History of the Hydraulics: Part Three

Around the turn of the twentieth century, the Hydraulics neighborhood was a booming commercial and industrial center in the city of Buffalo.  Despite its relatively small size, the area boasted numerous large manufacturing facilities and successful commercial enterprises along the Seneca and Swan Street corridor.  The Hydraulics became a natural location for a wide variety of industries and businesses to emerge during the late nineteenth-century as grain, cattle and raw materials flowed into the city of Buffalo via the Erie Canal and railroads.  The Larkin Company, manufacturer of soaps and toiletries, was certainly the most notable business which originated in the Hydraulics neighborhood.

THE LARKIN COMPANY, 1875- 1940s

Of all the businesses and industries which found a home in the Hydraulics neighborhood, by far the largest and most successful was the Larkin Company, makers of soaps, toiletries and a wide variety of household products.  In the age before the industrial revolution of the mid-nineteenth-century, soap making originally was a small, cottage industry in the United States.  Soap making became one of many industries which benefited from mass-production, thanks to new machinery and technologies.  Like many of the companies in the neighborhood, the Larkin Company took advantage of the Hydraulics area's proximity to regional and national transportation routes, raw materials and ample labor force.  Rising from humble origins in the late-nineteenth-century, by the early twentieth-century the Larkin Company grew to become one of the largest companies in the city of Buffalo and also the country.

John Durrant Larkin was born in Buffalo in 1845 at 13 Clinton Street (where the Lafayette Hotel now stands), the middle child of seven born to Mary Ann (Durrant) and Levi Larkin, founder of the Clinton Iron Works.  John D. Larkin became involved in the soap industry in 1862, when he began working as a clerk in the office of the Buffalo soap works of his brother-in-law, Justus Weller.  By 1865, Larkin was made a partial partner in the company, and when Weller decided to relocate the company to Chicago in 1870, Larkin was invited to relocate with the firm, becoming a full partner.  Larkin spent five years in Chicago, forming personal connections and learning much about the business end of the company.  His time in the growing metropolis laid the foundation for his later individual career in the soap industry.

Sometime in 1871 Larkin was introduced to Weller's uncle, Dr. Silas Hubbard, who lived in Bloomington, Illinois. The relationship between the Hubbard family and John Larkin became a significant association, and the two families would become intertwined following this initial meeting.  Dr. Hubbard's teenage son, Elbert, was encouraged to join the soap company of Larkin & Weller as a salesman, and John Larkin would marry Elbert's older sister, Frances (or Frank as she was nicknamed), in 1874.  The happy times of the Weller, Hubbard and Larkin families would not last for long, and by 1875 Justus Weller's marriage to Mary Larkin ended in divorce, forcing John D. Larkin to leave the Larkin and Weller company to establish a soap works of his own.

After travelling to Boston, Larkin eventually returned to his hometown of Buffalo, which provided the transportation and animal fats needed to grow a successful soap industry, especially the Hydraulics neighborhood. Larkin's first factory was located at 196-198 Chicago Street in Buffalo's Old First Ward area, and by 1877 the company had grown so rapidly that Larkin purchased property at 667 Seneca Street in the Hydraulics neighborhood in order to build a larger factory, adjacent to rail lines and the needed raw materials.  Larkin employed his brother-in-law, Elbert Hubbard, as his first salesman and a one-third partner. Hubbard travelled widely for the company in his years as a salesman or "slinger" as they were known, spending the years between 1875 and 1878 travelling between Buffalo, Chicago and Milwaukee.  In 1875, Hubbard's role in the company grew, and he hired Frank Martin from Dayton, Ohio to lead a crew of door-to-door "slingers" for the company. In 1879, Frank's young thirteen-year-old brother Darwin D. Martin was brought to Buffalo as one of the "slinger" crew. By the late 1870s, the "J.D. Larkin & Co." firm was well established.

During the height of its activities, the Larkin Company was a sales and marketing pioneer.  The company's initial sales strategy was a typical, door-to-door campaign which brought the soap and toiletry products direct to the consumer.  In the early 1880s the company began including a small premium item, such as a handkerchief or a small chromolithograph, in each box of soap to entice customers to purchase larger quantities.  The idea of including a premium was not invented by the Larkin Company, but the company was highly successful at the combination of direct-mail solicitation to the customer (rather than a shopkeeper or middle-man), and the enticement of premiums allowed the company to sell directly to the customer.

By 1885 the Larkin Company was able to completely eliminate the middle-men from its business dealings. In 1886, Larkin marketing mastermind, Elbert Hubbard, created the successful "Combination Box," an assortment of soaps and toiletry items which was shipped on thirty-days approval, allowing customers to try and use the products or return them for a refund.  The company's selection of premium items also expanded during the 1890s to include products such as the popular "Chautauqua Lamp" first offered in 1892 and the "Chautauqua Desk" which was offered in 1893.  These high-quality premium products encouraged bulk purchases of soap and other products.  The "Larkin Idea" marketing strategy embodied the spirit of the Larkin Company's direct-to-the-consumer approach; if a customer was willing to commit ten dollars (about one week's pay for most people at the time) to a direct purchase of a year's supply of soap then the Larkin Company agreed to share the advantage in the form of an attractive premium item.  This strategy promoted a sense of "quasi-familial" intimacy between the consumer - or "Larkinite" - and the company and is the root of much of modern marketing strategies today.

The Larkin Company also pioneered the concept of getting the average consumer involved in the sales process.  Called "Larkin Clubs of Ten," which began in the early 1890s, these clubs consisted of ten families, generally under the guidance of the females of the family, who pooled their financial resources in order to buy the expensive combination boxes and to share the premium offerings.  While members drew straws to win the premium prize, by the tenth month all members obtained a premium.  Some enterprising people purchased the boxes and sold them to their friends, family and neighbors, keeping the premiums for themselves.  In this way, the Larkin Company replaced the typical sales force with primarily housewives and women, effectively reducing packaging, shipping and administrative costs, and because the women who ran the club acted in the place of the more typical corporate-sponsored sales staff, the Larkin Company saved on labor and other related costs.  These clubs were the forerunner of Avon, Tupperware parties and other types of female consumer-sold product.

As early as 1881 the Larkin company employed nearly one hundred factory workers, and had organized into four departments of shipping clerks, mail-advertising helpers, bookkeeper and a "miscellaneous" group. Borrowing the card-ledger system of the local YMCA library, Darwin Martin created a unique bookkeeping and tracking system for the Larkin Company in 1885, recently promoted from his sales position.  By September of 1885, Martin noted over 35,000 accounts in the ledger, and as business continued to prosper, he soon created and supervised both the Order and Bookkeeping Departments and hired a staff of assistants.

The combination of the business sense of John D. Larkin, the administrative skills of Darwin D. Martin and the salesmanship of Elbert Hubbard turned the Larkin Company into one of the most successful companies in Buffalo in the late nineteenth-century, as the company expanded its business into selling toiletries, furniture, lamps, home products and a myriad of other items.  As the quantity and variety of the products produced by the company increased, the size and scale of the production factory also grew.  The small brick factory at 667 Seneca Street was quickly outgrown, and the Larkin Company constructed a series of simple, utilitarian buildings near the intersection of Swan and Seneca Streets between the 1880s and 1912.

Beginning in 1895, the company constructed twelve new factory buildings ranging from eight to ten stories in height on an entire block of land at Seneca Street between Larkin (formerly Heacock) and Van Rensselaer Streets.  While appearing to be one enormous building, the large bulk was actually divided in several smaller facilities for specialized production ranging from soap making, wrapping, storing, lumber storage, perfumes and a myriad of other functions.  A large Power House building (1902) and a railroad terminal warehouse building (1912) were among other specialized building added to the growing Larkin Company complex.  Designed by the R.J. Reidpath Company of Buffalo, these steel framed brick-clad buildings were ideally suited for the needs of industrial manufacturing, but were unsuitable for the office and corporate needs of the ever-growing company. 

In 1903 alone the Larkin Company was receiving over 5,000 letters per day, and new members of the office staff were hired weekly to accommodate the rapidly growing administrative needs of the thriving company.  Housed in the E and F Buildings of the factory, the increasing administrative aspects of the company, coupled with the constant demand for new production spaces within the factory itself, soon created the need for a new separate administration building.

Although the factory site in the Hydraulics was selected based on the area's proximity to several major railroad routes, the noisy, dirty and polluted industrial neighborhood was not ideal for a significant office building to be constructed.  The typical office worker at the time was female, and the Larkin Company felt they would not be enticed to work in this area of the city.  The new administrative building was also seen as a sort of figurehead for the company as well. John D. Larkin selected Frank Lloyd Wright as the architect for the new building on the recommendation of Darwin Martin (who by this time had become Treasurer) and Larkin's brother-in-law, William Heath, who was the company's head of the legal department. 

Designed and constructed between 1903 and 1904, the new Larkin Administration Building at 680 Seneca Street was located just north of the company's largest factory building. 

In response to the industrial atmosphere around it, the building was the height of modern technology, creating a sealed, healthy indoor environment, and pioneered several hygienic features in large office buildings. Clean, fresh air was circulated in the sealed building through a rudimentary type of air conditioning system which turned the blocky corner piers of the building into a massive circulation system. 

A large interior courtyard infused the interior with natural light and allowed for additional air circulation.  In order to prevent the clutter common in large offices, Wright custom designed built-in metal office furniture, file cabinets, desks and even wall-hung toilets.  The Administration Building also featured an elegant restaurant and conservatory where the female office workers could unwind and be entertained.  Everything about the building was designed to be clean, efficient, pristine and modern in order to accommodate a staff of over 1800 people.  Upon its completion in 1906, the Larkin Administration Building was hailed as a triumph of modern architecture and office building design by European and American architects, critics and historians alike.
 
The Larkin Administration Building also was notable for its removal of the administrative and management functions from its previous location in the midst of the production floor.  Previous to this era, management staff and facilities of a majority of American factories and industrial buildings were typically located right in the heart of the production floor, keeping management in touch with the labor force and the manufacturing process.  The Larkin Administration Building created a separated building designated solely to the management and office tasks of the business, perhaps spurred by the labor strikes and turmoil of this period in American history.  While the result created an emblematic building which was specifically designed to house and economize the clerical functions of the company, the construction of the Larkin Administration Building effectively severed the deep-rooted connection between management and the labor force.

The Larkin Company continued to be successful well into the 1920s.  By 1925 the company manufactured a majority of the over nine-hundred catalog items in its expansive factory complex which covered over sixteen-and-a-half acres on Seneca Street in the Hydraulics.  In addition to their own soaps, cleansers, cosmetics, perfume, pharmaceuticals and food, they offered consumers everything from clothing and furniture to utensils and radios. 

With its primary corporate headquarters centered in Buffalo, the company had branches across the East Coast in Boston, Chicago, Peoria, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and New York City. The company had expanded into many aspects of daily consumer life, including the 154 Larkin chain stores in Western New York and Peoria, Illinois and the Larkin-branded fuel stations which pumped gas in Buffalo, Rochester and Erie, Pennsylvania. Over 4,000 employees proudly called themselves "Larkinites."  By the 1920s, the Larkin Company had expanded their range of products to cover nearly every aspect of daily life.

Source:  National Register Multiple Property Documentation Form prepared by Architectural Historian Jennifer Walkowski of Clinton Brown Company Architecture.

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