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.

The LCo signs are lit brilliantly at night, particularly at its south facade. Any guess at why? The south side of the building, now dubbed Larkin at Exchange, faces a very large audience: the tens of thousands of vehicles that pass every day on the Niagara Thruway (I-190). The heritage symbols, the most conspicuous aspect of the otherwise spare concrete structure that so elicited the admiration of early Modernist architects, now serve as veritable billboards advertising office space at the building, which identifies closely with its Larkin history.

The project, which essentially saved what many economic development officials believed would become a real estate “white elephant” for the city when Graphic Controls announced its departure from the building in the mid-1990s, is now nearly 100% occupied. History really does sell.

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The Larkin Terminal Warehouse was a center of attention on December 5, 1933, the day the Prohibition Amendment was repealed and this, the city’s only bonded warehouse, was expected to release 10,000 cases of imported whiskey and gin to Buffalo hotels and restaurants to mark the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.

But there was a hick-up: Utah, the only state that was yet needed to ratify the amendment, delayed its vote until after 5 o’clock, meaning the flow of sweet goodness from the Larkin Terminal Warehouse would be held back until the next day. Doh!

A December 6, 1933, article from the Buffalo Evening News has the story:

Large supply of liquor held until today: Larkin Warehouse closes few minutes before word comes from Utah of the official end of the 18th Amendment

Possibility of release of a part of the flood of legal liquor stored in the Larkin company bonded warehouse in time to stock hotels, restaurants and clubs for sale tonight vanished when Utah delayed its vote until after 5 p.m. The warehouse closed sharp at 4:45 p.m. in accordance with usual custom. More than 10,000 cases of choice whiskeys and gin are reposing in the warehouse. The McKesson-Buffalo Drug company, which has a federal license, pro-rated its entire supply of liquor among licensed hotels downtown. The supply which was shipped to each hotel within a half-hour after ratification was described by executives of the McKesson company as “reasonable.”
Nearly fourteen years of Prohibition may have been bad enough, but yet another day without fine, legal Canadian liquor must have been intolerable.

The news was probably of no note to the owners of “soda bars” throughout the Hydraulics. Dozens of these “soda bars” operated in the neighborhood in former taverns as speakeasies, and likely continued business as usual that night, as they did all over the city… But the fine hotels, restaurants and night clubs of Buffalo appear to have lost out, at least until the evening of December 6th, which must have been some party night!

So next time you’re in Sharkey’s or the Swan Lounge, look out the bar window, raise a jigger of Seagrams, and cheer the Larkin Terminal Warehouse and its role on a day the following became the law: “The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.”

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The photo above taken by photographer Edward L. Kasprzak (Eddie, are you still out there?) in 1962, and provided to TheHydraulics.com by renowned playwright Tom Dudzick, is a window into these better days. The photo shows some of the Dudzick clan on Emslie Street near Seneca, on their way to St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church (demolished) for a mass celebrating the 50th wedding anniversary of Joseph & Veronica Dudzick, Tom’s grandparents. Clad in Jackie Onassis and John F. Kennedy early 60s attire, the family is passing Tony Milosta’s grocery on Emslie and Seymour Streets. In the background are some Seneca Street commercial buildings, including the Kamman Building, and behind that the Larkin Terminal Warehouse.

The above photo shows the same view today, a view that communicates hope. The Larkin Terminal Warehouse is now repurposed as Class-A office space housing nearly 2,000 employees. The Kamman Building is being renovated by Chaintreuil Jensen Stark Architecture to house its national headquarters. Things are looking up, projects are happening, and it appears to be only the beginning. Perhaps the happy days will be here again, though there’s still a long road ahead to get there…

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Check it out! The Buffalo News has the scoop:
Businessman boosts renewal program: Larkin project proves it works, Zemsky says.

By Jerry Zremski
WASHINGTON – Buffalo businessman Howard Zemsky told a House subcommittee Wednesday that the building his company renovated just east of downtown is proof that the federal Renewal Communities program is working.

“Today our Larkin at Exchange building is home to approximately 2,000 employees working for over 30 companies and organizations,” Zemsky, managing partner of Larkin Development, told the House Ways and Means subcommittee on select revenue measures. “The federal government’s investment, coupled with our own private investment, has resulted in a re-emerging and reinvigorated neighborhood, which was the goal of the renewal community program,” he added.

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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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