that employer. Company towns grew up across the United States in the 1800s and early 1900s around mines, lumber operations, textile mills, and factories. Many sat in places with little existing housing, so the employer had to build a town to get a workforce at all.

They are an early form of what is now called employer-assisted housing, and an early large-scale answer to the question of how to house workers where the jobs are.

How It Works

West Virginia’s coal towns show the typical pattern. According to the West Virginia Encyclopedia, the coal company bought or leased the land, then built dwellings along with a company store, church, school, and other buildings. The towns were not incorporated places and had no institutions of government. Housing was arranged by rank: managers in better houses on better sites, miners in simple, uniform three- or four-room dwellings. Black and immigrant workers were often placed apart, in less desirable areas. The same source estimates there were 465 coal company towns in West Virginia in 1930. None remain company-owned today, though many survive as privately owned communities.

Quality varied widely. Some towns were better than comparable independent communities, while others were squalid or harshly repressive.

Example

Pullman, Illinois, south of Chicago, is the best-documented case. The Pullman Palace Car Company bought 4,000 acres for its factory and town. Ground was broken in 1880, and the town was finished in 1884. The National Park Service notes that its brick row houses, with indoor plumbing, were well above the standards of the day. However, George Pullman set rents to earn a 6% return on the company’s investment, restricted certain activities, and did not allow residents to buy their homes.

In May 1894, during a period of economic hardship, Pullman workers went on strike. The walkout grew into a nationwide railroad boycott of Pullman cars, which ended after a federal court injunction and the deployment of federal troops. In 1898 the Illinois Supreme Court ordered the company to sell its non-industrial land. Most of the town changed hands in 1907, and residents got the first option to buy.

Why It Matters for Workforce Housing

Company towns show both the appeal and the hazard of employer-provided housing. Employers today still build or subsidize homes for teachers, hospital staff, resort workers, and farmworkers when local markets cannot house them. The history helps explain why some modern programs keep the lease separate from the job, use third-party owners or deed restrictions, or help workers buy rather than rent. The aim is to avoid a situation where losing a job also means losing a home. For more, see the guide to the history of workforce housing.