Sheet 02 - the office
The drafting room
NM Chicago, LLC is two desks, one long drawing table and four flat files above Fulton Street. Everything the office publishes starts here, on paper, before it is ever set in type.
Sheet data
- Sheet
- 02 of 07
- Firm
- NM Chicago, LLC
- District
- Fulton MarketWalked every spring since 2016
- Hours
- Mon to Fri, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm CT
- Standing
- DocumentaryNot a licensed survey office
The room faces west, which is wrong for drafting and right for everything else: the light comes in low in the afternoon and you learn to draw before it does. The table is eight feet of maple, flat enough to trust a straightedge on, and it has been resurfaced twice. Under it are the flat files, one drawer per district, plates rolled never, folded never.
Work here follows the season. Blocks are walked in spring and autumn, when the light is even and the porches are not buried in snow. Winter is for the table: field books come out of the drawer, the second walk is compared with the first, and the plate is drawn in ink. A plate that cannot be drawn from the notes alone goes back into the queue for another walk rather than being guessed at.
Nothing in the room is secret. The index of blocks is published on this site, two plates are published in full, and the field books can be read at the table by anyone who asks. What we do not publish is a plate we have not walked twice, and we do not publish a figure we did not measure.
Fulton Market, where the drafting room stands. The warehouse faces here are the most altered in the city, which is why the district is walked first each year.
Table 03
What the office keeps
Every item has one home in the room and one rule about how long it stays there. If a thing has neither, it does not come in.
| Record | Where it is kept | Rule |
|---|---|---|
| Field books | Drawer 1, one book per season, numbered in order of use. | Kept permanently. A second walk is written in a new book, never over the first. |
| Plates | Flat files, one drawer per district, flat and unfolded. | Every plate carries its revision table. Superseded revisions are kept behind the current sheet. |
| Plat copies | Drawer 3, filed by recorded plat reference. | Copies of public documents, held for reference. The record itself stays with the custodian. |
| Change notes | Loose in the plate folder until the next revision. | Written on the day of the walk, dated, and initialled. |
| Corrections sent in | Correspondence file, by block number. | Answered in writing. A correction is entered as a revision, with its source named. |
| Photographs | Reference folder only. | Used to check a note, never used as the source of a figure on a plate. |
Standing of the work
What this office does, and what it does not
The distinction matters. A plate from this room documents a block face. It does not settle where a line falls.
What we do
- Walk block faces and measure what stands, on the ground, with a tape.
- Draw plates with a legend that explains every line weight, hatch and symbol.
- Compare a new walk with the previous one and log the differences.
- Read recorded plats, alley dedications and easement lines, and explain them in plain prose.
- Copy and index plates and field books so a block stays findable.
- Answer corrections from residents and enter them as dated revisions.
What we do not do
- We are not licensed surveyors and we do not set or locate a legal boundary.
- We do not stake corners, mark monuments or sign a survey for a lender or a court.
- We do not appraise, and we do not comment on what a building is worth.
- We do not hold city records. Copies of plats stay with the office that recorded them.
- We do not enter private property. A face is measured from the public way.
- We do not publish a figure we did not measure ourselves.
If you need a legal boundary
For a boundary dispute, a lot split, a fence line or anything that goes to a lender or a court, hire an Illinois-licensed professional land surveyor. Our plates may be useful background for that work, and we will send copies to a surveyor on request, but they are not a substitute for it.
On the table
Instruments and paper
The kit is small on purpose. A block face is measured with a tape and written in a book; the drawing is done in ink on plate stock and checked against the book before it is lettered.
| Plate number | Two digits, assigned in the order a block is first drawn. Plate 04 is the fourth block drawn, not the fourth walked. |
|---|---|
| Block number | As logged by this office. It is not a city designation and it does not appear in any public record. |
| Face letter | N, S, E or W, for the side of the street that was walked. A block with two faces drawn carries two plates. |
| Revision | Letters A, B, C. A revision is only issued after a second walk, and the earlier revision stays in the folder. |
| Sheet | One sheet per plate. Nothing is printed on the reverse. |
Who does the work
Elizabeth Brooke keeps the office: she walks the blocks, draws the plates, answers the correspondence and holds the field books. A second pair of hands joins for the longer faces in spring and autumn. Enquiries reach her directly at [email protected] or on (847) 525-6556, Monday to Friday, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm Central Time.
The office does not claim expertise it does not have. We measure, we note, we draw, and we say plainly when a question belongs to a licensed surveyor, an attorney or the agency that holds the record.
Chicago seen from above the river. The grid starts here and runs out in every direction, which is what makes a block-by-block record possible at all.
Where we work
The service area is Chicago neighborhoods, from the bungalow belt to the lake front. Blocks are chosen for three reasons: a resident or a historical society has asked for one, a face is about to change and the change should be recorded first, or a block completes a street we have already partly drawn.
We do not take on work outside the city. The grid, the alley dedications and the plat references are all local knowledge, and a plate drawn by someone who does not walk the neighborhood is not worth the paper.
If your block is not in the index and you would like it walked, write to the office with the street, the face and the block you mean. Requests are added to the queue in the order they arrive, and you will be told honestly whether a walk is likely this season.