Larkin Administration Building

Designed in 1903 by Frank Lloyd Wright and built in 1904–1906 for the Larkin Soap Company, the five-story dark-red brick building used pink-tinted mortar and steel-frame construction.

By the early years of the twentieth century, the company expanded beyond soap manufacturing into groceries, dry goods, china, and furniture.

Floors, stairs, doors, window sills, partitions, desk tops and plumbing slabs were used with magnesite for sound absorption.

Magnesite was also used for sculptural decoration on the piers surrounding the light court and for panels and beams around the executive offices at the south end of the main floor.

Wright designed much of the furniture, the chairs were made out of steel and hung from the tables to make cleaning the floors easy.

Between its support piers ran fourteen sets of three inspiration words each, such as: GENEROSITY ALTRUISM SACRIFICE, INTEGRITY LOYALTY FIDELITY, IMAGINATION JUDGEMENT INITIATIVE, INTELLIGENCE ENTHUSIASM CONTROL, CO-OPERATION ECONOMY INDUSTRY.

In space the building was conceived of as facing inward, with a glass-roofed central hall rising the entire height and with horizontal office floors woven around it.

... At the same time, the stiff verticals of the interior of the Larkin Building continued to recall the challenge of the exterior, so that the occupant could not feel himself to be simply inside a shell.

Significantly enough, the building also recalled the Romantic-Classic projects of the first revolutionary architects of the later eighteenth century, particularly in the harshness of its forms but even in the rather underscaled world globes which were flaunted upon its exterior.

Modern engineering has improved upon the lighting and ventilation systems Mr. Wright used, but that is hardly excuse enough to efface the work of the man who successfully pioneered in the solving of such problems.

The sidewalks on Seneca Street reflect the locations of the major features of the building including the width of the atrium, fence piers and main entry.