Frank Lloyd Wright's headquarters for the Larkin Soap Company in Buffalo, built between 1904 and 1906. The company, founded in Buffalo by John D. Larkin in 1875, sold soap and household goods by mail, and the building housed the clerks who handled its orders.
Instead of a conventional office floor, Wright organized the building around a tall, skylit central court, with galleries of desks overlooking it. He later said the building introduced many innovations, including wall-hung toilets and early air conditioning.
The company's fortunes declined. It remodeled the interior in 1939, and in 1945 the city of Buffalo foreclosed on the building for unpaid taxes. Despite protests in newspapers across the country, it was demolished in 1950. The truck stop planned for the site was never built.
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