The Larkin Building's Protestant Modernism

At the turn of the century in Buffalo, NY, Frank Lloyd Wright, John D. Larkin and Darwin D. Martin sought to create the ideal conditions for both body and mind in the headquarters of the Larkin Soap Company. This catalog foregrounds the synchronicity between the architectural design developed by Wright for the Larkin Company headquarters and the values of the Larkin Soap Company itself. The Larkin company's soft capitalism, with its emphasis on understanding both customers and...
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At the turn of the century in Buffalo, NY, Frank Lloyd Wright, John D. Larkin and Darwin D. Martin sought to create the ideal conditions for both body and mind in the headquarters of the Larkin Soap Company. This catalog foregrounds the synchronicity between the architectural design developed by Wright for the Larkin Company headquarters and the values of the Larkin Soap Company itself. The Larkin company's soft capitalism, with its emphasis on understanding both customers and employees as family, was echoed in a design that coupled workplace amenities (a branch of the public library, YWCA, restaurant, top floor conservatory and roof garden) with ruthless efficiencies of production under stringent quotas. The company sought to take care of its employees with the intent of increasing their productivity-and Wright, Martin, and Larkin alike held fast to the Protestant ethic that hard work was a moral calling. The Larkin Soap Company was one of the largest mail order businesses in the country in 1900 and Wright a little-known Chicago architect at the time. This building, now sadly lost, was a significant turning point in his career, and the structure was widely praised in the US and Europe as the most significant modern commercial building in the world. This commission allowed Wright to put his ideals for a morally uplifting architecture into practice in a commercial setting. In his design, technological innovation partnered with a carefully contrived moral uplift to engender an architecture that was so beautiful as to obscure its productive imperatives.Jonathan D. KatzAssociate Professor of Practice, History of ArtUniversity of Pennsylvania