Torn-Down Tuesday: ‘Stains run from 101’

       By Steve Cichon
       steve@buffalostories.com
       @stevebuffalo

The site of the former 101 plant on Van Rensselaer Street is now a parking lot for the Larkin Complex. (Buffalo Stories archives)

The phrase was well-known around Buffalo from radio, newspapers and billboards: “Stains run from 101.”

“101” was a bottled bleach sold by the Gardiner Manufacturing Co. starting in 1920, first from a small plant in Niagara Falls, where J.A. Gardiner bottled the stuff himself. After opening a larger factory on South Park Avenue in 1922, Gardiner opened the 35,000-a-day plant on Van Rensselaer Street pictured above.

The site of the plant is now a parking lot for the Larkin Complex.

By the mid-1930s, Gardiner claimed to have sold more than 100 million bottles of 101 and that the sodium hypochlorite-based, color-safe bleach had more than 101 household uses.

Cleaning the bathroom and “whitening and disinfecting clothes without boiling” still sound like great uses for bleach. Disinfecting your coffee pot sounds questionable, but the list written in a company-produced pamphlet goes downhill from there.

All of the personal hygiene uses promoted by the company 80 years ago are now specifically warned against on today’s labels.

But then, the reader is advised that gargling a teaspoonful of 101 mixed in a glass of water will ward off colds, sore throats and influenza, plus whiten teeth.

To relieve a cold, the 1930s reader is encouraged to pour a full bottle of 101 in a warm basin, then cover their head with a towel, and breathe in the fumes from the bleach.

Perhaps the most alarming suggested use was for feminine hygiene, saying 101 “makes a good douche solution which is not only a germ killer but also a healer.”

The name and formula for 101 was sold to out-of-town companies long ago, but the name still lives on – with pretty much the same product inside the bottle.

The toxicology report from the James Austin Company, the current makers of 101, certainly makes more sense than that old pamphlet. It says in part that 101 causes skin irritation and may cause burns; that vapors and mist may irritate the throat and respiratory system; and that prolonged or repeated overexposure may cause lung damage.

The “Larkin” behind the Larkin District

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Thirty-five years ago this week, The News began celebrating the 100th anniversary of the paper’s starting a daily edition.

In the special section called One Hundred Years of Finance and Commerce, The News recounted the history of a handful of Buffalo’s financial and commercial industries and provided ad space for many companies involved in those industries to tout their own contributions.

Except for perhaps attending a concert or food truck Tuesday in the Larkin District, most Buffalonians aren’t aware of the impact that Buffalo’s Larkin Soap Co. had on the national and world economy and the way we all shop.

While many of us remember the Sears catalog, it was John D. Larkin’s company that created many of the processes that became standard in mail-order retail and remain the basis for the systems used by Internet age mail-order retailers to this day.

Buffalo in the 1910s: Not quite ‘Food Truck Tuesday,’ but visitors are welcome at Larkin Factory

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

While today visits to Larkinville are made to enjoy food, music or culture, 110 years ago, visits to Larkin were all about taking in the majesty of one of the world’s largest manufacturers and retailers of personal items.

Just as Larkin Square represents what’s new and happening in Buffalo for many in 2015, in 1910, the Larkin Company revolutionized how products were bought and sold and was America’s leader in catalog and mail order retail.