Its enormous mail order business, originally devoted to soap, had expanded into household goods of all types through the vision of founder John D. In South Buffalo, the saying went that young women went to work at either the H-O cereal company or, preferably, the Larkin Company. In , John D. Larkin commenced construction of one of the last buildings in the complex, the Terminal Warehouse.
The floor, , square foot structure was designed by the Boston firm of Lockwood and Greene Co. Ninety percent of the exterior was comprised of windows, and the ground floor had four train tracks along its entire length to permit efficient, sheltered loading of mail-order goods.
After a number of years in decline, the Larkin Company began to sell its real estate in the 's to avoid bankruptcy. The last building to be sold was the Terminal Warehouse, in , to its largest tenant, Graphic Controls.
That company occupied the building until The company replaced all the windows with new aluminum-framed windows and had to pour new concrete floors throughout. In , the building is occupied nearly at capacity and has proven to be a successful reclamation of existing city buildings. In order to consolidate its office departments, John D. Larkin approved the hiring of Frank Lloyd Wright to design an administration building that would meet Larkin's desire for a humane working environment.
It would be Wright's first large commercial project and, when completed in , became a subject of much discussion and some criticism. The Larkin executives and office workers were very pleased with the structure which contained many employee amenities not found in other Buffalo companies at the time. The building, located in a heavily industrial neighborhood, was sealed off from the outside by an early form of air conditioning. But numerous market factors were eroding the practice of mail order shopping by that time and the Depression blunted the attempts by John D.
Larkin, Jr. By , the company was finished and the building sold to a Pennsylvania contractor who, it was later revealed, had hoped to use the building for tax purposes, to write off some business losses. The building remained vacant and the city eventually took ownership for back taxes in Six thousand dollars for advertisements in national newspapers brought no other offers.
The state refused to accept the building even for storage of Selective Service records. Proposals by local residents were also futile. In , the building was a wreck; it had been repeatedly vandalized. The tall iron gate which graced the entrance has toppled from rusted hinges. Frank Lloyd Wright's Buffalo.
Buffalo's Lost Treasure One of Buffalo's architectural treasures, the Larkin Soap Company Administration Building, was lost to the wrecker's ball more than a half century ago, "an act of destruction," one of Wright's biographers has written, "subsequently recognized as cultural vandalism.
Side gallery offices were illuminated by the central court and windows between the brick piers. The upper level contained a kitchen, bakery, dining rooms, classrooms, a branch of the Buffalo Public Library and a conservatory. A roof garden, paved with brick, served as a recreation area for employees, families and guests.
The entrances of the building were flanked by two waterfall-like fountains. Above them were bas-reliefs by Richard Bock, a sculptor who worked on other Wright creations. He also designed the globes on the tops of the building's central exterior piers.
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