Brunswick Balke Collender Company Factory Building, Chicago, Illinois, Multiple Views Possibly 1891 - 1989

Curator: At first glance, it appears almost ghostly—a spectral presence rendered in graphite and ink. Editor: Indeed. What we have here is a drawing titled "Brunswick Balke Collender Company Factory Building, Chicago, Illinois, Multiple Views." Attributed to Adler & Sullivan, Architects, it likely dates sometime between 1891 and 1899. Curator: Ghostly, yet precise. The fine lines describe more than a structure; they map the aspirations and ideals of a city burgeoning with industry and innovation. Those repeated window shapes, like eyes, offer an architectural language promising transparency and mass production. Editor: The grid structure you are referring to emphasizes the logic of industrial design. But also consider the very materiality. The ink and graphite are carefully layered to express an almost Platonic essence of building: planes, voids, supports—it’s as if we're seeing the structure's ideal form laid bare. Note the linear style. Curator: I find something undeniably potent in that reductive quality. This wasn't merely a blueprint, but a statement about industry's place in society—architecture embodying the values of the age: efficiency, order, even a kind of stark beauty. Editor: Values reflected as well through the repetition of forms throughout. Think of the window panes themselves, and what they represented for a factory in Chicago at the close of the 19th century. Light. And productivity made manifest. Curator: Looking at it again, the lines also seem to speak of division and standardization within labor itself. But what stands out to me are not these intellectual considerations but, despite everything, a clear demonstration of a creative artistic sensibility! Editor: Well said. Perhaps what strikes me most is this delicate interplay between line and volume—between abstraction and something concrete in its manifestation. Curator: A dialogue in lines, about work and living—I find that remarkable. Editor: Precisely. A stark look into a fascinating age in the American zeitgeist of architectural aesthetics and industrial output.