Apartment Project, Chicago, Illinois, Perspective Rendering

Known primarily for luxurious apartment buildings of the 1920s, McNally & Quinn completed plans for some of their tallest residential buildings in the early 1930s. Instead of the detailing common in their earlier work inspired by French Renaissance styles, their later designs featured dramatic massing and modern lines, often appearing in high contrast of light and dark in the architectural rendering. This building’s tall towers and setbacks shown in this drawing allow light to enter the core of the large building, similar to the recently-completed Stevenson Hotel on South Michigan Avenue that was, at the time, the largest hotel in the world. Like many architecture firms of the era, McNally & Quinn saw their thriving practice collapse during the Great Depression. Drawings for unbuilt projects such as the one represented here provide provocative traces of how their work would have evolved in Chicago in a different economic climate.