n 1904 Wright built his first major public work, an administrative building for the Larkin Mail Order Co. of Buffalo, New York. The Larkin Building was one of two projects Wright designed that year for Darwin D. Martin, the company’s entrepreneurial owner (the other project, the Martin House, is one of Wright’s most elaborate Prairie Style designs). The Larkin embodies Wright’s vision of productive labor as a cornerstone of the social contract: its central space is filled with an almost ecclesiastical light, and ringed with inscriptions extolling the value of labor.

The Larkin Building was demolished in 1950.