The Hydraulics | Est. 1827 | Larkin District | Buffalo, New York

Uncle Sam's: North America's largest Army Navy outfitter occupies the Hydraulics

Gearing up for MASH Bash, Buffalo's beer-soaked, military-themed, American Red Cross charity event this Friday? Be sure to gear up at Uncle Sam's Army Navy Outfitters, the veritable department store of military surplus items at 290 Larkin Street!

Uncle Sam's, a Hydraulics landmark established in 2001, has adaptively reused a recently vacant 1902 warehouse designed by engineer R. J. Reidpath for the Larkin Co. In its 107th year, the heritage building is now the warehousing and retailing headquarters for the military surplus dealer, easily North America's largest.

The 33,000 sq. ft. military surplus store at ground level is stunning, one of the hidden (camouflaged?) gems of Buffalo. Robert Geist, the CEO of Uncle Sam's, identifies closely with the history of the building and figures the "recycling" of the heritage structure is much like the recycling of military clothing and accessories. "We're the original green of green," says Geist.

Larkin executive Elbert Hubbard speaks on "the Hydraulics"

This just in! Elbert Hubbard, the former Larkin Soap Mfg. Co. executive and influential poet and philosopher of the Arts & Crafts Movement, published a little-known 1914 pamphlet on Buffalo, titled "A Little Journey to Buffalo," that elucidates his views on the city and its economic prospects.

The pamphlet, written in the simple, compelling language of the famous marketing guru, reveals the city's unbridled optimism as well as Hubbard's experience building up the national mail order firm founded in 1875 in "the Hydraulics."

A new U: Larkin U Building to be renewed!

The historic Larkin U Building, 237 Van Rensselaer Street, is set to be renovated by Larkin Development Group. The former manufacturing building, which most recently housed the now defunct Par Foam Products, Inc., has been purchased by the development team and will be renewed (re-nU-ed?) as Class-A "loft style" office space, following the firm's successful model at the adjacent, ten-story Larkin Terminal Warehouse at 726 Exchange.

    

And that's not all! The former Larkin Station #6 (read more about it here and here), an Art Deco filling station built in 1930, is also part of the sale agreement with SNPT Partnership, the recent owner of the two contiguous structures. Howard Zemsky, a principal in Larkin Development (and this blogger's employer), formally announced the purchase and the firm's plans yesterday.

New comedic production inspired by odd Hydraulics shrine receives rave reviews!

Tom Dudzick's new Buffalo-inspired comedic production, "Our Lady of South Division Street," has received rave reviews since its June 15 world debut at the Penguin Repertory Theatre in Stony Point, New York.

The hilarious play, based on the odd shrine (read more about it here and here) devoted to the Blessed Mother at 847 Seneca Street in the heart of the Hydraulics, is Dudzick's latest installment on his renowned series of theatrical productions based on his life growing up the hardscrabble industrial district in the 1950s and 60s. Playing thru June 7, "Our Lady of South Division Street" is a smash hit! Read up on Peter Kramer's May 18th review from the Lower Hudson Valley's Journal News blog:

Every family has its stories. The Nowaks of Buffalo have a doozy. In Tom Dudzick’s heartwarming and clever comedy, “Our Lady of South Division Street” — getting its world premiere at Stony Point’s charming Penguin Rep through June 7 — Clara and her three children live in the shadow of that story.

More specifically, they live in the shadow of a small shrine that was built to mark the day when, as they repeat to passersby in what they have come to call “the statue speech,” “the blessed Mother appeared” to Henry Nowak, the family’s patriarch, a barber just off the boat from war-torn Poland in 1944. Continue reading here.

The new production, which if we say our rosaries often enough will undoubtedly have a showing in a Buffalo-area stagehouse sometime soon (stay tuned!), continues a long line of theatrical productions that have shined a light (and now a very heavenly light) on the old Buffalo neighborhood. The odd shrine, affixed in a parking lot, has been quite a blessing to the city.

Photo courtesy of Kerwin McCarthy.

Hydraulics held hostage by fearsome rooster

Just when you thought the "corner lounging" story (here) couldn't be topped! Seems a ferocious gamecock took the Hydraulics by storm in 1898, ripping a warpath through a wholesale grocery store, getting arrested, and holding a woman hostage in a prison cell.

 

So how in the world does that happen? At the Hydraulics, site of bizarre turn-of-the-century news stories, anything's possible! And the Buffalo Express wouldn't ever miss a beat, now would it? Here's the paper's April 24, 1898, story:

Rooster in a cell: Game escaped from a coop and was arrested: Held a woman at bay: When Mrs. Carey the janitor of Police Station No. 2 tried to slaughter the bird she found she had a big job on her hands

A proud and enterprising game rooster was responsible for it all. It might be added that the said rooster died game. Sergt. Michael Walsh and Mrs. Carey janitor of Police Station No. 2 can tell more about the affair than anyone else. This is what leaked out.

Gladkowski's Lanes likely to be revived as food haven - but hold the wheat!

Hold the wheat, please! Gladkowki's Lanes, the former tavern and bowling alley at 829 Seneca, is likely to see a new (wheat-free) use after having been vacant, though well-maintained, for more than ten years. Buffalo Gluten-Free Products, LLC, a new local firm, has reportedly signed a contract to purchase the bowling landmark, and has its eyes set on a late summer opening for a small factory operation at the site.

The historic bowling alley, a fixture in the Hydraulics from World War II into the early 1990s, will be the stage for a new light manufacturing use and, perhaps, the sweet smell of baked goods at this rough-and-tumble, hardscrabble intersection of Seneca and Griffin. James Fink of Buffalo Business First was the first to break the story (which can be read online here) last Friday.

Newsweek puts spotlight on Larkin Administration Building

This just in! Newsweek puts a spotlight on Frank Lloyd Wright's Larkin Administration Building in a recent May 2 online article, titled "The Goodbye Swirl: The Guggenheim was Wright's last great building. What happened to the first?" This latest exploration of the Wright masterwork, written by Cathleen McGuigan, can be read online here or in Newsweek's print edition dated May 18, 2009.

The article is a lucidly written, poignant piece expositing on the famed structure, built from 1904 to 1906 in the heart of the Hydraulics at 680 Seneca, and the clients who hired Wright to design it:

The Larkin Company of Buffalo, N. Y., made soap, but more than suds, the company helped invent modern marketing. In the late 19th century, Larkin began to sell mail-order products for the laundry and bath with elaborate premiums: lamps, music stands, rocking chairs. The business exploded and by the turn of the new century the company needed a new building to handle all the orders. John Larkin, the founder, wanted the great Chicago architect Louis Sullivan, who'd built the innovative steel-framed Guaranty Building in downtown Buffalo, to design it. But a Larkin lieutenant, Darwin Martin, had another idea. He wanted to hire a 35-year-old hotshot Sullivan protégé named Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright was gaining fame in the Midwest for his radical "Prairie" houses, but he'd never built anything as ambitious as the Larkin Building -- and may have indulged in a little résumé inflation about his experience in commercial architecture. But he got the job in 1902 and began work on the design. Read the rest here.

Just one problem, or rather, two. Newsweek is factually incorrect on two fronts: the Larkin Company never went bankrupt, as the article states. The company managed to pay off its debts after a dramatic contraction of business in the latter half of the Depression, and it was successfully reorganized in 1945 as the Larkin Co. Inc., continuing a modest mail order business on a single floor of the Larkin Terminal Warehouse until 1962. Second, the City of Buffalo did not demolish the Larkin Administration Building, as the article also states incorrectly. That dubious honor falls to the Western Trading Corp., to whom the City agreed to sell the building (with Hunt Business Agency as an intermediary) in 1949 on the condition that the building be demolished and be replaced with taxable improvements costing not less than $100,000 within 18 months. The City granted a demolition permit for the famed structure on January 23, 1950, the building was destroyed by wreckers, and the promised improvements never came to pass. The Western Trading Corp., in 1951, backed off on plans to construct a $150,000 truck terminal at the site, citing a lack of parking.

Special thanks to Jerry Puma for bringing this Newsweek article to our attention.

Amusing Hydraulics story reveals more innocent times

A very amusing Hydraulics story published in the Buffalo Morning Express on March 24, 1900, reveals more innocent times. It's a very "Buffalo" story, to be sure...

The article is a gem. It details the arrest of Louis Trost, deputy sheriff and former saloon owner (at 863 Seneca, which still exists), after nearly getting in fisticuffs with police officers to defend his teenage son, about to be carted off in a patrol wagon for "corner lounging" at Emslie and Seymour streets (the image above shows where it all went down) along with other boys who were terrorizing residents with well-packed snowballs.

1836 legislation chartering the Buffalo & Attica Railroad was mighty controversial

Legislation passed by the New York State Legislature in 1836 to charter the Buffalo & Attica Railroad, completed in 1843 as the last link connecting Buffalo to Albany, promised not only steam from engines, but also steam from the ears of civil libertarians. A controversial provision in the legislation, setting the precedent for railroad incorporation legislation in New York State for the rest of the 19th century, authorized the Buffalo & Attica railroad company to forcibly take private property for the "public purpose" of establishing privately-owned rail rights-of-way.

Economists today would likely agree the railroad, part of a system that crossed the entire state and became part of the behemoth New York Central system in 1853, could not have been built quickly and efficiently without having exercised periodically the powers of eminent domain. But unlike the European system, by which the state itself exercised this taking power and built the railroads utilizing the public purse, it was the American style to defer using the public budget to build speculative roads and instead to deliver its taking powers to private corporations who would assume the bulk of the risk. The state, having opened the Erie Canal at immense public expense in 1825, was not willing to wage the political capital necessary to construct an experimental road that could potentially diminish its own investment in the canal. This public responsibility was consequently transferred to private capitalists, who were then given quasi-governmental authority to build, to the purported benefit of the public, railroads that would help secure the Empire State's preeminence as an industrial heartland of America.

The Swedish Invasion: Swedes tour the Hydraulics

What would Swedes be doing trolling around the Hydraulics, an industrial district on the outer edges of downtown Buffalo? Getting a fascinating tour from a certain blog author, that's what!

The Swedes, a group of fashion design and management students from Gothenburg, were in Buffalo for three weeks to examine the relationship between vintage clothing and vintage cities.

Seems they found a match in the complex of Larkin factory and warehouse buildings, a group of vintage structures undergoing a shift in economic purpose, not unlike classic clothing finding a new use after a period of underappreciation.

The Larkin Company, which, as it happens, produced clothing, appears to be a fine test case for their unusual inquiry. The students explored the only remnant of the Larkin Administration Building, the historic corner of Seneca and Swan streets, the revamped Larkin Terminal Warehouse, and the sprawling Seneca Industrial Center, all places of hope and possibility.

Group tours of the Hydraulics can be arranged by contacting this blog's author at chrishawley@buffalo.com.

Wagner & Nauland Block: Economic opportunity forfeited?

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"
- John Greenleaf Whittier, "Maud Muller," 1856

The Wagner & Nauland Block, a composition of two Italianate commercial structures at 742-748 Seneca Street, was demolished in the late 1990s. Was it necessary?

This photograph, taken at about 1979 by Black Rock activist Scott Glasgow, shows the block in its final iteration as Mindy's Home Service, a used appliance store that occupied the site into the mid-1990s. The heritage structures, which would have finely complemented the streetscape of any city, were reportedly in good repair at the time of their demolition, only a few years before the 2002 rehabilitation of the Larkin Terminal Warehouse, 500 feet away, shattered misconceptions about the potential marriage of preservation and economic development in Buffalo's "near downtown."

Keller's was neighborhood fixture for nearly 120 years

The Keller Drug Store first opened in 1872. It didn't close until around 1992, making it probably the longest running such establishment in city history.

This photo of Keller's (known as Keller & Deuchler from 1894-1910) above, kindly provided by Judith Keller Morganti, is a poignant scene of round-about 1905 or 1906, when the store was located at 739 Seneca, now demolished. From left to right in the photograph is Andrew Keller, the mailman, and Andrew's son, Edward Keller. Andrew Keller, a prominent member of the Hydraulics community, was also a member of the Common Council, elected in 1894 for one three-year term, and ran the store until 1927, when it was reportedly sold to a new owner who chose to keep the original name. Keller's moved to a storefront in the Kamman Building at 757 Seneca Street at about 1931, and stayed open in the same location for another sixty years.

738 Seneca: You can bank on this building's character

The handsome three-story commercial structure at 738 Seneca, now vacant but secured, was the longtime home of the Hydraulics branch of the Marine Trust Bank, which occupied the building in 1919. The building, constructed in 1900 to house Henry Schaefer's grocery, was designed by architect Joseph J. W. Bradney. Architecture firm Mann & Cook headed up the building's expansion in 1919 when Marine Trust moved to into its first story, and in 1954 the storefront was re-clad in polished stone and a bay window on the second story was removed. For years, a billboard Marine Trust installed in 1927 on top of the building was a landmark of its own accord.

The branch's establishment at 738 Seneca in 1919 was no coincidence. John D. Larkin, president and founder of the Larkin Company, was also on the board of Marine Trust Bank and almost certainly had a hand in this choice of location to provide an amenity for factory workers and shoppers at the famed Larkin Store. The bank was a fixture in the neighborhood into the 1990s, though under different names. Marine Trust became Marine Midland in the 1960s and then became HSBC in the 1990s.

Larkin logo still advertising vehicle for heritage structure

The Larkin Company's corporate logo, emblazoned across the late mail-order company's Larkin Terminal Warehouse for the past 97 years, is still a potent advertising vehicle for the heritage structure, now repurposed as Class-A office space.

The corporate logo ("LCo") was actually obscured for years by another sign for Graphic Controls, which leased 4,000 sq. ft. space in the former warehouse in 1940 and later purchased the entire building from the Larkin Warehouse Co. in 1967, the likely year of the original sign's concealment. (Graphic Controls expanded to the nearby Exchange Street Industrial Park in 2001.) When the mammoth 600,000 sq. ft. structure was purchased by investors Howard Zemsky, Bill Jones, Doug Swift, and Joe Petrella in 2002, the original Larkin sign was revealed, a highly-visible first step in the building's rehabilitation.

83 Roseville was home of Buffalo mayor downed by Blizzard of '77

A little house on the urban prairie, 83 Roseville Street, was the longtime home of Stanley Makowski, the Buffalo mayor who, in the 1970s, weathered the storm of plant closings, 15% unemployment, mandatory school integration, and the disastrous Blizzard of '77.

Mayor Makowski, an eternal optimist during one of the city's grimmest decades, was known to frequently refer to Buffalo as "the greatest city in the world" in his public remarks. Upon his appointment by the Common Council to the mayor's spot to succeed the ailing Frank Sedita in 1973, Makowski promised the Common Council his cooperation on the development of the city,  famously stating to the Council: "Without your support, I cannot succeed. With it, I cannot fail."

Urban scene of the week: Exchange St. and the RR tracks

Today's urban scene of the week (er, scene of the month?) brings us to 567 Exchange Street, an alluringly spare, rustic loft building at the banks of Buffalo's most historic and longest-enduring rail line, the Buffalo & Attica, first built in 1843 and later subsumed into the New York Central rail empire that connected the city to New York, Chicago, and the vast reaches of the continent beyond.

The four-story structure was not constructed at this site in 1900 for no reason. The Buffalo Lounge Co., for which the building was erected, chose this precise location because of the geography of the Hydraulics at the intersection of several rail lines, including the Erie and New York Central. The Buffalo Lounge Co. was directly linked to both lines via a rail bed that once existed behind the building.

1929 Larkin Square proposal assailed by Socialist council president

A 1929 proposal by the Larkin Company to establish a "Larkin Square" at the corner of Seneca and Swan streets was shelved by a reticent Common Council and assailed by the Socialist council president Frank C. Perkins as a corporate give-away that "smelled to the heavens."

The public square proposal (click here for a bird's eye view of the site) would have seen Van Rensselaer Street cut through Seneca Street to Swan Street to relieve traffic congestion (yes, there was traffic congestion!), setting aside a triangular plot of cleared land for a public space honoring the company's late founder, John D. Larkin.

F. N. Burt was world's largest paper box manufacturer

Did you know the largest manufacturer of small paper boxes in the world was in Buffalo? Consider yourself now in the know! The F. N. Burt Company, whose sprawling factory complex at Seneca and Hamburg streets churned out upwards of four million boxes a day, was one of the largest employers in the Hydraulics and one of the shining lights of Buffalo industry.

 

F. N. Burt, an innovator in graphic design, was one of the most respected box manufacturers on the planet. Renowned for the glamour and sophistication of its manufactures, the company experienced tremendous growth in the early 20th century that coincided with, as well as contributed to, the emergence of the stylized box as an advertising vehicle for mass-produced consumer goods. Its prodigious, 400,000 sq. ft. factory complex is entirely intact - every building it ever constructed on Seneca Street from 1901-1927 still stands, a miracle by any standard in industrial heritage preservation.

Our Lady of Seneca Street blesses the Irish

Our Lady of Seneca Street, an eccentric shrine devoted to the Virgin Mary at 847 Seneca Street, wishes you a happy St. Patrick's Day. The shrine, adorned today with three-leaf clovers, appears to be out to spread the luck of the Irish.

The shrine is lovingly maintained by the family of Helen Grek, 88, who has lived in the Hydraulics all her life and whose daughter and son-in-law are now stewards of the religious structure. The shrine, almost demolished by the City of Buffalo in the 1980s, is today a beacon of hope, linking the neighborhood to its past and underlining the district's struggle to keep its traditions alive.

Niagara Thruway sped the decline of the Hydraulics

The construction of the Niagara Thruway (I-190) through the Hydraulics, one mile east of downtown Buffalo, was completed in the fall of 1959, changing the neighborhood forever. Partly open in 1958 from Dingens to Louisiana streets, the highway's impact was not fully understood or yet fully realized. The good times were still rolling.

This circa 1959 image, kindly provided by Marty Biniasz at forgottenbuffalo.com, reveals a vibrant neighborhood scene at Roseville and Van Rensselaer streets. Kids hang out at the corner store. Older folks chat at Eddie's Bar and Grill, known today as Sharkey's. People abound. The district, though gritty and industrial, was still a lively place, and no one imagined the highway, shining with its fresh white concrete, would ever help bring an end to the good times.