TheHydraulics.com will feature an “urban scene of the week” of Hydraulics sights and scenes on a roughly weekly basis – weekly, meaning “whenever the inspiration and the camera intersect.”

This week, the highlight is the fence pier of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin Administration Building, built in 1904 and demolished in 1950, with the exception of this one lone artifact. The fence pier, on Swan Street, is all that remains of Wright’s masterpiece, what was considered by architecture critic Henry-Russel Hitchcock to be “the most important building ever demolished in the 20th century.” Read the rest of this entry »

New clues on the original appearance of the Larkin Gas Station have emerged, hiding in plain sight. In the rear of the long-vacant filling station at 725 Seneca, an Art Deco, brick and concrete facade reveals itself, giving some indication of what a retro, 1960s Gulf Oil sheathing may hide underneath its metal panels.

Commentor David Steele, a writer for Buffalo Rising and architect in Chicago, underscores what may be a preservation dilemma in the potential Read the rest of this entry »