Factory Portrait Complete!

Adrienne Langer, 1241, 2012, pen and marker drawing.

I recently posted on artist Adrienne Langer’s visit to our collection to research a local factory in order to create a “factory portrait” of the exterior.  The Main Belting Factory, located on Carpenter Street in South Philadelphia, was an active manufacturing company in the late 19th century and its structure has since been turned into studio space and offices.  Langer has just completed the drawing above, which will hang in the lobby of the building.

Main Belting Company.  Philadelphia, Pa., The Book of its Bourse & Co-operating Public Bodies (Philadelphia , 1898).

We were excited to see how she incorporated historical elements of the building into her work, including a water tower (seen in the below photograph showing a rear view) and an operating smoke stack, providing the viewer with a glimpse of what the factory may have looked like when in operation.  The palette of browns she used is reminiscent of old sepia-toned photographs and the original railroad tracks and cobblestone street included in the foreground, as visible in the above photograph, add to the historical charm made possible by the documentation found in our collections.

Jackson-Cross Company, Rear of 1217-41 Carpenter St. on Montrose St., ca. 1940.

Langer was pleased to locate a variety of resources for her project at the Library Company and hopes to utilize our collections again soon.  We wish her well and hope to see more building portraits in the near future!

Nicole Joniec
Print Department Assistant & Digital Collections Manager