Photo Source:  Syracuse and Its Environs, by Franklin H. Chase, Lewis Historical Pub. Co., Chicago, IL, 1924, pg. 305

Text Source: Onondaga's Centennial, by Dwight H. Bruce (ed.),  Boston History Co., 1896, Vol. I, pg. 425.

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In early years H. W. Durnford owned the two lots south of the corner [southwest corner of Clinton and Genesee Streets], and a small house stood on the southeast corner; these were purchased by Samuel Larned who built a plain  brick structure where he kept a hotel called the Alhambra; a part of the lower story contained stores.  The hotel was afterwards called the Tremont (kept at one period by Barnet Filkins), and still later the Sherman House.  The building finally burned and the Larned Building took its place.

Text Source: Syracuse and Its Environs, by Franklin H. Chase, Lewis Historical Pub. Co., Chicago, IL, 1924, pp. 312-313

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Almost immediately after the burning of the Sherman House on November 13, 1868, work was begun to put up the present Larned Building on East Genesee, South Warren and Washington streets.  While excavating for the cellar an old cistern was uncovered and out of it came three bushels of watch movements that had been torn out of cases, and almost as great a quantity of table ware that had once looked like silver and been found to be of baser  metal.  As Samuel Larned, one of the heirs of Capt. Samuel Larned and builders of the block, remarked:  "I guess some of the old stories of the old hotels on this spot having been the hang-out of burglars and gambling dens where soldiers of the Civil War were fleeced, must have been true."  All that could be done with the belated evidence was to take it to the dump.  There had been erected successively on this spot three hotels.  They were the Alhambra, the Tremont and the Sherman.  It was the "old depot" in the present Vanderbilt Square which brought the hotels, and the rivalry for trade among the hotels around the old station was picturesque and crowded with incident.  It was the privilege of catering to the passengers during the long waits between trains that caused the principal contest.  The dining room of the Sherman House, which had started as a hotel of high repute and only in its run-down period had started rumors of its being a gathering place for the city's bandits, was upon the second floor to the west entrance which led into the railway station.  When the railroad established a restaurant further west near Salina Street this Sherman House entrance was boarded by the railroad.  Then Captain Larned broke down the boards with an iron bar and said he would use it to protect his rights.  After the stairway remained open.  In the 'fifties the hotel was known as the Tremont House, and was referred to as opposite the Granger Block.  When it became the Sherman House, J. W. Yale had a store on the ground floor.  Chet Hair, later one of the fashionable tailors of the city, had had a shop upstairs at Warren and James streets, and moved into the Genesee Street corner store in the Sherman House block.  The brick building which became the Tremont and Sherman was built by Captain Larned in 1846.