The company formed a new city as a means of reinventing Decatur as a progressive manufacturing and transportation center following the war.
They named their new city New Decatur and gave it the nickname "The Chicago of the South," referencing its status as a transportation hub, and as a marketing tool toward Midwesterners.
New Decatur was designed as a planned community with the help of famed landscape architect Nathan Franklin Barrett.
The company advertised this new development across the Northeast and Midwestern United States as "the healthiest city in the South," following the installation of a modern water and drainage system, which was thought to ward off disease.
The founders together and separately were also involved with starting other businesses mills, banks insurance companies in Decatur and the region.