Postcard of the Day No. 106, Larkin Factories, Buffalo

This is a conventional promotional postcard - an invitation to admire the inordinate scale of the Larkin Factories activity and the vast extent of its premises in a hand drawn aerial perspective view. The Larkin business was in mail order supplies. As the American settler population infiltrated the most remote regions of the territory in search of unclaimed land, more and more consumers came to depend on the US Mail to keep their rural homesteads supplied with goods. Companies like Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck in Chicago expanded phenomenally by catering to this market and mailed compendious catalogues from shore to shining shore.  Within a decade of its foundation as a manufacturer of soap in 1875, the Larkin Company had expanded its product range and sales volume and relaunched as a mail order operation selling direct to the public.  Savings made by dispensing with a sales force enabled them to offer discounts and undercut conventional retailers.  

 By 1903 the company offices were dispersed across a sprawling industrial complex and John D Larkin commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design an Administration Building to consolidate all office functions under a single roof. A grainy image of Wright’s building, completed in 1906, occupies the lower right portion of the postcard and it’s immediately apparent it looks unlike every other building on the site. At first glance its slab sided form has the air of an industrial building - a turbine factory or a power station.  Harsh rectilinear elevations and cliff faces of unbroken masonry are a product of Wright’s fascination with the manipulation of cuboid volumes and convey a sense of permanence, ironically considering the building’s ultimate fate.  The severity of the building’s profile is offset by decorative subtleties designed by Wright’s Oak Park collaborator, Richard Bock and the sensation of upward momentum implied by the strong vertical forms*.  

Wright’s vision was responsive to practicalities such as the provision of air conditioning, a glazed roof that illuminated a deep light court or atrium enclosed by balconies, specially designed office furniture (where comfort was sacrificed for appearance), and universal fire-proofing.  When complete, Wright’s radical reinvention of the modern office block drew criticism for its lack of surface differentiation and an absence of colour and decorative moulding. It was left to European Modernists, ever an object of suspicion to Wright, to find positive things to say, notably Erich Mendelsohn who visited in 1924 and wrote effusively about what he saw and Mies van der Rohe who openly recognised its pioneering qualities.  Wright himself would translate much of the basic geometry of the Larkin project to the design of his next building, Unity Temple in Oak Park, where his vocabulary of horizontal and vertical forms would be infused with colour in the service of the spiritual qualities that were always closer to his heart.

The family run Larkin Company was not especially nimble in its response to changes in the market and was in serious decline by 1939 when bankruptcy was narrowly avoided.  At the same time Wright’s building was subjected to a series of unsympathetic alterations including the installation of new windows that destroyed the unity of the architect’s vision. After fruitlessly throwing money at a variety of diversification projects, the business finally closed in 1942.  Wright’s building was sold to a developer whose plans came to naught - when demolition took place in 1950 the vacant site became a car park.  Wright was unexpectedly sanguine - perhaps he lost interest as the Larkin family repeatedly compromised the integrity of his building.  It all makes for a fascinating saga and the undisputed authority on the subject is Jack Quinan, whose book, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin Building, Myth and Fact (MIT Press, 1987) is indispensable.

*  Quinan drew attention to the extraordinary ensemble of grain elevators to be seen in Buffalo and reminds us that Wright would have seen them every time his train to or from Chicago passed by them.  Wright expressed his admiration for their functionality and uncompromising dominance in the landscape. Quinan speculates that something of their presence might have filtered into the formal geometry of the Larkin building - we can’t know for certain but it’s not wildly implausible.

Postcard of the Night No. 13 – Buffalo, Main Street at Night

We stay in the city of Buffalo for a nocturnal visit. Main Street at Night owes as much to the imagination of the artist as it does to the original photographer. Huddled pedestrians scuttle through the traffic as an incandescent streetcar advances through the gloom. An illuminated clock promoting watches beams its message from on high. More modest signs project over the pavement, including a perennial favourite – the sign that advertises “Signs”. In the other cards, the Electric Building lives up to its name with every window ablaze with light while a high-intensity searchlight radiates into the clouds. Finally the Statler Hotel appears in real danger of toppling over into Swan Street - the unremarkable surroundings de-glamourize the image.

Postcard of the Day No. 91 – Grain Elevators, Buffalo, NY

The city of Buffalo is the spiritual home of the grain elevator. At its height there were over 30 of these gargantuan storage facilities lining the river and harbour. Grain from the Midwest was shipped to Buffalo via the Great Lakes and stored prior to transhipment to the Atlantic seaboard and Europe. The end for the Buffalo grain trade came in 1969 with the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway – only two of the surviving 15 structures are still handling grain. Elevator Alley as it is known, is still an impressive sight and has been developed as a visitor attraction – a campaign exists to have it designated as a National Park.

The example shown on today's card appears to be an early wooden cribbed construction with multiple hipped roofs. Later elevators were built in concrete and formed of cylindrical silos. Other cards show examples from Canadian ports – the last card shows a prairie elevator. Cereal growers would transport their crops to the local elevator from where they would move on by rail. In wheat growing states every small town would have its elevator. It would normally be the largest building in town, visible for miles and much valued as a landmark.

For artists and photographers grain elevators have been perpetual objects of fascination. Their overwhelming physical scale and repetition of geometric form offered rich graphic possibilities to the Modernist sensibility. They lent themselves easily to simplification and abstraction and supported the popular pre-war idea of the industrial sublime. Painters who explored them include Charles Demuth, Charles Sheeler, Ralston Crawford and a host of amateur artists, mainly from Canada, whose work (of variable quality) can quickly be found online. John Vachon, David Plowden and Andreas Feininger all produced memorable photographs of elevators. And the great Düsseldorf taxonomists, Bernd and Hilla Becher published their definitive survey in 2006. Their impassive scrutiny is extended over 200 plates.