This Textile Mill Complex in WI was demolished in 2003

Bradley Knitting Company - Borg Complex, Delavan Wisconsin

Date added: February 13, 2024

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The Bradley Knitting Company in Delavan, Wisconsin, was an industrial site consisting of eight buildings constructed between 1903 and 1955. The shape and design of the earliest building set the pattern for the five major components that followed. It played a role in transforming the village of Delavan from a retail distribution center to a small industrial city. For many years the company was by far the town's largest employer. The founders of the company were important in the development of the town both before and after the establishment of the Bradley Knitting Company.

The complex was demolished in 2003.

The history of Delavan begins in 1836, when Henry and Samuel Phoenix arrived from upper New York state, looking for a likely spot to found a settlement. They named their choice for Edward C. Delavan, an Albany, New York temperance leader. By 1839 there was a sawmill and a grist mill. By 1846 the town had 63 families and two temperance societies, which between them enrolled 75% of the town's population. The railroad arrived in 1856. The first manufacturing concern, other than craftsmen for local trade, was a pump and windmill factory started in 1861. (By 1882, this concern, located near the Bradley / Borg site, boasted a foundry and machine shop and shipped 15,000 pumps and 1800 windmills a year. It employed 35 persons. It is the ancestor of the Sta-Rite Company, which continues to this day to be a major manufacturing firm located in Delavan.) Another early feature of the village was the circus. Starting with the Mabie circus in 1850, the town spawned seven shows between 1857 and 1876. Altogether, 28 circuses headquartered in Delavan between 1847 and 1894. Delavan could also boast having sheltered an extraordinary teacher, Thomas C. Chamberlin, later a seminal figure in the history of the University in Madison. The village was, in the years 1867-69, "A small frontier village of about 1500 inhabitants. Most of the original settlers were still living on their holdings. They were chiefly of New England extraction, deeply religious, and profoundly desirous that their children should receive a good education. In such a community, Professor Chamberlin was very much at home..." True to their New England roots, the town's founders were also anti-slavery; the Wisconsin Territorial Anti-slavery Society was founded there in 1847. A supplement to the Delavan Enterprise, August 13^th, 1936, points out that the Van Velzer Cigar Factory had been in operation there since 1877, and tobacco remains an important local crop today. Since the 1870s, nearby Lake Delavan has been a vacation spot, drawing patrons from Milwaukee and Chicago. The town is also the location of the State School for the Deaf. Delavan (2020 census) has a population of 15,884, up from 5684 in 1980. It has a well-preserved and thriving shopping district, and a growing industrial park on its eastern edge. The Borg Company now occupies a large building in the industrial park.

In 1900, the population of Delavan was 2244. Major businesses on the 1904 Sanborn map are an elevator and feed mill, the pump and windmill factory, and a lumber company, all grouped near the railroad on the southeast side of the village. The Globe Knitting Factory, in the same small area of town, is shown as a two-story, 50' by 200' building. Obtaining the knitting factory was the result of a concerted effort by a group of leading businessmen.

The men who obtained the Globe factory for Delavan were among its leading businessmen. The decision that ultimately transformed Delavan from a retail to a manufacturing center was made early in 1903 when the committee offered $2600 in cash, a building site, and a $10,000 building fund to Globe. Ten percent of the fund was pledged by the W.W. Bradley Company.

William Wallace Bradley was "...for years one of the leading merchants of Delavan." Born in Groton, New York in 1826, he came to Delavan in 1848, where he opened a tailor shop. Later he began dealing in ready-made clothing, and dry goods. "He started in a small way and built well, his trade increasing with the years..." He married the sister of one of the first settlers, Esther Larnard, and they had two daughters, Eva and Allie. Bradley was in business in Delavan for over fifty years and "did much for the upbuilding of the place." He died on January 1^st, 1900.

The daughters of William Wallace Bradley married men who became the prime movers in bringing the Globe Knitting Factory to Delavan. Allie married William H. Tyrell, of whom Beckwith says, "he advanced the general welfare by accelerating commercial activity," and was a "well known manufacturer and merchant." He was born in Racine in 1857. His father was descended from British nobility, was a tailor, and also a prominent developer. William came to Delavan as a young man, in 1876. After his marriage, in 1879, he became a partner in W.W. Bradley Company.

Eva Bradley married John Jay Phoenix, grandson of the town's founder. John J. grew up in Illinois, but came to live in Delavan in 1883. He married Eva in 1885. In 1886 the W.W. Bradley Company was incorporated, with Bradley and his sons-in-law as owners. Phoenix died at 94, in 1958. His obituary, "J.J. Phoenix, Civic Leader, Dies" noted his keen interest in the "community founded by his grandfather," and his contributions to the "cultural and industrial growth of Delavan." He was president of the Bradley Knitting Company from its founding until it closed, and also was a one-time president of the National Knitters Manufacturing Association. Phoenix and Tyrell together founded the Delavan Fuel and Light Company, in 1895. Tyrell platted Tyrell's addition, a development that sold 75 lots, at a fixed price, within two hours of the opening of the sale, in 1911.

Globe's president, Richard Lorenz, was anxious to escape labor union activity in Chicago. In April he made a deal with the committee, to include the building site, $3500 in cash, and an extension of a water main to the site. A Delavan contractor, James Davidson, got the contract, for a two-story building, 50' by 108'. This section of what is now Building 2 went up between April and July, 1903. In the summer of 1903 production included 500 dozen sweaters a week in addition to gloves and hosiery. When the company was incorporated in October, 1903, Lorenz held $20,000 of the total $50,000 stock.

The new possibility was first reported by the Delavan Enterprise on February 19^th, 1903. Employment of 150-200 "hands" was anticipated, 3/4 of them women. Events moved quickly and by April 2^nd, work was advertised for women and men over 15 at $4.00 to $12.00 a week. (The city's employees went on strike the next week, demanding raises to $3.50 for teamsters and $1.75 for laborers.) A site for the factory was donated by Julia Gormley, who soon after sold an adjacent tract to be subdivided into 60 lots. By summer's end, the building was complete, with 50 machines shipped in from Chicago.

W.H. Tyrell and John J. Phoenix bought out Lorenz and Globe Knitting Works in 1905 and it became the Bradley Knitting Company. In 1910 a new stock issue raised $25,000. A photo from the preceding year shows the two-story Building 2, already apparently longer than the original 108'. Next to it is Building 4.

Building 1 (the heating plant) the water tower and the chimneys first appear in a photo dated 1915. The 1915 picture also shows an addition on the east end of Building 4: the first section of Building 5. Yadon describes the impact of the new factory; it caused a building boom, and "...over the next three decades completely changed the economy of the city, employing up to 1200 during peak times."

Beckwith observed in 1912 that "the original owner being compelled to give it up, Messrs Tyrrell and Phoenix, after much pressure, were persuaded to take hold of it.... They have had to build additions to the plant for the past 3 years, and in 1911 an addition of three stories, 100' in length, was added, also a power house was built. The plant is managed under a superb system... They now employ about 300 people and do an annual business of nearly one million dollars. Their goods...find a very ready market all over the world... They make knit coats, jackets, caps...one of the most popular (items) being the 'Bradley Muffler' designed and invented by...son Wallace Bradley Tyrell." Wallace Bradley Tyrell was vice president and superintendent of the firm. In 1911 the patented muffler was the subject of a court battle. It was, says Beckwith, "..admittedly the finest muffler in the world...sold in England..."

The factory profited early from WW I, particularly due to a large order for sweaters for the British army. The order was shipped; and went down with the Lusitania; whereupon a second order was placed, and filled. After the war the company continued to prosper, turning out sweaters, bathing suits, and other items. In the early 1920s, the plant at Delavan employed 450 people, in addition to the sales force. Branch plants were built or acquired in Rochester, Minnesota, and in Milwaukee, Racine, Elkhorn, Whitewater, and Lake Geneva. During the 1920s Bradley products were advertised nationally, and bathing suits, dresses and men's overcoats were added to the original line. The company also provided uniforms for major league baseball teams including the Yankees, Giants, Cardinals and the Chicago Cubs.

The Bradley Company was an integral and defining element in the social and economic structure of Delavan. Most of the company stock was held locally and its executives were local people. As noted, housing expanded near the plant, and in 1919 a dormitory (extant) was built for women workers, across from the plant on Wisconsin Street. After October 1929, the firm began a slow decline. The bankruptcy proceeding, in 1941, resulted in a loss of their life savings for many in Delavan. Despite this bitter ending, about 100 former employees turned out for a reunion in 1986.

Employees may have faired better than stockholders. The company would have closed early in the Great Depression had it not been for the arrival of George W. Borg, a wealthy Chicago industrialist who had already acquired a large cattle farm nearby, as a hobby. (Borg Farms had the "largest herd of milking shorthorn cattle in the western hemisphere" --Delavan Enterprise, January 1^st, 1942. The farm employed 60 people and shipped breeding stock overseas, primarily to Latin America.) Borg made a loan to the floundering knitting company, and opened a small operation, making components for automobile clocks, in part of the plant. Bradley continued to struggle through the Depression, only to go bankrupt on the eve of WW II. (Delavan Enterprise, March 27^th, 1941) Within weeks, Borg's Gibbs subsidiary, located in the old women's dorm across the street from the Bradley plant, received a new contract from the war department. (Gibbs held at that time $354,823 worth of army contracts "the nature of which has never been revealed" according to the Enterprise, April 10^th, 1941.) Work was started the same week on an addition to the Gibbs building. In May, Borg purchased the Bradley plant. In June its remaining employees were sent away on paid vacations. When they returned, in July, they would operate on one floor of the main building, producing sweaters and polishing disks. By October the reduced operation employed 100 persons. Some former Bradley managers opened a new company in Delavan, manufacturing sweaters.

Early in 1942, Borg was awarded a defense contract for $6,430,000. Bradley, now a Borg subsidiary, was further reduced "due to the scarcity of wool and the completion of an army contract for 40,000 sweaters." (Enterprise, January 8^th, 1942) The new Borg operation would employ 600 people and require $1,000,000 worth of new equipment. By April, the Enterprise was reporting a Critical housing shortage. In August Borg purchased twelve buses, which ran throughout the war, bringing workers in from nearby towns. Local construction of housing was authorized by the War Production Board, and over 100 houses were built in Delavan to house war workers. (Enterprise August 6^th and November 5^th, 1942) Early in 1943 the new buildings of the Gibbs Division (now Bergamot Brass Works) were completed.

As the Bradley Division declined and finally vanished, the Borg Company prospered. As Bradley had in WW II, Borg grew due to war. The manufacture of automobile clocks was suspended and the plant made mechanical time fuses, earning the dubious distinction of being listed by the Department of Defense as one of the 10 top sabotage targets in the country. The period W. Gordon Yadon has called "The Glory Years", should be remembered for its importance to the national war effort and for the contributions of Gibbs in the development of machine tools and Borg in the organization of massive industrial production.

Site Description

The Bradley Knitting Company plant in Delavan, Wisconsin was, the largest industrial property in the city. It consisted of five connected, three-storey buildings in two parallel rows, plus three smaller buildings, and related structures, occupying a long, narrow tract lying between the tracks of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific railroad, to the south, and Wisconsin Street, on the north.

The Borg Company left the premises in 1989 leaving only the mail room of Sta-Rite Manufacturing Company. West of the Borg complex and connected to it by a second-story skywalk is the Bergamot Brass Works. A gate opens to an alley between the buildings, which is shared, and is connected to an alley that runs between the Bradley / Borg buildings. The Bergamot buildings were constructed for the Gibbs division of the Borg Company during WW II. They are two-story, red brick factory buildings extending over 300' to the west. Across Wisconsin Avenue from the Bradley / Borg complex is a building originally constructed as a dormitory for women factory workers in 1919. It later became the original home of the Gibbs Company and has today been converted to apartments. There is a tunnel that connects the west end of the Bradley / Borg complex to the Bergamot buildings and thence to the dormitory building.

The first impression of a visitor to the Bradley Knitting Company as it was before demolition, is of a very long, uninterrupted three-story facade. Three of the five main buildings form a connected row 481 feet long along Wisconsin Avenue. Starting from the West, and following a numbering system dating at least from the early days of the Borg occupancy, these are: Building 8, constructed by the Bradley Knitting Company in 1923 to house its offices, Building 2, incorporating the original Globe Knitting Mill, of 1903, (expanded before 1909 by the Bradley Company), and, at the east end, Building 3, constructed in 1911.

An alley separates the east end of this row from building 9, an L-shaped, one-story concrete-block storage building, constructed in 1951 and connected at its south end to Building 5. Buildings 5 (1916) and 4 (1909), lying south of and parallel to Buildings 8, 2, and 3, form the second row of buildings in the complex. A 30-foot wide alley separates the two rows of buildings. The alley is spanned by a two-story pedestrian bridge between Buildings 2 and 4, a conveyor bridge between Buildings 3 and 5, and a pedestrian tunnel between Buildings 3 and 5. A rail spur runs down the center of the alley from the west.

West of Building 4 is Building 1, a single-story engine room and heating plant, the first section of which was built in 1910. A one-and-a-half-story addition, housing additional boilers, was added in 1945. Connected to the west and south walls of this addition are two single-story, brick coal sheds. A brick pump house addition is attached to the south wall of the original building. West of the heating plant, and extending parallel to Building 8 and the Bergamot Brass Works, is Building 7, a one-story, irregularly shaped structure consisting of units built in 1944, 1920, 1943, and 1955. There is a 75' steel tower, that once supported a wooden water tank, standing between Building 4 and the heating plant. Behind the heating plant is a partially demolished chimney, surfaced with a crumbling white substance. At the southeast corner of the complex, adjacent to Building 9, is a large cistern that projects about 2 feet above ground level. There are steel electric sub-stations between Buildings 1 and 4 and atop Building 7. All of the property except for a terrace along Wisconsin Street is paved.

Each of the five main buildings in the complex offers three floors of interior space interrupted only by lightweight partitions and supported by pillars. These pillars are 16' apart in both directions except in Building 2, which is supported by wooden pillars 12' apart on the long axis of the building and 10' apart across its width. There is a basement under Buildings 8,2,3, and 5. There is a passenger elevator at the west end of Building 2, added when Building 8, with its adjoining entryway and staircase, was constructed. There are party walls between Buildings 2 and 8, 2 and 3, and 4 and 5. Building 8 has a fireproof staircase, paved in terrazzo, in its easternmost bay. At the east end of Building 2 is an entrance door, hall, and staircase. The fireproof staircase has brick walls on either side, extending from the basement through the roof. At the back (south) of this bay is a freight elevator. There are sliding metal fire doors into this stairwell from Building 2 and Building 3.

There is an original freight elevator in the northeast corner of Building 4, with an adjacent, narrow staircase. Building 5 also has a narrow staircase in its northeast corner. Access to these two buildings is afforded by the bridge on floors two and three from Building 2, and the basement tunnel. Neither of them has its own main entrance, although there are small doors in the east wall of Building 4 and the north wall of Building 5, as well as doors opening to loading docks in their north walls.

The main section of Building 1, measuring 60' by 40', was built in 1910 of reddish common brick, and contains an engine room and a boiler room, separated by a brick partition. The engine room is empty of its original equipment, but the two coal-fired boilers, with "Bradley" in cast lettering, are intact. A 1945 addition, measuring 20' by 40', and one-and-one-half stories high, contains additional oil and gas-fired boilers. To the south of the engine room is a pump room, a one-story 32' by 15' brick addition that contains a pump that brought water from the cistern in the southeast corner of the property to the sprinkler system. (The sprinkler system was at first served by a wooden water tank next to Building 1.) The main section of Building 1 has large, round-headed windows with 8 over 8 sashes topped by a half-round fanlight with spoked muntins. There are four of these and a wooden double door with glass transoms in the north wall. There are three identical windows on the east wall and four on the south wall. Three of the latter, although intact, are covered by the pump house addition. The 1945 addition is concrete block surfaced with tan brick and has two windows on its north wall. Attached to the west wall of the addition are two low brick sheds originally used for coal storage, measuring 15' by 18' and 27' by 17', respectively. All the parts of Buildings #2, #3, #4, #5, #8, and #9 are interconnected.

Building 1 has flat roofs with tile coping on a low parapet. The floor of the 1945 addition is slightly below grade; all floors are poured concrete. The interior walls are exposed brick and, in the 1945 addition, concrete block.

Building 2 began as a 2-story, 50' by 108' structure with entrances in the west and north facades and a loading dock facing the railroad to the south. Delavan put forward substantial inducements to the Globe Knitting Company of Chicago to relocate there. The result, as reported in the Feb. 26^th, 1903 Delavan Enterprise, was "...not so extensive an institution as we would like to see established, (but) it is a starter." "They plan," the story continues, "to use electric power, which will give sufficient business to warrant running the electric light plant day as well as night." A chimney, extant on the south wall of the building, may have served a heating plant in the basement. By 1909 the building had been extended, probably to its full 269' length and 22 bays. A picture from that year shows a two-story building, longer than that shown in a 1903 picture, with alterations in the west facade. What is now known as Building 4 also appears in this photo. A small, one-story brick structure, free-standing with a flat roof, appears near the west wall. A 1912 photo shows a third level added to Building 2, Building 3, and the heating plant with two smokestacks, one presumably brick, with "Bradley" in contrasting letters, and the extant stack. Judging from the nearby 75' water tower, the brick stack was about the same height, while the present one may have exceeded 100'.

Building 2 has brick walls 12" thick. (The exterior surface, of yellow and red common brick, now weathered to a light gray, is uniform over all of Buildings 8, 2, 3, and 4 despite the addition of the third floor of Building 2 and the later date of Building 3.) The foundation of Building 2 is roughly laid stone. Starting at the level of the sills of the basement windows, the foundation walls are topped with brick. Stone piers topped with brick are visible in the basement and support a double row of 12" square wooden columns, some of them doubled, on the first and second floors. The wood joists have wooden cross-bracing. Levels 1, 2 and 3 have narrow maple flooring and exposed brick walls. The ceilings are covered by acoustical panels; a displaced panel allows a view of massive wooden braces at the top of the columns, supporting axial beams. These beams are crossed by transverse wooden joists. The piers and columns define 22 bays. The easternmost bay, containing the stairwell and a freight elevator, is separated from the rest of the building by a transverse brick firewall. Each bay has double windows with 9/6 wooden sash, except that bays 1 and 2 (counting from the west) have 1 over 1 sash on the first floor. Bays 1-9 have 1 over 1 sash on the second floor. On the third floor, there is a replacement triple sash in bays 4-8. The west end of Building 2 on floors 1 and 2 has been converted to office space with lightweight partitions, some paneling and tile or carpeting on the floors. There is a passenger elevator, installed when Building 8 was attached, in bay 1.

Although the building might be classified as utilitarian in design it does not entirely lack architectural character. Each double window is topped by a low segmental "relieving" arch. On the exterior of the building, the bays are defined by brick pilasters, which extend from the first floor to the parapet. The basement wall is parged up to the level of the first floor. Basement window openings are framed by curious "reverse corbels" of brick that project 6" from the wall and have segmental arches. The westernmost bay of Building 2 was modified in 1923 when Building 8 was attached. Specifications for Building 8 indicate that sash from the west facade of Building 2 was moved to its first and second bays. On the roof is a wooden elevator housing. At the other end of Building 2, a concrete housing tops the freight elevator.

Building 3 is an eastward extension of Building 2, constructed in 1911. It is 50' by 146'. It is constructed of reinforced concrete beams, with brick curtain wails and a brick exterior surface. It has 9 bays, each 16' wide. Although the window openings are much wider than in Building 2, decorative segmental arches over the windows and brick pilasters on the exterior facades maintain a continuity with the older building. Building 3 has a slightly lower parapet, further defining it as a separate unit of the facade. The windows have modern metal sash in a 3 over 3 configuration. Entrance to Building 3 is from Building 2 and, on the ground floor, through a door in the central of three bays in the east end of the building. A fire escape leads down the south corner of this end of the building. There is a covered loading dock, 42' by 7', on the alley on the south. A conveyor bridge, 34' by 5' by 7' high, leads from the second floor to the third floor of building 5. A plan drawing for the bridge dates it to 1957. Building 3 is also connected to Building 5 by a basement pedestrian tunnel. The foundation of Building 3 is of poured concrete.

The interior of Building 3 is almost entirely open space, broken only by a few partitioned areas, and by reinforced concrete pillars at 16' intervals. The floors are narrow maple over poured concrete, much of it covered in modern tile. The walls are exposed brick. On the ground floor, the eastern end is partitioned off to form a large room reached from the entrance in the east wall.

Building 4 was built in 1909, that is, before Building 2 acquired its present dimensions. Unlike Building 2, which is constructed like that of the first factories, constructed 100 years earlier. Building 4 marks the appearance on this site of reinforced concrete. The exterior of the 65' by 112' building is covered in common brick, weathered to gray, and embellished with segmental arches over the single windows. Except for the window arches, Building 4 is an astylistic rectangle. Inside, the difference in construction is evident from the large concrete pillars at 16' intervals, exposed concrete beams in the walls and ceilings, and the cast concrete basement.

During the Borg era, round steel ventilator stacks were installed on the western exterior walls, leading from a lacquer room on the second floor to above the roofline. Building 4 has no basement. A ramp leads up from the basement of Building 5, with a half-stair to the first floor of Building 5. The two buildings are continuous on the second and third levels. A pedestrian bridge at levels 2 and 3 leads from the east end of Building 4 to the east end of Building 2. The bridge is visible in the 1912 birds'-eye view of the Bradley plant. The first level windows of Building 4 have been boarded up with styrofoam panels. The floors are poured cement.

Building 5 shares the east wall of Building 4, and extends to the east. It is 137' by 65'. It too is framed in reinforced concrete. It was constructed in 1916, and is notable as an example of a construction principle first advocated by the French architect Robert Maillot. In place of reinforced concrete beams, used in the manner of timber construction, reinforced concrete is here used as a structural member in a plane, dispensing with ceiling beams to support the floor above. Gideon observes that "The heavier the load this homogenous type of flooring is called upon to bear, the greater the practical inducement to adopt it. Consequently, it is usually found in warehouses, factories, and other large, many-storied buildings." News of the technique was first published in America in 1908 and 1909. Building 5 contains the mushroom ceiling, (round columns capped by flanges joining the columns to the ceiling) that is typical of this technique. Except for the comparative grace of these interior pillars, building 5 is completely utilitarian. The reinforced concrete framing is exposed on the interior and exterior walls, with light gray brick curtain walls. Most of the building has single windows in each bay. There is a loading dock, 100' by 8', on the north wall, and exterior chutes on its north and south walls from the third floor to ground level.

The easternmost 32' of Building 5 is visually distinct from the rest of the building. Its framing beams are separate and slightly mismatched with the rest of the building. It has yellow, rather than gray, brick curtain walls. On the east end of the building and the south wall, exterior brick veneer covers the concrete framing members, and there are large triple windows with metal frames. Large loading doors open to the north from all three floors of this section and it is connected by a conveyor bridge to Building 3. On the roof, a transverse parapet divides the two sections of the building. No date has been found for what appears to be a two-bay addition, probably added during WW II when this part of the building was used by the Borg Company to calibrate instruments used in munitions, under climate-controlled conditions. The addition has reinforced concrete beams supporting its floors and thus represents a return to an earlier mode of construction.

Building 6, shown on a 1942 fire map, was a small, one-story brick structure used for storage. It was on the present site of Building 9.

Building 7 is actually a string of four one-story brick buildings. Only one section pre-dates the Borg era. It is 50' by 46', with segmental arches over its irregularly spaced windows. There is a double wooden door on the north wall. It is dated 1920 on the 1984 report. Attached to it on the east is a trapezoidal section dated 1944. Two sections to the west are dated 1943 and 1955, respectively. Overall, Building 7 is 244' long and 46' deep at its widest point. Only the original section is rectangular, the additions being irregularly shaped to make maximum use of available space. The later sections have small single windows with wooden sash. The original section appears to have all brick walls and an arched tile roof on a steel truss framework. The additions have flat roofs and are of concrete block faced with brick. There is a covered wooden loading dock, with asphalt siding on the north wall on the 1944 section, and a large electrical frame on the roof. Building 7 was used by the Borg Company for its electro-plating and buffing operations. The interior is ill-lit, with a poured concrete floor bearing marks of the heavy equipment and vats once installed inside.

Building 8 is the only building in the complex with any real claim to architectural style. Plans exist for the building dating from 1917 but it was not constructed until 1923, when the exterior plan was updated with modest art-deco motifs. It extends the original Bradley mill structure (Building 2) to the west, and is joined to it by a party wall. The easternmost of four bays in the north wall of Building 8 forms a slightly projecting pavilion featuring an entryway faced with limestone, with a decorative stone crown supported by two stone scroll brackets. There are globe lamps mounted below the brackets on either side of the door. Above this vaguely Classic Revival entrance is a pair of one-and-a-half story windows, with a 6-over-1 sash, which light the stairwell. A narrow brick pilaster divides these windows and continues upward to divide a similar pair of windows between the second and third stories. The pilaster is topped by a limestone keystone. The pavilion is further defined by brick pilasters on either side and a narrow stone belt that makes a gable-like peak over the third story and continues in a horizontal line over the third-story windows in the three bays to the west. Narrow, single windows on the right side of the pavilion at each floor give it an interesting asymmetry. Another horizontal element in the facade is a continuous stone sill that crosses the uppermost paired windows of the entry pavilion and continues under the third-story windows of the remaining three bays. There is a row of brick dentils under this sill. The remaining three bays of the facade are also defined by pilasters and recessed brick spandrels under their triple windows, which have 6-over-1 wooden sash. The decorative scheme evokes Art Deco with a chevron design in brick and limestone at the top of each pilaster. The basement is faced with brick with recessed courses defining horizontal bands above ribbon windows. The parapet is topped with a limestone coping. The decorative scheme is echoed on the west (end) wall of Building 8, which has a central bay with quadruple windows flanked by bays with triple windows. There is a stepped parapet over the center bay, topped by a flagpole on the roof. Facing the alley, the south wall has identical windows in an unornamented facade, and a small loading dock at the west end of the building.

Building 8 incorporates reinforced concrete slab floors, but without the mushroom-type pillars. The foundation is poured concrete. The exterior is finished in a glazed brick, of the same grayish color as Buildings 2 and 3. The doorway shown in the 1923 plan has "Bradley" incised in a stone panel over the entrance, and a wooden door frame and sidelight. This entire entryway was replaced in 1949 with a maroon and gray glass inset. (The drawing for the new entry is extant: "Carrera and Herculate Door Setting for the Borg Company" 6/13/49 Pittsburg Plate Glass Company, Milwaukee.) The sidelight is replaced with glass block and the door is replaced by a steel door with a full length glass panel. The panel over the door is inscribed "Borg." Large metal letters attached above the second-story windows of the entry pavilion also spell "Borg."

Building 9 is a utilitarian 1-story concrete block garage, 55' by 104', with a flat roof. Of unknown date, it is later than the 1943 addition to Building 5, to which it is attached. It is located at the eastern edge of the property and is connected to Building 5 by a 16' by 24' concrete-block passageway.

To the south of Building 9 is a 92,000-gallon cistern that once fed the sprinkler system. It rises about 2' out of the ground and is approximately 35' in diameter. Between Buildings 1 and 4 is a 75' steel frame that once supported a wooden water tank that supplied the sprinkler system before the installation of the cistern and a pump in the pump house attached to Building 1. Also between Buildings 1 and 4 is a large electrical substation. The entire complex, except the north facade of Building 8, is surrounded by a chain link fence topped with barbed wire.

All of the buildings except the oldest segment of Building 7 have flat graveled roofs. Except for Building 8, all have low parapets, finished with tile coping.