The Seneca Street bridge leading into the Larkin District over the former New York Central Rail Corridor offers some interesting scenes.
Looking to the east, one first witnesses the impressive profile (above) of the Larkin Power House and its smokestack – one of the steeples of industrial Buffalo. The peak of the smokestack marks the highest point in the Hydraulics and at one time reached much higher, that is, before the stack was damaged in a lightning strike some decades ago. To the south of the Power House is the Larkin L/M Warehouse, where the Larkin Company stored much of its raw materials (think hundreds of tons of animal fat for soap production, as only one example) and which has the highest floor load capacity (230 lbs./sq.ft.) of all the Larkin District structures, a higher load capacity than even the more advanced Larkin Terminal Warehouse constructed eight years later in 1912.
Looking north from the same position (below), the bakery and refrigeration warehouse of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (anyone remember A & P grocery?) forms another nice urban profile. The bakery was closed in 1975, resulting in the layoff of 100 workers. The building complex is a very important example of steel-reinforced concrete construction.
What ties all these buildings together, and the reason they form a pod of industrial structures around a single site, is their location abutting the New York Central Belt Line, a loop rail that connected Buffalo’s disparate industrial neighborhoods and helped transform the Hydraulics into a hotbed of steam-powered manufacturing by the late nineteenth century. The rail line incorporates the original eastbound rail corridor constructed through the district in 1843, the Buffalo & Attica, a line that crossed through the estate of the Hydraulics founder, Reuben Heacock, whose stone mansion was located adjacent to where the Seneca bridge now touches down in the Larkin District. The railroad became such a dominant force in the neighborhood that by the end of the Civil War, the Heacock Mansion – the single greatest link to the area’s early mill period – was demolished to make way for a rail car repair shop. So far removed had the development of the neighborhood been from its original purpose that, in 1894, Heacock Street was renamed Larkin Street. The car repair shop persisted as a use at the site, on the old Heacock plot north of where Larkin Street intersects with Seneca, into the second half of 20th century.
This rail line that was constructed in 1843 is still part of one of the most frequently used freight lines in New York State. The corridor once consisted of dozens of spurs; now only two spurs run through the neighborhood, and they split into two separate spurs one block south of the Seneca bridge at Exchange Street. Despite the diminished importance of rail traffic in the economy of Buffalo, the constancy of rail infrastructure in defining its geography and character is a fascinating subject of study.
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