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. Read the rest of this entry »

10,000 cases of booze on the wall, 10,000 cases of booze, take one down, pass it around, 9,999 cases of booze on the wall…

The Larkin Terminal Warehouse was a center of attention on December 5, 1933, the day the Prohibition Amendment was repealed and this, the city’s only bonded warehouse, was expected to release 10,000 cases of imported whiskey and gin to Buffalo hotels and restaurants to mark the first night of legal liquor. Repeal Day, now celebrated in bars across the United States and undoubtedly in Hydraulics taverns like Sharkey’s and the Swan Lounge tonight, was anticipated to be a day of celebration, and commerce, in Larkinland in 1933, as well. Read the rest of this entry »

The Hydraulics was a vibrant neighborhood in 1962. The neighborhood had two schools, five bars, two churches, a bank, seven restaurants, a drug store, a liquor store, three groceries, a hardware store, a furniture store, a post office, a railroad watch store, a laundry, a bowling alley, two service stations, two beauty salons, a cigar store, and two barber shops. Seneca Street was a lively commercial district. People were on the streets. Things were active. Read the rest of this entry »

Howard Zemsky, principal in Larkin Development Group, testified before Congress yesterday, bringing the success story of the Larkin Terminal Warehouse conversion to a nationwide audience. The 10-story building, transformed in 2002 from industrial to chic office space and now at full occupancy, is one of many projects across the nation that benefited from the federal Renewal Communities program. Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »