"This great mercantile establishment is one of the few that take the time and trouble to show visitors thru their work rooms and warehouses. The main business of the company is the manufacture and sale of household and toilet soaps, but to these articles have been added toilet and pharmacal preparations, pure food specialties, paints, notions, and sundries, until it is now selling over 300 products. Its plant is on both sides of Seneca Street, at Van Rensselaer Street. Take a Seneca Street car and tell the conductor to stop at Larkin's visitors' entrance and he will do the rest.

This company has branches and showrooms in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburg, Cleveland and Peoria. The company issues a handsome folder, "The Home of the Larkin Idea," describing the establishment, also its Product price-list and its Premium list, which are given or mailed to all interested. It also publishes the monthly "Larkin Family Magazine."

John D. Larkin, founder of the business, is president and treasurer of the company, and Darwin D. Martin is secretary."

Reprinted from "A Guide to Buffalo and Niagara Falls," by Frederik A. Fernald -- 1920. The rest is history.