The Larkin Administration Building ( the Larkin Building or Administration Building) was an office building at 680 Seneca Street in Buffalo, New York, United States. Constructed for the Larkin Soap Company, it was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright with ornamentation by the sculptor Richard Bock. The building, Wright's first-ever commercial design, was completed in 1906 and demolished in 1950. It was composed of a six-story main building and a five-story annex, connected by a shorter entrance pavilion at their lowest two stories.
Larkin Company executives Darwin D. Martin and William R. Heath helped convince the company's president John D. Larkin to hire Wright to design the building. Wright drew up plans between 1903 and 1904, and the building took another two years to construct. After its completion, the Administration Building was used mostly by the Larkin Company's mail order departments and administrative offices. The Larkin Store Corporation leased the building in 1939. Pennsylvania contractor L.B. Smith bought the Administration Building in 1943 and abandoned it after the Larkin Store's lease expired the next year. Despite multiple plans to find another use for the building, it remained derelict until it was sold to the Western Trading Corporation in 1949. The building was demolished between February and July 1950, with its remains being used as fill. The site became a parking lot after Western Trading abandoned plans to redevelop it. One pier and some scattered decorations from the building remain intact.
The building had dark red brick facades and steel frames, with interiors grouped around two light courts. There was little ornamentation, except for piers on the facade and inside. The main building had a rectangular plan, with towers for staircases and utilities at its corners. Inside, the main building's basement included machinery and service spaces; the first through fourth stories contained various offices; and the fifth story included dining areas. Spaces such as a lounge, locker rooms, restrooms, and a classroom were placed in the annex. The building had several innovations for its time, which included central air conditioning, built-in furniture, and wall-mounted toilets. The Larkin Administration Building was praised both during its existence and after its demolition, and architectural critics such as Paul Goldberger lamented its loss.
Site The Larkin Administration Building was located at 680 Seneca Street in Buffalo, New York, occupying a trapezoidal site. Part of a massive industrial complex built by the Larkin Company, it was sometimes called the A Building. The Larkin Company's other buildings, labeled as buildings B through O, were on the south side of Seneca Street, opposite the Larkin Administration Building. A tunnel connected to one of these buildings, the Larkin Terminal Warehouse. The other Larkin buildings, some of which still exist, are part of the modern-day Larkinville neighborhood.
The lot was bounded to the north by Swan Street and to the south by Seneca Street. To the northwest, the site adjoins a series of railroad tracks (specifically CSX Transportation's Niagara Subdivision and Buffalo Terminal Subdivision). At the time, products were shipped out mainly through the railroads, hauled predominantly by steam engines that produced large amounts of emissions and noise. The presence of the railroads and industrial complex influenced the building's self-enclosed design and mechanical features. When the building existed, a wrought iron fence surrounded the site, and there was greenery outside.
History Development
The Larkin Administration Building was built for the Larkin Soap Company, founded in 1875 by John D. Larkin, who had recently moved to his native Buffalo from Chicago. Larkin built a two-story factory in Buffalo, which was both his hometown and a major trading hub. Like other companies of the time, Larkin and his business partner Elbert Hubbard originally hired salesmen to sell soap to distributors in person. These salesmen included Darwin D. Martin, who eventually became a senior executive at the company. Larkin and Hubbard began selling soap directly to clients in the 1880s, and during the next decade, they began giving "premiums" of household items to clients who made bulk orders. Both these practices increased the Larkin Company's business greatly, and the business model—intended to save the company's customers large amounts of money—was a point of pride for the company. After Hubbard left the company in 1893, Martin and William R. Heath were made senior executives of the company: Martin as secretary, and Heath as head of the legal department.
Commission
By the early 1900s, the Larkin Company had a dozen buildings immediately south of the Administration Building's future site, two of which held the office staff. Darwin Martin and his brother William went to Oak Park, Illinois, in September 1902 in an attempt to meet with the architect Frank Lloyd Wright; they may have heard about Wright from Heath. After Darwin returned to Buffalo, William wrote a letter encouraging his brother to hire Wright to design both a new house for Darwin and a new building for the Larkin Company. Wright first visited Buffalo in November 1902, when Martin hired him to design the Barton House on the Darwin D. Martin Estate, a residential compound that also included Martin's own house. When Martin gave Wright the Barton House contract, he was reluctant to commission Wright for the other two buildings until he was satisfied with the Barton House's completion. Heath also commissioned a house of his own from Wright.
Both Martin and Heath may have helped persuade Larkin to accept Wright's selection as the Administration Building's architect; in a letter to Larkin, Martin likened a Wright-designed house to a fine Oriental rug. Wright biographer Meryle Secrest wrote that Martin wanted the Administration Building to be "a monument to himself", to the extent that Martin excluded Larkin's sons, his direct competitors, away from the development process. The Administration Building became one of several buildings designed for Martin or his family over his lifetime. It was also one of several major designs created by Wright and his employees in the 1900s, along with the Dana–Thomas House, Robie House, and Unity Temple. The Larkin Company also commissioned Wright to design row houses for its workers, which were never built. Originally published in Buffalo Spree, July–August 2006, p. 150.
Design and construction
The Larkin Company provided a $4 million budget for the Administration Building, which was developed simultaneously with the Martin and Barton houses. Wright drew up plans for the Administration Building primarily between January 1903 and April 1904, although many of his drawings were undated. From the start, Wright envisioned a building with offices surrounding a central light court, in a manner similar to an atrium. In early 1903, Martin and Wright met to discuss early plans for the Administration Building, where Wright suggested using magnesite and incorporating an atrium similar to those of Chicago's Marshall Field and Company Building. Martin wrote to Larkin that March, complaining that the initial plan was "utterly inadequate to convey to us any proper sense of his meaning". Wright's early drawings had, at that stage, already envisioned a six-story main building and a shorter annex. Wright hired several employees to assist, tasking Cecil Bryan, Barry Byrne, William Drummond, and Andrew Willatsen with the detailed drawings.
Wright experimented with some of the building's materials, including magnesite, at his Oak Park studio. Wright's original concept called for the entrance to be in the annex, but he later relocated the entrance to a smaller pavilion wedged between the larger main building and the annex. Wright convinced the Larkin Company to move the staircases to freestanding towers at each corner of the building, to be used for both air intakes and communications. Larkin subsequently gave Wright an extra $30,000 to build these features. In conjunction with the addition of stair towers, Wright moved the proposed annex from the western elevation to the eastern elevation, away from the railroad tracks. By early 1904, Wright had finalized the design of the stair towers' exteriors.
Paul Mueller, a Chicago-based contractor who had collaborated with Wright on several projects, was hired to construct the Administration Building in April 1904. Plans for the building were filed with the Buffalo city government the next month. That October, two laborers died and three were injured when a construction derrick at the site collapsed. In addition, work was interrupted in 1905 when electricians went on strike to protest the employment of non-unionized electricians; several other labor unions organized a strike in solidarity with the striking electricians. The building opened in late 1906, although work was still ongoing in early 1907. Ultimately, the building cost over $1 million.
Larkin usage
1900s to 1920s Initially, the Administration Building accommodated about 1,800 workers. The building was used mostly by the Larkin Company's mail order departments and administrative offices. Other functions, such as advertising and production, were housed in other buildings. Ten groups, which handled mail from states east of the Mississippi River, worked at the Administration Building; mail from other parts of the US was handled by a branch office. Mail was delivered to the basement from on Swan Street and transported to the third floor's mail department. Messengers delivered the mail to the respective state group, where it was addressed accordingly. Customer information was recorded on cards and placed in the storage cabinets. Customer complaints and questions were recorded on graphophones, which were stored in the basement and taken to Buffalo's main post office. The historian Zeynep Çelik Alexander wrote that, although the building was intended to accommodate a high degree of flexibility, the company's workflow was unnecessarily complex, inadvertently hastening the building's eventual demise.
According to Wright's apprentice Edgar Tafel, Wright was so proud of the design features that, while showing visitors around the building, he once entered a busy women's restroom and cried out, "There it is! The first wall-hung water closet!" The Larkin Company periodically invited guest lecturers to give speeches in the light court. The company also provided other incentives to the building's employees, such as clubs and picnics, and provided ample amenities for the largely-female staff. Nonetheless, the Larkin Company wanted the building's design to encourage employees to focus on their jobs. The historian Reyner Banham also wrote that, despite Wright's attempts at a technologically advanced design, it suffered from defects. Decorations and glass sometimes fell from the roof, reportedly killing two employees. The building's magnesite surfaces were prone to cracking, the fifth-floor restaurant was hard to heat, and other design details broke under the weight of furniture.
By the 1910s, the company had 21 buildings and was selling over 600 products and 1,700 premiums. At the time, it was fulfilling about 10,000 daily orders and was shipping out premiums as varied as fine glass, stoves, and watches. The Larkin Company, despite its dissatisfaction over the cost overruns during the building's construction, gradually began using the building to advertise its business. The company's success did not last; as early as 1919, Martin observed that women employees tended to leave within three years of being hired. John Larkin donated a pipe organ to the building in 1925 to celebrate the company's 50th anniversary. Afterward, organ concerts were periodically held in the building, and in 1928, the Larkin Company began broadcasting the building's organ concerts over radio.