O, boy, what an amazing door! The Larkin O Building, constructed in 1907 as one of multiple additions to the sprawling Larkin factory complex, contains an odd second-story door that appears more like one that would have opened out onto a ground-level sidewalk.
It’s not only an appearance. The door did once face onto a street – the Van Rensselaer Street viaduct, in fact. Until a couple decades ago, this section of Van Rensselaer Street from Roseville to Seneca streets was an elevated viaduct allowing the passage of trains underneath, along the tracks of the Erie Railroad that have since been removed.
Huge cargo trains once traveled under the shadow of the viaduct directly into the Larkin Terminal Warehouse, where they would efficiently load and offload products to and from interior freight elevators without worry of exposure to the elements – an ingenious innovation of Machine Age warehouse engineering that dramatically sped the pace of Larkin’s shipping operations.
At the Larkin Terminal Warehouse, in fact, when Graphic Controls purchased the building in 1967, the pedestrian entrance at Van Rensselaer Street was not at the first story but on the second. Ditto at Larkin Building O, whose “ground-level” door several feet in the air is fascinating evidence of rail infrastucture in the district that has long since disappeared.
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January 25th, 2010 at 1:24 am
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