Larkin Administration Building

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The Larkin Administration Building in 1906

The Larkin Administration Building was designed in 1904 by Frank Lloyd Wright for the Larkin Soap Company of Buffalo, New York, at 680 Seneca Street. It was demolished in 1950. The five story red brick building was noted for many innovations, including air conditioning, plate-glass windows, built-in desk furniture, suspended toilet bowls. Sculptor Richard Bock provided ornamentation for the building.

Wright said of the building:

"It is interesting that I, an architect supposed to be concerned with the aesthetic sense of the building, should have invented the hung wall for the w.c. (easier to clean under), and adopted many other innovations like the glass door, steel furniture, air-conditioning and radiant or 'gravity heat.' Nearly every technological innovation used today was suggested in the Larkin Building in 1904." — from Frank Lloyd Wright, Edgar Kaufmann, Ed. An American Architecture, pp. 137-138.

The Larkin Soap Company was founded in Buffalo in 1875. Among the principals were John D. Larkin, Elbert Hubbard and Darwin D. Martin. By the early years of the twentieth century, the company expanded beyond soap manufacturing into groceries, dry goods, china, and furniture. Larkin was a pioneering, national mail-order house with branch stores in Buffalo, New York, and Chicago. At the time it commissioned its headquarters, Larkin was prosperous and the high price for a well-designed, innovative building was not a barrier. The company, known for its generous corporate culture, also commissioned Wright to design row houses for its workers, which were never built.

In 1939 the firm made interior modifications and moved retail operations into the building. In 1943, the firm's fortunes were in decline and it sold this building and others. The Larkin Company, which never recovered from the Great Depression and changes in American retailing, eventually declared bankrupty.

Wright's Administration building was foreclosed upon for back taxes in 1945 by the City of Buffalo. The city tried to sell the building over the next five years and considered other uses. In the meanwhile, it was vandalized. In 1949 the building was sold to the Western Trading Corporation, who announced plans to demolish it for a truck stop. It did so in 1950 despite protests from the architectural community. No truck stop was ever built. A single brick pier along a railroad embankment is all that remains from the original building. The remainder of the site is now a parking lot with a marker and an illustrated educational panel.

Other parts of the company's extensive manufacturing and distribution complex survive. The enormous former Larkin Warehouse, not designed by Wright, has been successfully converted into Class A office space.