Buffalo Stories Archives & Blog

The Buffalo You Should Know: How we lost the Larkin Administration Building

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

At the turn of the century, The Buffalo-based Larkin Company was one of the nation’s largest retailers, first selling soap, and eventually a range of items — second only to Sears & Roebuck — from its catalogs that reached 1.5 million homes.

Drawing of the company complex from a Larkin publication, 1925 (Buffalo Stories archives)

The money being sent into the Larkin complex near Seneca and Swan streets was unprecedented. It was enough that $4 million didn’t seem too steep when executives, impressed with Larkin Secretary Darwin D. Martin’s Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home, asked Wright to design a new administration building for the company. The structure, the cost of which would be close to $100 million in 2016 dollars, was completed in 1906.

From a postcard (Buffalo Stories archives)

At the time, the office space was the latest in modern design. It was lauded by those who appreciated art and architecture around the world, and pointed to as an example of the country’s “coming of age” in design innovation. When an exhibition showcasing three centuries of American architecture moved from New York’s Museum of Modern Art to the Albright (now Albright-Knox) Art Gallery in Buffalo in 1938, Buffalo’s Larkin Administration Building was one of the stars.

“It has received considerable praise for the boldness with which the architect cut with tradition in order to bring light into hitherto gloomy interiors,” said one review. Wright took credit for designing the country’s first metal office furniture for the structure.

The design also made it a pleasant place to work, with a mix of natural and artificial light, waterfalls, and a pipe organ all meant to make the day’s toil a bit less burdensome for the everyday Joe working there. It was the jewel in the Larkin crown for 30 years.

In a gross simplification, through the Depression business dwindled for the Larkin Company. The Frank Lloyd Wright-designed headquarters building, where incoming mail-order cash was once loaded into quickly filled bushel baskets for easy carrying, was renovated into a Larkin storefront in 1939 when the mail-order business died out.

Larkin Co. collectibles were shown in a 2004 exhibit at the Larkin at Exchange Building. These Larkin Co. products were part of a collection from Gail Belliveau of Willington, Conn. (Sharon Cantillon/News file photo)

Announcements of the building’s conversion mix awe of Wright’s “sensational” and “outstanding” structure, while also bragging of the “modernizing” of the interior — stripping it of most of Wright’s design.

Larkin stumbled into the war years. In 1940, Larkin and subsidiaries were $38,000 in arrears to the City of Buffalo for taxes and looking to make payment plans. Three years later, cash-strapped Larkin sold its headquarters building to a Pennsylvania real estate investor, who had hoped to turn a profit with possible federal government interest in the building.

The hopes of that out-of-state investor were never realized, and the City of Buffalo seized the building for back taxes.

As one of the few open spaces in the city that could accommodate such an enterprise, in 1946 it was hoped that the building might become Buffalo’s new Veteran’s Administration headquarters, but the current Bailey Avenue structure was built instead.

Once that plan fell through, the City Council discussed an offer to buy the building — which was assessed at $237,000 — for $26,000. City Comptroller George Wanamaker said the offer was too low, and asked that he be allowed to advertise the building nationally and locally.

The council approved $6,000 to advertise the building, although Council Majority Leader George Evans called it “gambling with the taxpayers’ money,” saying that every real estate person in Buffalo knows the building is available.

In January 1947, large ads were taken out in a total of seven papers in New York and Chicago, as well as The Buffalo Evening News and the Courier-Express.

Buffalo Stories archives

Three months after the advertising blitz, there were plenty of inquiries, but no bids. Wanamaker also tried to market the 92,000-square foot building to someone who might convert it to housing, but city engineers eventually determined that the site wasn’t appropriate for housing. The state was offered the building as a record storage facility, but the offer was declined.

Based apparently more on the structuring of the contract than the money, the Common Council rejected a second offer, this one $25,000, in Jun, 1947.

During a time when The Buffalo Evening News and the Courier-Express rarely agreed on any editorial stance, both papers took up one official’s calling the Wright masterpiece “a white elephant.”

Admitting that the building seemed to have no commercial appeal, Mayor Bernard Dowd offered it to the county, which was looking for space to house some offices. He said the building had “attractive features” for municipal work, but it never came to be.

Nearly a year passed before another offer was received. It was again for $26,000, and it was again rejected as too low. A month later, however, a $500 option to buy the building for that amount was accepted. Whether the councilmen who voted to accept the offer knew who the actual bidder was or not is unclear, but published reports named Chestor, Inc., a local real estate company, as the buyer on behalf of an undisclosed client.

It was eventually unveiled that the bidder was Magnus Benzing, manager of the Magnus Beck Brewery. While he wouldn’t unveil his plans, he did say they weren’t brewing or housing related. Benzing eventually declined his option, and the building sat empty.

An informational marker on Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin Administration Building stands at Swan and Seymour streets. (Buffalo News file photo)

During the spring of 1949, Ellicott District Councilman Joseph Dudzick — famous as the inspiration for the gin mill owner in his son Tom’s “Over the Tavern” plays — proposed the Larkin Administration Building be transformed into a recreation center.

“This once-beautiful structure that attracted visitors from all over the world has become an eyesore and a tax-devouring white elephant,” said ‘Big Joe’ Dudzick. “Practically everybody who has looked at it with the intention of using the building for business purposes has declared it beyond repair for practical business use. There is no wisdom in allowing the building to deteriorate further until it becomes a pile of crumbling brick, especially when it can be put to good use in building the bodies, minds and character of the city’s youth.”

“We’ve got a community blight on our hands,” said Dudzick, “But it can be transformed into a worthwhile medium to combat juvenile delinquency.”

It was another idea to save the building which never made it past the proposal stage.

On Sept. 13, 1949, the Common Council voted to sell Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin Administration Building — once the most modern office building in the world — for the sum of $5,000, with the knowledge that it was another unknown bidder’s intention to demolish the building and then replace it with a new structure to add back to the tax rolls.

Immediate reaction to the sale to Buffalo’s Western Trading Company was positive. The term “white elephant” and a relieved sigh of “finis” were thrown around, as it was clear the city wanted to be rid of the burden of this building.

Unlike his predecessor Wanamaker, new City Comptroller Edward Neider had been doing his best to “dispose of” the property and bring it back to the city tax rolls since he’d “inherited it” upon assuming the office.

“I believe the city has made the best possible disposition in accepting an offer of purchase for $5,000,” the comptroller said. Outside City Hall, however, the impeding demolition was panned by architects and architecture historians everywhere, including on the pages of New York City newspapers.

In this photo from 2006, a wall stands at Swan and Seymour streets marking the location of the Larkin Administration Building. The Seneca Industrial Complex on Seneca Street looms in the background. (Buffalo News file photo)

While vandals had begun the work of demolishing the building, stripping it of nearly every light fixture, doorknob and plumbing line, the solidly built steel framed and poured-concrete girded building took an agonizing six months and six figures to demolish.

Larkin historian Jerome Puma writes that pieces of “the building that was meant to last forever” do live on, however humbly. Chunks of stone and brick from the building were used to backfill the Ohio Basin, and the 24-inch steel floor beams made by Bethlehem Steel were last known to be holding the earth in place above a West Virginia coal mine.

After the world-famous structure was cleared away, Western Trading petitioned Buffalo’s Common Council for a variance to move the truck terminal they had planned for the site, saying in part that the newly opened up land would just be too valuable as a parking lot for the rest of the Larkin complex. The council agreed, and the space remains a parking lot to this day.

Buffalo in the ’90s: Councilman Byron Brown faces a primary challenge

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

This series of photos dates back to 1997, when Masten District Common Council Member Byron Brown was facing a primary to return to his seat two years after defeating 18-year incumbent David Collins for the job.

Buffalo News archives

The freshman lawmaker was among those who faced heat from constituents after voting for the highly controversial garbage fee which Mayor Anthony Masiello made a part of the year’s budget, but in endorsing Brown over two community activists in the Democratic primary, The News called him an “intelligent, ambitious, hard-working representative” and said he “seems to overflow with effective ideas and actions to improve life in Masten and bring hope to its citizens.”

“Brown, the live wire, clearly deserves another term,” concluded that 1997 Democratic primary endorsement. He ran unopposed in the general election, and was elected to three terms on Buffalo’s Common Council.

In 2000, Brown became the first African-American State Senator elected outside of New York City, as he defeated incumbent Al Coppola in the Democratic primary and then the general election.

As Masiello sought re-election in 1997, Brown was mentioned as a possible candidate for the job during the next mayoral election in 2001. Brown himself did little to dissuade that thinking, disagreeing with the notion that Masiello’s re-election was tantamount to a mandate from the voters.

“People think the city is moving in the right direction,” Brown said speaking of Masiello’s leadership, “but they want to see more.”

Masiello won re-election again 2001, but when he announced his retirement before the next mayoral cycle, State Senator Byron W. Brown was elected Buffalo’s 62nd mayor in 2005.

The year these photos were taken, the then-councilmember also made the list of Western New York’s most beautiful people.

In the 1997 “Buffalo” magazine story “Turning Heads- The Most Beautiful People in Western New York,” Brown was listed with the likes of Michael Peca.

Look up the word “smooth” in the dictionary. Byron Brown’s picture might be there.

Brown, 38, a Common Council member since January 1996, exudes confidence and serenity. He’s unflappable. Or at least he remembers when he used to be that way.

“I’m a lot less serene in this job,” says Brown. “I can’t sleep through the night, which never happened before. The job is so awesome. There is so much to do.”

Brown is another person who says the real beauty in the family is his spouse. “Wherever we go, people always notice my wife, Michelle, and mention how attractive she is,” he says.

Still, Brown believes looking the part helps establish the right attitude. “If I’m playing basketball, I want to have the right equipment,” he says. “If I’m in an office, I want to look professional and poised.”

What it looked like Wednesday: Buffalo’s Greyhound Terminal, 1948

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

With the ability to load and unload up to 11 buses simultaneously, Buffalo’s new Greyhound Bus Terminal opened at 664 Main Street in 1941. By 1948, it was a well-established terminus of travel to, from, and through Western New York.

Buffalo News archives

Buffalo was among the most important stops on the entire Greyhound system, according to one executive, who called Buffalo the Gateway to Canada and the major transfer point for the tens of thousands visiting Niagara Falls by bus every year.

1941 ad. Buffalo Stories archives

Among those there for the ribbon cutting was Greyhound President CE Wickman, who was greatly responsible for the growth of and manner by which modern bus travel developed.

Postcard image, Buffalo Stories archives

The terminal was a backdrop for the film “Hide in Plain Sight,” and was a Buffalo Police Substation for several years. It has been the home of the Alleyway Theatre since 1985.

Torn-Down Tuesday: Elmwood Avenue’s Kittinger Factory, 1999

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Kittinger Furniture was a Buffalo institution — and a family institution — for a century. From 1866 to 1966, the Kittinger family ran the business which created handcrafted, world-renowned pieces which wound up famously in places like the White House.

Buffalo News archives

Even after the family sold the company in 1966, the Elmwood Avenue factory continued to turn out handmade furnishings. The towering sign erected high above the immense 193,000 square foot factory was a North Buffalo landmark just north of Elmwood and Hertel for generations.

The company changed hands several times through the ’80s and ’90s, and in 1995, the factory closed as Kittinger filed for bankruptcy. Former Kittinger employee Ray Bialkowski eventually bought the name and continued the tradition of artisans creating fine tables, chairs, desks and other furnishings — but doing so on a smaller scale, he didn’t need so much space.

A Kittinger artisan at work, mid 1970s. (Buffalo News archives)

After buying the North Buffalo building in 1998 for $600,000, Benderson Development razed the factory in 2000. In the years since, a bank and a gym were built in its place.

Tom Connolly: Great Friend, mentor, broadcaster

By Steve Cichon | steve@buffalostories.com | @stevebuffalo

BUFFALO, NY – For those who just knew Tom Connolly as the guy who said, “it’s midnight,” every night, seven nights a week for almost 25 years, its difficult to introduce you to the man. He was as unique as his voice– unequivocally one of a kind.

We’ve all seen some movie or TV show where a kid goes to the dumpy basement closet to hang out with the school janitor– a world-weary and gruff, yet kind and brilliant guy, who gives great advice and does his sometimes rotten job like clockwork.

Overnights in radio are a lot like a dumpy basement… And while Tom was no janitor, he just did his work– and a lot of stuff that he’d do just because he thought someone should– quietly with no expectation of appreciation or praise. He was like radio’s counterculture guidance counselor.

He loved and cared for each one of us kids who went through the station, and encouraged us to make our own role there, because no one else was going to do it for us.

The first time I was ever on the air at WBEN was with Tom’s guidance– make that his insistence. On a Sunday morning shift in 1994, the news guy never showed up.

It was with his passionate, insistent, and unmistakably Connollyesque advice that I began my on air career in radio.

What many people outside of radio might not realize, is that Tom worked overnights, seven days a week. For decades.

Again, that started in part because Tom cared about me personally. There was a time when I was working 3-11 Saturday evening, then was back Sunday morning at 5. At this point, Tom had Saturday nights off– his one night off every week.

The guy who was supposed to work the overnight shift while I’d go sleep on the station couch for six hours didn’t show up two weeks in a row. Being a naive high school kid, I never told anyone… Until one day I let it it slip to Tom. He was already angry that “the man” was taking advantage of my eagerness to work by putting me on such a schedule.

But Tom had no love for the character who skipped out on that shift. The next week, Tom was working Saturday night — the start of his 23 year run of overnights every night. He also insisted that I forgo that soiled couch in the station basement and drive 45 minutes home for some real sleep. More than once that sound sleep ended abruptly with a phone call from the station.

“Tom here.”

“Sorry Tom, I’m on my way.”

“No problem.”

And he meant no problem. For five years, Tom relived me from “running the board” as the technical producer and operator of the station in the early 90s.

Most nights he’d walk in, fresh from Tops next door, with his arms filled with bizarro overnight snacks. The menu would change through the years, but early on it was a half-gallon of Tops Vim One skim milk, which he’d drink straight from the carton to wash down a bag of oyster crackers and a pound of M&Ms.

Often a minute or two “late,” he’d simply say, “Good evening. Vacate.”

In those years he wouldn’t take official vacation days or any time off– he’d ask me to cover for him, with the same request once a year, several years running.

“If it’s ok, I may be a few minutes late tonight,” he’d say— and I then knew what was coming next. “Weird Al Yankovic is performing in concert tonight, and I’d like to attend.”

The gratitude he’d show when you did him a small favor was as if it had been served on a golden platter.

Maybe a bit more mellowed, Tom was the same cat when I came back to WBEN after several years away.

No longer a (young) punk and having some radio management experience under my belt, I had an even greater appreciation for Connolly (which is nearly universally how we’ve always referred to him.)

He taught young people not only the craft of radio, but the reward in the drudgery of work just for the sake of your own pride in getting it done. He was the cool upper classman who knew all the tricks and was willing to share.

For decades, Tom would send home board ops and news people on Christmas… And work double duty for 36 straight hours so the people at the bottom of the totem poll could spend time with their families.

After his daily nine hours at Entercom, contributing to the success of WBEN, WGR, Star and Kiss’ morning show in his typical unheralded fashion, rarely receiving the credit or thanks he deserved, he’d head to his first radio love, WBNY, and work for free on a fantastic music show– again, acting as mentor and funky uncle to generations of Buff State broadcasting students.

If one was trying to be sensitive, one would say Tom was unique. He was unique enough to be comfortable with weird. Mostly a good weird. Mostly a weird like, “Who works that hard?” Or “Who helps people he barely knows like that?” Or “Who just does his job, seven days a week, always superior with no questions asked?”

Tom was one of the people who made working in radio different, exciting, and so much better than any other terrible, terribly-paying job on the planet. His work ethic, his weirdness, and his love and support for all of us will be greatly and forever missed.

Stars make “radio” for those who listen. Guys like Tom make radio for those who make radio.

Buffalo in the ’90s: Rob Ray gets ready for his second full season

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Rob Ray’s story in Buffalo began with scoring his first NHL goal on his first NHL shot, after being called up from the Amerks in 1989. As a hockey player, man and volunteer in the community, tavern owner, and broadcaster — Rob Ray has been a Buffalo favorite for parts of four decades now.

Rob Ray, 1991. (Buffalo News archives)

With knowing what he has meant to the Sabres and the community over the last 27 years, it’s difficult to remember the young player headed into his second full season with the Sabres — which he was when News Photographer Ron Moscati took these photos of Ray working out at Sabreland, the Sabres’ old practice facility in Wheatfield.

Rick Dudley is one of the Sabres’ all-time tough guys. He was the Sabres’ head coach when these photos were taken. “I think he’s the hardest guy in the NHL to play against,” Dudley told News reporter Milt Northrup about the then-23-year-old winger. “Robbie’s whole function is to be a pain in the butt and he does it very well.”

The previous season, Ray shattered the Sabres’ previous all-time penalty minute tally. He also led the NHL with 348 penalty minutes — 59 two-minute minors, 26 five-minute majors, eight 10-minute misconducts and two game misconducts.

“You can hit a guy hard. Sometimes when the ref’s not looking you give him a jab,” Ray told Northrup describing his game in 1991. “You’re saying something to him, you’re doing something dirty to him that you’re not going to get caught, and this guys’s ticked off because the ref’s not calling it or he’s mad at you because he knows what you’re like and it eventually works on him. You’ve just got to hope when he takes a shot, the ref’s looking.”

Both Dudley and Ray talked about work ethic. It came naturally for Ray, who watched his dad run his own farm machinery dealership in Stirling, Ontario. “He’s there every day and he’s working on the machines, he’s fixing tractors. He’s not a guy that stands around and tells everybody what to do,” said the younger Ray.

He was already a fan favorite after only 92 games, possibly, wrote Northrup, the most popular player on the team. Perhaps it was because he knew his role that year and for the next decade.

“I don’t think there’s as much pressure on me doing what I have to do as there is on a guy like Pierre (Turgeon) going out there and having to score goals every night. If he doesn’t score a goal, he’s not doing his job.

“I might not get a goal or a point but if I make a big hit, I’ve done my job.”

Buffalo in the 1890s: Frederick Law Olmsted’s designs for Depew

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Chauncey Depew was one of New York’s U.S. Senators from 1899-1911, but that probably wasn’t the office from which he wielded the most power. Depew was the president of Cornelius Vanderbilt’s New York Central Railroad. It was in his capacity as a railroad tycoon that Depew bought up about 100 acres east of Buffalo in Lancaster for the building of railroad sheds and locomotive repair shops in 1893. From there, Depew sprung.

Town of Depew, 1893, Olmsted, Olmsted & Eliot Landscape Architects (Buffalo News archives)

The Town of Depew was envisioned as a model town, and Frederick Law Olmsted — by then a legend in his own time — was contracted as the consulting architect in the designing of the town square.

The proof of Olmsted’s hand in designing Depew had been lost for generations — until a proposed changes to Broadway in 1991 sent historians to Olmsted’s archives, where they found as many as 40 maps of Depew.

It’s also no coincidence that today’s Depew has an Olmstead Avenue. Despite the misspelling, the street was named after the landscape architect. The extra “a” was added in error by a survey company in 1925, and the typo stuck.

There was talk of officially fixing the mistake as recently as 2011, but when Olmstead Avenue’s intersection with Transit Road was rebuilt to accommodate the new Tim Horton’s at the intersection the following year, new signs continued the typo-turned-fact.

What it looked like Wednesday: Hertel flooded out at Colvin, 1959

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Unless you lived in a time when Hertel and Colvin still looked like this, there are very few clues to orient yourself to this view in 2016.

The buildings in the immediate foreground have been replaced by the Sunoco gas station. The first building still standing is the old post office. The current Gabel’s building is also easily identifiable on the next block up at Crestwood Avenue.

Some of the signs can be made out on the businesses, others can’t, but the listing from the 1959 City Directory offers some explanation. The odd side of the street is shown.

1959 City Directory. (Buffalo Stories archives)

The photo was taken as an icy January was hit by a wind storm bringing warmer air and flood waters to much of Western New York.

It was during this same week that the SS Michael Tewksbury slammed into the Michigan Avenue bridge after winds blew it away from its moorings. The 20-year-old lift bridge in the shadow of the General Mills plant was completely destroyed.

Buffalo News archives

The gale and flash floods left millions of dollars of damage, with South Buffalo and Lackawanna hard hit. Six feet of water filled the Republic Steel plant on South Park Avenue, and the shutdown of the two blast furnaces and nine open hearths made costs climb into the millions alone.

Torn-Down Tuesday: Delaware Drive-In, Knoche Road, 1963

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

This one is more a case of built-up than torn down, but the Delaware Drive-In, prominently featured in the aerial photo by longtime News photographer Bill Dyviniak, was torn down to build the Youngmann Expressway.

Buffalo News archives

Landmarks which are still recognizable today include tiny St. Peter’s German Evangelical Church. It was built in 1849 by early German settlers of Tonawanda, including John and Eva Pierson (who happen to be my fifth-great grandparents.) It remained a church until 1967. It’s now the home of the Tonawanda-Kenmore Historical Society, and is easily visible on Knoche Road on the 290’s Elmwood Avenue exit.

Buffalo Stories archives

Opened in 1948, the 35-acre Delaware Drive-in featured a 63-foot-by-63-foot screen and accommodations for 1,000 cars for the twice-nightly shows.

Lucky Pierre broadcasts live from the Delaware Drive-In on WEBR, 1957 (Buffalo Stories archives)

The big screen was torn down in 1963 as the state built the 290 through Tonawanda and Amherst.

Buffalo in the ’90s: Music at Nietzsche’s

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

“It’s not as classy as the Tralf, as wild as the Continental or as bluesy as the Lafayette Tap Room,” wrote News Critic Anthony Violanti in 1994. “Nietzsche’s, though, fills a special niche.”

Buffalo News archives

“There’s never been a club in Buffalo history that has lasted this long where so many different styles of music have been represented,” the late Michael Meldrum told The News. He ran Nietzsche’s Monday night open mic night for decades before he died in 2011, using the stage there as a starting ground for hundreds of artists of many different sounds through the years.

Joe Rubino took the keys to 248 Allen Street in 1982, and within a year or two, the joint was pumping with live music every night. In the decades since then, Nietzsche’s has unquestionably been one of the driving forces and primary showcases for the local music scene it has helped nurture — especially during a bleak few years on the Buffalo music scene.

It was a time News Pop Music Critic Jeff Miers said was filled with “anxiety over generating enough cash to pay for beer, guitar strings, Ramen noodles and bus fare” for musicians.

For at least 50 years — from the 1930s through the early 1980s, the spot now known as Nietzsche’s was called the Jamestown Grill.

Jamestown Grill ad, 1937 (Buffalo Stories archives)

The baseball team was unbeatable for decades, and as the place was raided for underage drinking many times through the years, there’s little doubt that many West Side and Allentown teens had their first drinks in the place at 16 or 17 years old when the legal age was 18.