Frank Lloyd Wright's Larkin Building
The Administration Building of the Larkin Company of Buffalo, New York, designed in 1904 by Frank Lloyd Wright and built in 1906 at 680 Seneca Street, became the focal point of the vast Larkin industrial empire. When business began to founder, the Larkin Company changed its name to the Larkin Store Corporation. When L. B. Smith bought the building, the Larkin Store corporation had nine months remaining in its lease of the building. When the lease ran out, L. B. Smith took no further action, abandoning the building until it was taken over in a tax foreclosure of $104,616 by the City of Buffalo on June 15, 1945. Final sale was made on November 15,1949. Demolition of the Larkin Administration Building by the Morris and Reimann wrecking contractors of Buffalo began in late February 1950 and was completed in July 1950. The inordinately long period of time for demolition was due to the fact that the building was "built to last forever." The floors of each story were made of ten-inch thick reinforced concrete in slabs seventeen feet wide and thirty-four feet long. The floors were supported by twenty-four inch steel beams, which are now shoring up coal mines in West Virginia, and the bricks and stone were used to fill the Ohio Basin.
This is now:
(exerpted from
http://freenet.buffalo.edu/bah/h/lar...min/index.html)
On a much less depressing note, does the demolition of the Cabrini Green (8 buildings, 15 and 16 stories each) and Robert Taylor Homes (28, 16 story buildings) complexes qualify w/re to height?
