Brunswick Balke Collender Company Factory Building, Chicago, Illinois, Roof Plan Possibly 1891 - 1989

Curator: This delicate drawing, likely from sometime between 1891 and 1898, is a roof plan. It’s believed to be from the architects Adler & Sullivan for the Brunswick Balke Collender Company Factory Building in Chicago. You can see it’s rendered in graphite and ink. Editor: Wow, my first thought? Serenity. It's stark, geometric, almost like a Mondrian painting if he'd gone into architecture! I feel drawn to that clean, uncluttered design. Curator: Indeed! There is something deeply satisfying about the precision and clarity here. Each line, each square, serves a purpose. The whole is like a diagram of contained potential. For me, it is a symbol of modern progress. Editor: I see that too. Those precise lines speak of order, industrial potential...yet I sense more. There's an almost ritualistic element, the way those tiny arrows point inward. It feels almost as though it’s holding psychic energies in balance... Curator: A building as a vessel, you mean? In a way, that’s the work of Adler and Sullivan. The balance of form and feeling was deeply thought. Editor: Exactly! Looking at these little chimney stacks along the side, for example, it strikes me as more than a simple diagram. Think about what they would have looked like billowing smoke against the Chicago sky. Even in this plan, I feel the grit of the industrial age softened somehow. Curator: A romantic’s pragmatism? A businessman's aesthetic eye? Chicago really was the crossroads of those values. This simple plan resonates because it still asks questions about how those seemingly irreconcilable ideals work together, even now. Editor: Well, my headspace is a bit more “Jungian shadow,” but you're right, of course. What lingers isn’t the factory plan itself but the echoes of intent and aspiration – all that was to *happen* within these measured lines. That to me is the enduring resonance, beyond brick and mortar. Curator: Nicely put. Perhaps the beauty truly lies in its potent simplicity, waiting for life to unfold.