Comparing the Brown-Lipe factory designed by Kahn to the factories he designed for Ford reveals key differences that support how the first was stitched into the existing industrial fabric of a city to become a distinct artifact interacting with surrounding buildings (part of a city of factories), while the second relies on it surroundings but is essentially a separate entity (a factory as a city). Each has its advantages and disadvantages in it approach to economy, equity, and ecology. Overall, the comparisons help provide a better understanding for analysis of the Brown-Lipe Gear Company in Syracuse by using knowledge of the Ford Motor Company to form stronger conclusions.

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SCALING THE OBJECTIVES

​One of the major differences between Kahn's work with Ford versus the Brown-Lipe Company was simply the scale of the projects. To start, the Brown-Lipe Gear Company hired Kahn to build the new factory because it was growing, but it was nowhere near the physical size Ford demanded to produce his Model T. As noted before, the original Lipe Shop was only 20,000 square feet in a two story building and Charles Lipe didn't even need that much space to manufacture in the beginning which was why he rented out space to other inventors. Similarly, the gear company did not even yet require all of the space that the new building would provide. When the structure was built in 1906, the Syracuse Herald reported, "only the basement and three floors [were to be] occupied at once, leaving room for the expansion of the business." When the Brown-Lipe Company looked to the future, it only needed more floors of a building; when the Ford Motor Company looked to the future, it needed more buildings of equal or greater size than its original "Crystal Palace" assembly plant at Highland Park, and later a compex the size of a city at the River Rouge site. A simple comparison of the actual dimensions of the two company's factories makes this point clear. Kahn's Brown-Lipe Gear Factory has five stories and a basement on a lot of approximately 144 x 80 square feet; it has 65,000 square feet of floor space and is 85 feet tall (Syracuse Herald). Ford's Crystal Palace alone was a four-story building with a footprint of 860 x 75 square feet. Furthermore, the later building additions to the site were six-story structures, 842 x 60 square feet in area with 687,500 square feet of working floor space, and were 77 feet tall (Arnold and Faurote, 411). In simple terms, just one building at the Ford Motor Company had well over ten times more floor space than the Brown-Lipe factory, multiplied by even more because there were several buildings (and this was all before the move to River Rouge).

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Additionally, the scale of the factories and plants in part corresponded with the particular product and its production which the architecture had to accommodate. First, the actual size of a product will determine how much space is needed to manufacture it. An automobile is considerably larger than a transmission gear, which means the product itself takes up much more space to begin with. In addition to that, producing a larger product usually requires larger machinery and energy to make it. Second, products constituted of multiple parts require multiple processes and thus multiple spaces to house those operations. An automobile is such a product, and in contrast, the Brown-Lipe Gear Company distributed single components, the transmission gears and differentials, that were used to assemble automobiles by car manufacturers such as Ford at other sites all over the country. Therefore, the Brown-Lipe Gear Company can be equated with just one specialized factory in the Ford complex like the glass plant for example, that focused on the production of one component of the whole. Third, the methods of production used by each company required different spatial configurations and organization. The assembly line of the Ford Motor Company ran the length of entire buildings almost as if a road for the car itself, and supplementary machinery was involved in other steps of the manufacturing too. The Brown-Lipe Gear Company used more traditional methods where different steps were executed at stations arranged about the floor plan with machinery attached to wood that was bolted to and hung off the ceilings. It was a much more static method that did not call for the same level of ease in the flow of materials. Finally, the ambition of the company can influence the size of the buildings because especially for Kahn, the job of the architect is to design facilities that satisfy the client's wishes. If Ford wanted a hundred buildings of ridiculous proportions to create the means to produce 10,000 cars a day he could have it. Ford's goals were clear- to mass produce the car to reduce the price and make it accessible to all, which Kahn's architecture helped him accomplish. Perhaps the aims of the Brown-Lipe Gear Company were not as lofty, but to it credit, the architecture it requested and used helped to establish it as one of the most prominent gear companies at the beginning of the twentieth century.

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PROFIT OF PLACE

​Another factor impacting the factories was location. Ultimately, the size of the factory building was dependent on the context of its site in which the architecture aimed to incorporate positive aspects and resolve challenging conditions. This includes the dimensional footprint of the site, surrounding areas, and existing infrastructures. Accordingly, sites are chosen for particular reasons such as the cost of the land, proximity to modes of transportation, and availability of labor and resources.

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First, the development of an industrial plant is bounded by the edge conditions of the site or the site's total acreage. It is important to note that the projects being discussed were all expansions of previous facilities that inhibited the companies from reaching their full potential. Henry Ford made the move to Highland Park because the Piquette plant initiated the company's success as a leader in the automobile industry but could not sustain it. Ford needed more buildings, and therefore more land, which led to the development of the 230-acre investment located just outside of Detroit (Hildebrand, Ch. 3, 44). Then, although he had believed that future modifications and additions would support the company's interests for years to come, production grew, stretching the available area to its limits. Next came the pivotal dislocation to the River Rouge plant in the suburb of Dearborn, Michigan, which Ford chose not because it was the most advantageous setting, but because the land was cheap; he purchased an enormous tract of land, nearly 2,000 acres, for only $700,000 (Biggs, 138). While the Ford Motor Company moved its facilities further and further from the city of Detroit, the Brown-Lipe Gear Company did the opposite, deciding to remain at the outskirts of Syracuse's city center on lots directly next to it existing structures. It did not create its own isolated campus with ample space, but rather squeezed into the unfilled spaces of the city around it.

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Both scenarios have advantages and disadvantages. Moving away from the city meant more land to provide extra space for growth could be purchased at a lower cost, which saved money or allowed money to be invested elsewhere, such as in building a greater number of more efficient single-story structures. However, it also involved development of virgin land and sprawl which has negatively impacted the environment. Staying in the city had the costs of higher lot values and less space. In fact, this is why skyscrapers were growing taller and the same reason justified having extra floors- building up for expansion, at the Brown-LIpe factory. Yet the city factory reaped the benefits of neighborly interactions with other industries and the community and kept the unfavorable aspects of industry from spreading and contaminating undeveloped areas.

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Second, accessibility to the infrastructure of modes of transportation was critical to the companies' success because manufacturing involves both obtaining and distributing goods. At the beginning of the twentieth century railways and waterways were crucial and therefore every site discussed here had those elements in common. In each case, access to railroads made the receiving and shipping of materials and goods easier and the tracks near the factories serviced larger lines that could travel across teh country. Also, workers utilized rail, trolley lines, and streets to commute to work. Although water was no longer used to power factories like in the colonial mill factories, it became another necessary feature for transportation because like railroads, bodies of water lined the site to other regions of the country and provided water as a resource. The Ford complexes took advantage of the Great Lakes, and River Rouge specifically was located along a stretch of the Detroit River, which in addition to giving access for barges bringing raw materials to the site also supplied the site with nearly 700 million gallons of water per day, more than an actual city might require. The Brown-Lipe Company in Syracuse utilized the Erie Canal that connected Lake Erie to the Hudson River.

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While economy benefits from fast and reliable transportation, the ecology sector does not. Industrial wastes pollute the air and contaminate soil and water. Transportation is an externality with energy expenses and CO2 emissions that should also be calculated into the ecological impacts of producing a product even though it does not occur on site, but contributes to it. Furthermore, the Erie Canal was a man-made waterway built to accommodate boats with cargo weighing several tons. One can only imagine the energy required to construct it, which has now even been wasted as the portion running through Syracuse was paved over. While it seems these impacts are somewhat unavoidable (and today have evolved to include trucks and airplanes), the impact can be altered by considering distance. The less distance raw materials or goods need to travel, the less transportation is used. Choosing materials and markets closer to the site could help alleviate this, but again it is difficult to do when customers expect high quality and live in various regions of the country.

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Third, proximity of the site to resources and labor fueled production. Although the proximity of materials became less important with new technologis in transportation, labor availability was a major concern. Even though machinery came to dominate the factory, people were needed to run and supervise it. Ford's Highland Park Plant was located near a lively commercial area and dense urban residential neighborhoods; thus workers lived nearby and typically walked to work or took the trolley line that drove along the main street in front of the complex. Later, at River Rouge, the site was picked because it has good access to raw materials and it was close to the "largest labor sections in the City of Detroit" (Biggs, 139); however, by that time even the factory worker could afford a car so many commuted by car. The Brown-Lipe Gear Factory was much more engaged in the communities of its workers. Again, workers did not own cars so they most often walked to work and teh relationship of their neighborhoods to the factories was all part of the organization of the city as a whole. The residency of the Eastsidein the Downtown commercial/business district was mostly upper and middle class, but the factories were located on the Near Westside and neighborhoods made up of the working class formed around them. One such neighborhood became known as Tipperary HIll. After the Erie Canal was completed in 1825, the majority of the Irish laborers settled west of Syracuse next to what became the Cradle of Industry with the Brown-Lipe Gear Company as its cornerstone. The workers living in Tipperary Hill would walk down the hill each day to work there or at another factory next to it. Also, because they were closer to the industrial area that had a less favorable environment for health, the land/home prices were also cheaper.

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Finally, because the Gear Factory was integrated in Syracuse's Westside, it had the advantages of innovation and invention that originated with the Lipe Shop. All around it other industries were booming and collaborating to advance the technologies of the time period. In that way, the city of factories produced ideas as well as tangible goods. The Ford Motor Company also clearly developed innovations such as the assembly line, but it was more self-absorbed, and always strived for self-sufficieny rather than fully taking advantage of collaborating and supporting other industries.