Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis:

Buffalo Grain Elevators

Lynda H. Schneekloth, Editor

ISBN:
Copyright 2006
The Urban Design Project
School of Architecture and Planning
University at Buffalo, State University of New York

Cover Graphic: Elevator Alley, Buffalo River

(Photo by Lynda H. Schneekloth)
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis:
Buffalo Grain Elevators
Lynda H. Schneekloth, Editor

The Urban Design Project

School of Architecture and Planning
University at Buffalo, State University of New York

The Landmark Society of the Niagara Frontier

Buffalo, New York

2006
CREDITS

The Grain Elevator Project was initiated in 2001 by the Urban Design Project, School
of Architecture and Planning, University at Buffalo, SUNY, in collaboration with the
Landmark Society of the Niagara Frontier. It was funded in part by the National
Endowment for the Arts through the Urban Design Project, and by the New York
State Council on the Arts/Preservation League through the Landmark Society of the
Niagara Frontier.

The Project was managed by Lynda H. Schneekloth from the Urban Design Project,
and Jessie Schnell and Thomas Yots of the Landmark Society.

Members of the Advisory Committee included: Henry Baxter, Joan Bozer, Clinton
Brown, Peter Cammarata, Frank Fantauzzi, Michael Frisch, Chris Gallant, Charles
Hendler, David Granville, Arlette Klaric, Francis Kowsky, Richard Lippes, William
Steiner, Robert Skerker, and Hadas Steiner.

We would like to especially thank Claire Ross, Program Analyst from the NYS Office
of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation for her assistance. Thanks also to all
of those who, through the years, have worked to protect and preserve the grain
elevators, including Reyner Banham, Susan McCarthy, Tim Tielman, Lorraine Pierro,
Jerry Malloy, Timothy Leary, and Elizabeth Sholes.

Thanks to Laura Scarisbrick and Kathy Petrinec for the book design and layout, and
Rachele Schneekloth for copy editing.
This book is dedicated to the H-O Oats grain elevator and daylight
factory. Your presence on the Buffalo skyline will be missed.
 Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis:
Buffalo Grain Elevators

CONTENTS

Preface 9
Robert G. Shibley, University at Buffalo, SUNY

Introduction 12
Lynda H. Schneekloth, University at Buffalo, SUNY

Monuments of a Vanished Prosperity 18

Buffalo’s Grain Elevators and the Rise and Fall of the
Great Transnational System of Grain Transport
Francis R. Kowsky, Buffalo State College, SUNY

The Grand Ladies of the Lake 45

Ivonne Jaeger, University at Buffalo, SUNY

Projects and Proposals 65

The Grain Elevator Heritage Trail: Variations on a Theme 67
James Churchill, Sean Find, Michael Ross, Julia Kirton, Swapna Kulkarni, and
Priyanka Gupta, Department of Architecture, University at Buffalo, SUNY

The Digital Trace: Reconstructing, Forms and Migration 72

Joshua Price, Department of Landscape Architecture, Cornell University

Reforesting Buffalo’s Grain Elevator District 78

Catharine Callahan, Department of Landscape Architecture, Cornell University
 Vertical Architecture: The Connecting Terminal 84
Mauro Cringoli and Rhona Vogt, Department of Architecture,
University at Buffalo, SUNY

A Proposal for the Concrete Central 90

Ivonne Jaeger, Department of Architecture, University at Buffalo, SUNY

Child Street Music Center 96

Takushi Yoshida, School of Architecture, Columbia University

Silo Dreams 102

The Grain Elevator and Modern Architecture
Hadas Steiner, University at Buffalo/SUNY

Challenging the Imagination 115

Adaptive Reuse of Grain Elevators
Thomas Yots, City of Niagara Falls

“Where’s the Fun in a Grain Elevator?” 123

Michael Frisch, University at Buffalo/SUNY
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

Preface All of the themes are a blending of the

reality of the border between the United
States and Canada and a blurring of that
border. Canadians investing in the Erie
The binational Niagara region of Southern Canal and U.S. entrepreneurs investing
Ontario, Canada and Western New York in in the Welland Canal tell a story of
the United States is emerging as one large shared economic goals and international
landscape park. Imagine an interpreted cooperation as well as competition. The
landscape extending approximately forty story of grain in our region is not limited to
miles north to south along the Niagara the ensemble of structures on the Buffalo
River, and east to west from Hamilton, River but extends north to Niagara Falls
Ontario to Lockport, New York. No official and west to the Niagara Peninsula in
body has declared this area a “park,” there Ontario.
are no rangers yet, no new maintenance
crews are needed to mow the lawns, and The Urban Design Project in the School
there is no superintendent. Even so, in the of Architecture and Planning at the
popular imagination of the citizens of the University at Buffalo is on a mission to
region, it is emerging as a beautiful and, interpret the regional landscape and
frankly, powerful place of municipalities, give form and substance to the idea of a
heritage trails, urban and state parks, binational regional identity. Toward this
suburban and rural landscapes, a world end, we have published Rethinking the
biosphere reserve, an Important Bird Niagara Frontier (2001) with the Waterfront
Area, industrial, educational, and medical Regeneration Trust of Toronto, A Canal
campuses, and cultural and tourism Conversation (2001) in collaboration with
destinations. the National Trust for Historic Preservation,
Achieving Niagara Falls’ Future (2001)
This binational region is the site of an with the City of Niagara Falls, David Carter
amazing collection of heritage and cultural International and Foit-Albert Associates,
interpretation sites. Thematically, these and more recently the Queen City Hub: A
sites are a part of the region’s role in Regional Action Plan for Downtown Buffalo
“the wealth of nations” that establishes (2004) with the City of Buffalo and Buffalo
the home for the story of Reconsidering Place Inc. In 2005 we helped produce
Concrete Atlantis: Buffalo’s Grain Elevators. A Cultural Tourism Strategy: Enriching
The grain story was one of many in “the Culture and Building Tourism in Buffalo
wealth of nations,” including our history of Niagara, a report of the Buffalo Niagara
steel-making, electric power generation, the Cultural Tourism Initiative working with the
commerce enabled by the Erie and Welland University at Buffalo’s Institute for Local
Canals, manufacturing Pierce Arrow Governance and Regional Growth. All of
automobiles, and more. Related to this these publications and still more in process
theme are four other ways of understanding affirm the regional base of our “place
the conceptual park, including its “natural experience” here in the Niagaras. The
landscape,” “enterprise and the arts,” “the collaborative base that constructed them
bounty of nature,” and “war, peace and provides a mirror reflecting who we are and
freedom.” Together these five themes how we choose to be.
and the history they organize establish the
context within which Buffalo’s grain industry The exploration of the history of Buffalo’s
was born, flourished, and all but died. grain industry and elevators recorded in
these pages is a collaboration between
No one story is complete without the Landmark Society of the Niagara
understanding its relationship to this Frontier and the Urban Design Project.
broader context. Individually, the stories The effort has enjoyed support from the
represent themes that portray the available National Endowment for the Arts through
heritage and cultural resources, but braided a grant submitted by the Urban Design
together in our region as a park, they Project. A second grant from the New York
present a richer and deeper understanding State Council on the Arts to the Landmark
of our place. Society provided for assembling the


Rediscovering Concrete Atlantis

Binational Niagara Region with grain elevator area indicated

(Courtesy of Urban Design Project, University at Buffalo)

historic documentation and successfully significant contribution to the interpretation

nominating two specific elevators in the of the grain industry and elevators for
Buffalo ensemble to the State and Federal local, regional, national, and international
Register of Historic Places. audiences. It further demonstrates the
historic connections of Buffalo and the
This Urban Design Project and Landmark surrounding binational Niagara region to
Society collaboration continued in the the world.
evolution of a comprehensive plan for
historic preservation in the City of Buffalo.
This important planning initiative has been Robert G. Shibley, AIA, ACIP, is a Professor in the
requested by the Mayor, managed by the School of Architecture and Planning and the Director
Office of Strategic Planning and the Buffalo of the Urban Design Project at the University at
Preservation Board, and engaged by a Buffalo, SUNY. He participated in this project both
large cross section of community interests. in his position at the University, and also as past
A significant part of the imagination president of the Landmark Society of the Niagara
of our region is vested in more fully Frontier.
understanding, interpreting, and protecting
its stories and historic resources. August 2005

The story, however, is not just local or

regional. Buffalo’s grain industry and
elevators have played an important role
in nation-building as the country found
ways to feed the populations to the east
from the bread baskets of the Midwest.
Internationally, the elevators were an
inspiration to modernist architects from
all over the world, influencing functional
expression in modern architecture.
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis offers a

10
Buffalo Grain Elevators
Lynda H. Schneekloth
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

Introduction changing economic and cultural structure

of the region.

They do have an almost Egyptian monumentality Over three years, a group of dedicated
. . . and in abandonment and death they evoke scholars and community members
the majesties of a departed civilization. Or so it nominated and received a National Register
used to seem to me, looking downstream on the designation for two of the elevators, the
Buffalo River . . . It was a privilege to know them Concrete Central and the Wollenberg, and
in their ravaged antique grandeur . . . prepared the documentation for the Multiple
Property Designation that will facilitate the
Reyner Banham nominations of other elevators as they are
prepared in the future. We, as individuals
and as a community, have worked to bring
The Buffalo grain elevators have always the elevators into the public consciousness
brought attention to themselves, whether through a series of public events that
as examples of strategic economic included an International Symposium
infrastructure, technological wonders, in October 2002,2 and through public
architectural icons, or as objects of historic advocacy and publications. Whatever views
preservation. The sheer size, geometry, one holds of the elevators, their presence
and functioning of these forms arrest many is known.
observers, who have stood in awe before
their sublime beauty or have decried them Economic Infrastructure and
as ugly monsters. Innovative Technology
The Buffalo Grain Elevator Project,1 begun
in 2001 with grants from the National Since the very first urban wooden silos
Endowment for the Arts and the New York were erected in Buffalo to hold grain for
State Council on the Arts/Preservation transhipment between the Midwest and
League, was built on the work of many eastern ports, the elevator has engaged
people and organizations. Its goals were the minds and hands of creative engineers
to take the next step in the preservation and entrepreneurs. The grain industry
of the elevators through their nomination was instrumental in the development of
to the National Register of Historic Places the Erie Canal, and the combination of the
and to renew a conversation about the canal and elevators transformed a 3,000
future of these artifacts and their role in the mile journey to one of 450 miles from the
farmer’s field in the heartland of America
to the Port of New York for international
trade. The challenge to store and move the
grain efficiently spurred many innovations,
including Joseph Dart and Robert Dunbar’s
design of the Marine Leg Conveyer System
in 1843 and a series of material changes
in the storage containers themselves. The
entire history of the transformation of the
urban elevator – wood to tile to steel bin to
reinforced concrete – is represented by the
elevators in the Buffalo.

Francis Kowsky, in “Monuments of a

Vanished Prosperity: Buffalo’s Grain
Elevators and the Rise and Fall of the Great
Transnational System of Grain Transport,”
writes that the elevators were described
by writers such as Anthony Tollope and
Marine Legs on the Concrete Central Elevator
Rudyard Kipling in the mid 19th century.
(Photo by Lynda H. Schneekloth) Trollope describes them as being “as ugly

Introduction 13
Lynda H. Schneekloth
Rediscovering Concrete Atlantis

BUFFALO’S GRAIN ELEVATORS Included in Multiple Property Listing, 2003

Based on Chart by Henry Baxter, 2002
ELEVATOR SECTION BUILT DESIGNER BUILDER

Agway / G.L.F. “A” 1942 AEBECO JSCO

“ (Wheeler) “B” 1908 H.R. Wait Monarch
“ “C” 1936 AEBECO Hydro
American “A” 1906 JSCO JSCO
“ “B” 1931 H.R. Wait Monarch
(Cargill) Superior “A” 1915 H.R. Wait/AEBECO Monarch
“ “B” 1923 H.R. Wait/AEBECO Monarch
” “C” 1925 JSCO/AEBECO JSCO
Cargill Pool “A” 1925 C.D. Howe Monarch
(Saskatchewan Pool) “B” 1926 C.D. Howe Monarch
Concrete Central* “A” 1915 H.R. Wait Monarch
“ “B” 1916 H.R. Wait Monarch
” “C” 1916 H.R. Wait Monarch
“ “D” 1917 H.R. Wait Monarch
Connecting Terminal “A” 1914 H.R. Wait Monarch
“ “B” 1954 T. Green Hydro
Electric 1897 W.E. Winn SS&ECC

Annex 1942 H.G. Onstad H.G. Onstad

Great Northern 1897 D.Robinson D. Robinson
Max Toltz
H.O. Oats “B” 1931
D e m oH.R.
l iWait
s h e d 2 0 0 6Monarch
(Spencer) Kellogg “A” 1909 C.B. Foster SS&ECC
“ “B” 1912 ? ?
” “D” 1936 ? ?
Lake and Rail “A” 1927 J&H J&H
“ “B” 1928 J&H J&H
” “C” 1929 J&H J&H
“ “D” 1930 J&H J&H
Marine “A” 1925 JSCO/AEBECO JSCO

Perot Malting “A” 1907 JSCO JSCO

“ “B” 1933 H.R. Wait Monarch
Standard “A” 1928 AEBECO JSCO
“ “B” 1942 M-Hague M-Hague
Washburn-Crosby “A” 1903 Johnson-Record Barnet-Record
(General Mills) “B” 1909 JSCO JSCO
“ “C” 1909/ JSCO JSCO
” 1925

Wollenberg* 1912 C.H.A. ?

Wannenwetsch

*National Register of Historic Places 2003

Sources: HAER Study and Report, 1992; AEBECO Archives

Abbreviations:
AEBECO A.E. Baxter Engineering Co., Buffalo, NY
H.R. Wait Harry R. Wait, P.E., Buffalo, NY
Hydro Hydro Construction Co., Buffalo, NY, T. Green, President
JSCO James Stewart Co., Chicago, IL
J&H Jones-Hettelsatter Co., Kansas City, MO
M-Hague Mckensie Hague Co., Chicago, IL
Monarch Monarch Engineering Co., Buffalo, NY, H.R. Wait, President
SS&EC Steel Storage and Elevator Construction Co.

14 Introduction
Lynda H. Schneekloth
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

a monster as has been yet produced” Hadas Steiner revisits Banham’s work in
even while admiring the functionality of light of more recent scholarship to focus
the workings, the motion and lifting and on the power of the representations in the
dropping and storing, all done by the formation of modern architecture. The
machines and their attachments. circulation of drawings and photographs
of these structures helped shape both the
Engineers such as A.E. Baxter and Harry form and theory of modern architecture,
R. Wait worked to improve the type until even if many of those using the images
the current reinforced concrete elevator had neither visited the grain elevators nor
with its innovative slip form construction understood how they worked.
became the norm. With the exception
of two of the remaining seventeen large It was the power of the visual image that
elevator complexes along and near the moved these architects, and the adoption
Buffalo River, all of them are built of of their formal qualities had a long term
reinforced concrete. In 1980, when the effect on modern architecture. The simple
Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society but powerful geometric structures and
published Henry Baxter’s Buffalo’s Grain the ideology of practical design without
Elevators, many recognized that most the ornamentation conformed to the purposes
elevators were no longer functioning and of modernism. But, as Steiner suggests, it
would soon be lost. Baxter describes his was the power of the image of function and
book as an opportunity to educate people practicality that seduced the modernists.
about the engineering and technology of
the elevators.
Preservation Movement
As of 2006, only two of the elevators are
in operation: the Standard used by ADM Historic preservation almost always begins
and the elevators of General Mills. The after a building, place, or machine has
grain storage and ship-based transhipment ceased to serve the purpose for which
industry in Buffalo was challenged in it was designed and usually has ceased
the 19th century by the introduction to make an economic contribution. The
of the train but recovered because of story of the preservation of grain elevators
increase in demand. In the 20th century, in Buffalo and elsewhere, such as
the requirement for transshipment was Minneapolis, Akron, Tasmania, Montreal or
eliminated first by the opening of the Madrid, follows this pattern.
Welland Canal in 1932, and in 1959 by the
opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway. Grain By the mid 1960s, many of the elevators
no longer had to be housed in elevators in in Buffalo had ceased to function. Some
Buffalo and elsewhere for transfer between were inexpensively sold to private owners,
modes of transport but could be shipped others remained in the hands of the original
directly from the heartland to eastern and corporations but simply sat idle. A flurry
European ports. Many grain elevators of activity regarding the preservation of
across North America are no longer in the elevators occurred in the 1980s and
use, but they were built to last and remain early 1990s when it became clear that
standing, silent and abandoned. they were endangered either through
actual demolition (Cargill Electric in 1984)
or proposed demolition (Great Northern).
Icons of Modernism Led by the Preservation Coalition of Erie
County and their subgroup that later
As articulated by Reyner Banham in A became the Industrial Heritage Committee,
Concrete Atlantis (1986), the grain elevators a community of people formed to make
in general and those in Buffalo in particular these artifacts and their landscapes visible.
were an inspiration to modern architects
in Europe. Le Corbuiser declared, “Thus In 1981, Buffalo Architecture: A Guide was
we have the American grain elevators and published by MIT Press. William Clarkson
factories, the magnificent FIRST FRUITS of wrote in the preface to that publication
the new age.” In her piece, “Silo Dreams,” that, “[t]he City of Buffalo is an outdoor

Introduction 15
Lynda H. Schneekloth
Rediscovering Concrete Atlantis

museum of extraordinary architecture, Tourism is now one of the largest industries

developed over the one hundred fifty years in the world, and heritage tourism is one
of its history” (xii). The grain elevators were of its major components. The Niagara
prominently presented as an important region, centered on world famous Niagara
part of the architectural heritage of the Falls, is an area filled with stories of
region. This guide was followed in 1986 industrial heritage from the grain industry,
by Banham’s book, The Concrete Atlantis, to hydropower, to the chemical industry.
a scholarly treatise on the role of the Because we have the largest extant
elevators and daylight factories in the collection of the elevators in the world and
emergence of modern architecture. More they collectively represent the history of
local guides and publications included grain storage and technological innovation,
Waterview Guide to Buffalo Harbor (1989) it is likely that these magnificent structures
that placed the buildings in context, along will again be used to support the economic
with Tielman’s Buffalo’s Waterfront: A infrastructure of the region. Much work
Guidebook (1990) and Maritime Buffalo remains to be done, but as Michael Frisch
(1990) by Vogel and Redding. proposes in his article “Where is the Fun in
a Grain Elevator?” there are many stories
Significant national attention was brought to tell and ways to tell them that include
to the elevators in the early 1990s with the elevators as central artifacts. There is
the preparation of documentation for the fun to be had with the elevators through
Historic American Engineering Records their stories, and through imaginative
(HAER) now stored in the Library of explorations of possibilities offered in
Congress. Timothy Leary, John Healey, “Projects and Proposals” and Thomas Yot’s
and Elizabeth Sholes, along with Jet Lowe, “Challenging the Imagination.”
photographer, prepared detailed historic
records of the remaining elevators. There The Buffalo Grain Elevator Project was
was no longer any question about the officially completed in 2004, but work has
national, even international, significance continued in the preservation community
of the Buffalo Grain Elevators in many through a small working group to both
circles. However, proposals for demolition protect and reuse the elevators. We
of the Great Northern continued in the early have won some and lost some. The most
1990s until it received a local designation exciting development is the planned reuse
by the Buffalo Preservation Board, largely of four of the elevators: Marine A, Lake
through the work of Susan McCartney and and Rail, Perot, and American, to store
the Preservation Coalition.3 Yet, as late grain for a new ethanol plant, a project of
as 2001, none of the elevators were listed RiverWright Energy, LLC, a new Buffalo
on the National Register although most of based alternative fuel company. This
them were eligible for that designation. project should be producing ethanol by
2007. On the other hand, in 2006 the H-
The grain elevators were born to support an O Oats Elevator and daylight factory were
emerging economy of transhipment that put demolished to make way for a controversial
Buffalo and the Niagara region at the center casino. The Preservation League led the
of a national and international economy. legal battle to save it, but was unsuccessful.
With the loss of that position and shifts in It is to this elevator that we dedicated this
the global economy that led to the process publication.
of deindustrialization of the northeast
U.S., including Niagara, the economy has Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis is a record
sagged and the elevators, as a symbol of the community effort on behalf of the
of the economic strength of the region, Buffalo grain elevators through a project
now stand as negative icons to a glorified by the Landmark Society of the Niagara
past. However, the winds are shifting Frontier and the Urban Design Project of
again and a new economy is emerging in the University at Buffalo/SUNY. It describes
Niagara, indeed, in the binational region. the efforts of academics, preservationists,
The grain elevators may again play a role community people and funding agencies;
as infrastructure in the new economy. it builds on the efforts of those who have
been working for many years; and it

16 Introduction
Lynda H. Schneekloth
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

gives hope to all who will continue in this REFERENCES

project. We believe that the State and Baxter, H. (1980). Grain Elevators. Buffalo: Buffalo and
National Register status conferred on two Erie County Historical Society.
of the elevators and the multiple property
documentation prepared for all of the Banham, R. (1986). A Concrete Atlantis: U.S. Industrial
Building and European Modern Architecture, 1900
elevators is the beginning of a new era in – 1925. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
which the Buffalo grain elevators will again
be considered an important and critical part Buffalo Architectural Guidebook Corporation (1991).
of the physical fabric of the city, and of our Buffalo Architecture: A Guide. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
image of ourselves.
Engel, G. (1997). Buffalo’s Grain Elevators. Cologne,
Germany: Konig.

Glasser, K., Messmer, J. and Redding, P. (1989).

Waterview Guide to Buffalo Harbor. Cheektowaga, NY:
Western New York Heritage Institute Press.

Heverin, A. T. The Grain Elevators: Buffalo’s Lost Indus-

try. Online at http://www.buffalohistoryworks.com/grain

Historic American Engineering Record (1998). Buffalo

Grain Elevators. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of
the Interior.

LaChuisa, C. A History of Buffalo’s Grain Elevators.

Online at http://ah.bfn.org//h/elev/hist/3/index.html

Leary, T. H. and Sholes, E. (1997). Buffalo’s Waterfront.

Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing.

Mahar-Keplinger, L. (1993). Grain Elevators. New York:

Princeton Architectural Press.

Malloy, J. Tour Buffalo’s Historic Grain Elevator District.

Online at http://www.webspawner.com/users/graintours

Tielman, T. (Ed.) (1990). Buffalo’s Waterfront: A

Guidebook. Buffalo, NY: Preservation Coalition of Erie
County.

Vogel, M. N. and Redding, P. F. (1990). Maritime Buf-

falo. Buffalo, NY: Western New York Heritage Institute
Press.

ENDNOTES

1. The Buffalo Grain Elevator Project was cosponsored

by the Urban Design Project of the School of Architec-
ture and Planning, University at Buffalo, with Lynda
H. Schneekloth as Project Director, and the Landmark
Society of the Niagara Frontier with Jessie Schnell and
later Thomas Yots serving as co-directors.

2. “Industrial Heritage in the Working Landscape” was

held on October 12, 2002 in Buffalo, New York, with
presentations on the Buffalo grain elevators, presenta-
tions on other industrial landscapes, and a boat tour
that offered a waterside view of the elevators.

3. ADM again proposed demolition in 2002, although

it appears that the conditions set by the local Pres-
Lynda H. Schneekloth, ASLA, is a Professor in the ervation Board were not met and the structure is still
Department of Architecture, University at Buffalo, protected by local landmark status.
SUNY and associate at the Urban Design Project.
She managed the Buffalo Grain Elevator Project and
is president of the Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper.

Introduction 17
Lynda H. Schneekloth
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

18 Monuments of a Vanished Prosperity

Francis R. Kowsky
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

Monuments of a Vanished Prosperity:

Buffalo’s Grain Elevators
and the Rise and Fall of the
Great Transnational System of Grain Transportation

Elevator Alley on the Buffalo River

(Photo by Lynda H. Schneekloth)

Francis R. Kowsky
SUNY Distinguished Professor of Art History
Buffalo State College, SUNY

Monuments of a Vanished Prosperity 19

Francis R. Kowsky
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

Monuments of a The westward movement of population

accelerated after the Revolution, as
Vanished Prosperity “pioneers” moved into the territory beyond
the Appalachians. Settlers devoted much
of this newly cultivated land to raising
Introduction grain. In 1800, the Appalachians from
Virginia to central New York marked the
During the first half of the twentieth century, western boundary of American civilization.
Buffalo had the nation’s largest capacity for Before the middle of the century, the line
the storage of grain. Over thirty concrete had moved to the Mississippi River. By
grain elevators rose along the city’s inner the time of the Civil War, the future great
and outer harbors on the Buffalo River and Midwestern grain-growing regions of
Lake Erie. These concrete grain elevators Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Lower Michigan
represented the culmination of fifty years were under cultivation.
of development in grain elevator design.
Joseph Dart built the first wooden elevator Raising grain on the frontier was one
in Buffalo in 1842. Late nineteenth- thing; getting it to market was another.
century tile and steel elevators paved the Yet despite the slow and lengthy routes
way for the mammoth reinforced concrete the products were forced to follow from
elevators, the first of which went up in farm to market trade, grain and flour from
Buffalo in 1906. The last one constructed recently cultivated western lands became
here was erected in 1954.1 a flourishing business in the new republic.
During the Revolution and just after, a
Part I: The Development of considerable amount of the wheat raised in
Buffalo as a National Center of Western Pennsylvania began to be shipped
to Pittsburgh and then down the Ohio River
the Transshipment of Grain Prior to the Mississippi River to New Orleans.
to 1860 By the time of the Louisiana Purchase in
1803, New Orleans had become the most
The American Grain Trade before the important trading center for wheat, corn,
Opening of the Erie Canal and flour from the new farmland in the Ohio
Valley and Kentucky. New Orleans would
Wheat was one of the first agricultural remain a major transshipment point for the
products planted by European colonists export of western grain to Europe until the
in the New World. In colonial times it not opening of the Erie Canal in 1825.
only was a staple of life but also became
an item of internal and foreign trade. Even Western New Yorkers depended
By the time of the American Revolution, on New Orleans for marketing their
there existed a “bread belt” in the Middle grain. Grain (and other goods) bound for
and Southern colonies that extended New York City from the western part of
northward into New York’s Hudson Valley the state often went first south to New
and westward into the Mohawk Valley. Orleans. There it was placed on ocean-
Much of the corn, wheat, and rye that going vessels that carried it to its final East
was grown fed homeland consumption, Coast destination. This voyage of 3,000
but some was shipped abroad, mainly miles proved less expensive than the $100
through Philadelphia, to the West Indies per ton cost (a sum three times the value
and Europe. In 1765, Philadelphia, which of the grain) of overland transportation.3
was the leading commercial port in As one can imagine, the transport of grain
colonial America and the continent’s most from the upper Mississippi region to New
prosperous city, exported over 360,000 Orleans was long and arduous. Loaded
bushels of wheat. In the same period, onto barges manned by the “flatboatmen”
nearly 110,000 bushels of American wheat celebrated in the paintings of George Caleb
began its journey to foreign ports from New Bingham, barrels of grain and flour made
York City.2 From these small beginnings, their way down the Ohio to the Mississippi
grain was destined to become the premier and then southward to New Orleans. The
American agricultural crop. journey was fraught with the dangers of

20 Monuments of a Vanished Prosperity

Francis R. Kowsky
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

shifting channels and other vagaries of new types of large vessels were destined
wilderness river travel. And the return trip to play a significant role in the success of
back north, against the current, could take Buffalo as grain port after the opening of
up to three months. Frequently, at the end the Erie Canal. Conditions were ripe for a
of his journey, a barge owner would sell his major improvement.
boat in New Orleans and take passage on
a ship to Philadelphia or Baltimore rather Opening of the Erie Canal in 1825
than face an upriver trip. There he would
purchase manufactured goods and a wagon When the Erie Canal was opened in 1825
to carry him home over an increasingly with Buffalo as its western terminus, the
reliable network of interior roads. Such a course of grain transshipment from the
round trip could take as long as six months. west to the east altered drastically. Located
From the late eighteenth century until 1825, where the Niagara River flows out of Lake
many residents of the new western lands Erie toward Lake Ontario, Buffalo stood at
carried on this cycle of transport, which the easternmost point of navigation on four
had more in common with the Roman world of the Great Lakes and at the westernmost
than with modern life. point of the new canal. (Niagara Falls,
some fourteen miles down river from
Such journeys, however, became less Buffalo, precluded a navigable link between
and less difficult during the first half of the Lake Erie and Lake Ontario and the direct
nineteenth century as road building came access the latter would have afforded to
to supplement river travel in the country’s the Atlantic via the St. Lawrence River.)
interior. Important early westward roads Henceforth, grain would move across the
and turnpikes were constructed between western Great Lakes to Buffalo, where,
Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, across the unloaded and transferred to canal boats,
Cumberland Gap to Kentucky, and from it was carried eastward 363 miles via the
Baltimore to Wheeling. In some cases, canal to Albany. It was then placed on
new highways allowed northern farmers vessels for the 150-mile journey down the
to bypass the shipment of grain to either Hudson to New York City. There it could
Philadelphia or New Orleans. One such be exported to European and other world
exception to the southerly movement of markets. What had once been a 3,000 mile
grain took place in New York. Much of journey was now reduced to about 500
the grain from the fertile Genesee Valley miles.
-- one of the nation’s principal wheat
growing areas -- went east to Albany via In 1825, Buffalo was a middling village of
the Mohawk Valley Road. From there, 2,400 people, barely rebuilt after having
boats carried it down the Hudson to New been burned by the British during the War
York City. Such trade contributed to the of 1812. The town did not even produce
increased importance of New York City as its own flour; the nearest gristmill operated
a grain port. eleven miles away in Williamsville. At
the beginning of its existence, the canal
Concurrent with road building, another carried more passengers than goods, for
factor that would figure prominently in later it immediately became the vital water level
grain transportation came into existence. link in a new highway of immigration to
Steamboat service began on the Ohio-
Mississippi route in 1811, when the first
paddle wheeler left Pittsburgh for New
Orleans. By 1820, steamboat freight
and passenger service, an aspect of the
American experience immortalized in
the writings of Samuel Clemens, began
competing seriously with flatboat traffic.
By the end of the 1840s, it had completely
replaced the older form of water transport.
Steamboats also began plying the waters The City of Buffalo looking straight up Main Street with the Erie
Canal seen next to the lake on the left.
of the Great Lakes in the 1820s. These (Courtesy of Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society)

Monuments of a Vanished Prosperity 21

Francis R. Kowsky
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

the West from the Eastern Seaboard. But also stimulated a nascent flour milling
local leaders also saw Buffalo’s potential industry at nearby Black Rock, a community
as a commercial port as well as a place of some three miles down the Niagara River
human transit. By creating a large harbor from Buffalo. By drawing water from the
out of the sand-clogged mouth of the Black Rock harbor, engineers were able
Buffalo River (a process begun in 1819 to create here what, in effect, was an
by farsighted Mayor Samuel Wilkinson) extended millrace. This waterpower became
and protecting it from the often turbulent available for manufacturing in 1824, but
open waters of Lake Erie by means of it was not until the following decade that
a breakwater, the city prepared itself to significant flourmills were constructed along
accommodate increasing lake traffic. By its banks. “Black Rock has already, by aid
1830, the transshipment of wheat from the of her inexhaustible water power,” touted
West to New York City via the canal had a local newspaper at the time, “become
become significant. In 1831, over 57,000 the great flour market of the lakes, and is
barrels of flour and more than 173,000 hereafter to be the principal wheat market
bushels of wheat passed through Buffalo of the west.”8 By 1839, lake vessels
on their way east. These figures steadily loaded with grain sailed downriver and
increased, and in 1846 more flour and docked at the Black Rock harbor, where, by
wheat were shipped through Buffalo than means of newly invented machinery, their
through New Orleans. The United States cargoes could be unloaded in less than a
Bureau of Statistics reported that for the day. Predictions of Black Rock’s future as
year 1860, the “bulk of produce of the Ohio a major milling center, however, proved
Valley had been diverted to the lakes and overly optimistic, and during the last half of
Atlantic seaboard; but probably one-fifth the nineteenth century the area saw little
of it found its way to New Orleans.”4 And expansion beyond the initial spurt of mill
the expense of moving goods had come construction. Niagara water power proved
down dramatically since pre-canal days; it unreliable (there were years when, due to
now cost only $15 to carry a ton of grain low lake and river levels, milling had to be
from Buffalo to New York City (including suspended), economic recessions took a
canal tolls). By the time of the Civil War, heavy toll on development plans, and local
Buffalo, which also benefited from the millers experienced difficulty in obtaining
construction in the 1830s and 1840s of a high quality wheat. In the words of Peter
network of smaller canals in Pennsylvania Sweeney, historian of the grain trade in
and the Great Lakes region of which the Buffalo, during the period from 1853 to
Erie Canal became the hub, was handling 1907 “Buffalo milling made no sustained
over 7,000,000 barrels of wheat and flour advances and at the end its position was
annually.5 This, despite the fact that cold not markedly better than at the beginning.”9
weather closed the harbor and canal Flour milling, which after the opening of the
during the winter months. By the time that Erie Canal swelled into the premier industry
Buffalo’s mayor Grover Cleveland became in neighboring Rochester, did not come into
President of the United States in the mid- its own in Buffalo until after the mid 1890s
1880s, the Buffalo Express avowed that when hydroelectric power from Niagara
“Buffalo has long been known as the City Falls began to be transmitted to the city.
of Grain Elevators.”6
The Development of the Railroads
Grain transshipment also stimulated other
wheat-related businesses in Buffalo. An Together with the historic transformation
active grain market developed here as the of marine travel by steam power, the early
city grew into a center of grain traffic. In nineteenth century saw the same force
1855, the newly formed Board of Trade and recast terrestrial movement. In addition
Commerce proudly proclaimed that “Buffalo to the Erie Canal and the steamboat, the
is now universally acknowledged to be the railroad revolutionized the transportation
greatest grain market on the Continent, not of goods, including grain, in the early
even excepting the City of New York.”7 nineteenth century. Indeed, almost from
the beginning of its existence, the Erie
Indirectly, the construction of the Erie Canal Canal faced competition from the new

22 Monuments of a Vanished Prosperity

Francis R. Kowsky
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

railroad industry. Rail beds began to be Buffalo than moved on the canal and by the
constructed parallel to the Erie Canal in the end of the decade they threatened the very
early 1830s. At first, competition was small existence of the canal as a grain route.11
because early roads were built with iron
rails that could sustain only relatively light Another spurt of railway development came
loads. Furthermore, the early roads had in the 1880s, by which time the International
no terminals for loading and stowing grain Railway Bridge over the Niagara River to
and other goods. But with the introduction Canada had been constructed at Buffalo.
of steel rails and the steady improvement During that decade the city made generous
of trackside facilities, railroads began first land grants to railroads to encourage
supplementing and then drawing away their expansion here. Six different routes
business from the canal. Rail travel was connected the city to New York, including
faster, and unlike the canal, the railroads the New York Central, Lehigh Valley, and
could run all year round; they did not shut Delaware, Lackawanna and Western lines.
down when winter ice closed the lakes/ The transfer yards on the east side of town
canal route. grew to the largest in the world and new
terminal facilities greatly increased storage
By the middle of the century, when a and warehouse capacity. The Lehigh Valley
number of lines had been absorbed into line alone created a terminal and ship canal
the New York Central, the rail link between at the Tifft farm that added two miles of
New York and Buffalo was consolidated. dock space to the existing waterfront.
The railroad had grown into a major player
in the transportation of passengers and Joseph Dart, Robert Dunbar, and the
goods between the Atlantic seaboard Development of the Wooden Grain
and the Great Lakes region. “This great Elevator and Marine Leg Conveyer
route almost equaling in importance the System
Erie Canal,” stated a Buffalo business
journal in 1854, “and to which it already As Buffalo’s harbor became port of call to
proves a formidable rival . . . has been more and more vessels arriving to unload
yearly extending its operations until it now grain, it was perhaps inevitable that
forms one of the most reliable channels invention would be applied to the laborious
of commerce between the produce of the process of transferring grain from lake
west and the manufacturers and markets vessels to canal boats. At first men, chiefly
of the east.”10 Other railroads, such as the Irish immigrants, carried barrels by hand.
Pennsylvania Railroad and the Baltimore Not only was this backbreaking work,
and Ohio, also built trunk lines to Buffalo but the slow pace was a weak link in the
from the older ports of Philadelphia and chain of improved efficiency of movement
Baltimore. By the middle of the 1880s, represented by the steamboat and
twenty different railways started or ended locomotive. When the first bulk shipment
at Buffalo. of grain (some 1,600 bushels) arrived in
Buffalo aboard the Osceola, it took a week
Railroads eventually tightened their grip for longshoremen to unload the cargo.12
on grain transportation by investing in lake
steamboat lines as subsidiaries and by It was Buffalo entrepreneur Joseph
building warehouse facilities and storage Dart (1799-1879) and engineer Robert
elevators on the Buffalo waterfront. Already Dunbar (1812-1890) who applied the new
in the mid-1850s, the New York Central technology of the age to the handling
had erected between Ohio Street and the of grain. Dart had come to Buffalo from
Buffalo River what it touted as the largest his native Connecticut in 1821 and set
depot in the world. This facility allowed himself up in the hat and fur business.
trains to receive grain and other freight Dart, whom contemporaries described as
directly from lake vessels docked in the a “methodical and industrious man,”13 had
harbor. The railroad was also by then an eye for good business opportunities.
connected to the two largest grain elevators As the grain trade began to develop
on the Buffalo waterfront. In 1855, railroads in Buffalo after the opening of the Erie
carried twice the amount of flour from Canal, he turned his sights on this growing

Monuments of a Vanished Prosperity 23

Francis R. Kowsky
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

Diagram of the flow of grain in Dart’s Elevator.

(Source: Baxter 1980)

The Evans Elevator: one of the wooden elevators that existed on what is now the Erie Basin Marina.
(Courtesy of the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society)

24 Monuments of a Vanished Prosperity

Francis R. Kowsky
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

industry. “It seemed to me,” he said, “as water-powered flourmill that utilized a new
I reflected on the amazing extent of the mechanized system for handling grain
grain producing regions of the Prairie West, and flour. In 1842, the two men undertook
and the favorable position of Buffalo for to erect the fifty by one-hundred foot Dart
receiving their products, that the eastward Elevator on a site near the mouth of the
movements of grain through this port Buffalo harbor at the junction of a small
would soon exceed anything the boldest subsidiary waterway called the Evans
imagination had conceived.”14 In 1842, Dart Ship Canal. (A bronze plaque placed there
built the first steam-powered grain elevator. by the Buffalo and Erie County Historical
(It is probably more than coincidence Society presently marks the location.)
that the first shipments of anthracite coal By means of a steam-powered vertical
from northeastern Pennsylvania arrived conveyer belt made of leather or canvas
in Buffalo via the canal in the same year and equipped with buckets, Dart could
that Dart built his elevator. Thereafter, unload grain directly from the hulls of a
the coal that fueled Buffalo’s many steam- lake vessel moored alongside his storage
powered industries came in a steady flow elevator. Inside the ship, men who before
by the waterway and later by rail.) In 1843, this had carried barrels on their backs from
when the schooner Philadelphia unloaded boat to dock now shoveled grain into the
the first bulk shipment of grain at the Dart conveyor belt buckets. They were the first
Elevator, it took only hours to lift the wheat generation of “scoopers,” as the laborers
from the hold.15 -- more often than not Irish immigrants
or their descendents -- who unloaded
The man who made it possible was the lake vessel cargoes in this way came
thirty-year-old engineer, Robert Dunbar, to be called. (Locals skeptical of Dart’s
the unsung pioneer of grain elevator investment in the new technology taunted
construction. Born in Scotland in 1812, him with the jest that “Irishmen’s backs
Dunbar arrived in Buffalo in 1834, after are the cheapest elevators.”) The grain
having studied mechanical engineering in they scooped was carried up this so-called
Canada. At the time of his death in 1890, “loose leg” to a scale, where it was weighed
Dunbar was eulogized as “the father of the before being distributed to large storage
great grain elevator system.” His inventions bins. There, grain would be stored until
had made possible “all the present sold. At that moment, it would be drawn
improvements of elevators,” proclaimed off through the bottom and raised again to
the Buffalo Commercial Advertiser.16 In the scale by means of a “stiff leg” conveyer
addition to the Dart Elevator, Dunbar system that occupied a fixed position within
designed nearly all of the elevators that the elevator house. Finally, the grain
by the 1880s crowded together along “spouted” down into a waiting canal barge
the shores of the Buffalo River. The moored where the arriving lake vessel had
Evans (1865), Watson, Merchants, Reed, docked. The process involved the forces of
Wilkinson (1863), Wells, and Bennett17 steam power to lift the grain and gravity to
elevators are now long vanished and spout it. Thus was born a new building type.
known to us only in photographs, yet they An early observer defined it as “a collection
were the first landmarks of the new age of elevating, weighing and distributing
of grain transshipment in North America. machinery, placed in and over a building
The taciturn Dunbar -- a contemporary made to fit its size and requirements, this
described him as a man of “a singularly building being a collection of boxes, or
retiring and undemonstrative disposition”18 bins, of greater or lesser size and depth,
-- enjoyed an international reputation for fitted for the receipt of grain at the top and
his remarkable accomplishments in Buffalo. for discharging the same through openings
Jobs for constructing elevators came to him in the bottom.”19
from as far away as Odessa, Liverpool, and
elsewhere in Europe and Canada. The most innovative feature of the Dart
Elevator was the long, vertical conveyer
Dunbar became associated with Dart in system that replaced human labor as
his grain elevator enterprise after having the means of unloading grain from lake
erected in nearby Black Rock at least one vessels. Housed in a tall wooden sleeve,

Monuments of a Vanished Prosperity 25

Francis R. Kowsky
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

the conveyer could be canted outward at

the bottom of the elevator structure and
lowered directly into the hold of a waiting
boat. When not in use, this loose leg
conveyer belt was retracted by means
of a steam engine to its original vertical
position inside the elevator. A hood or
cupola, some twenty feet in height, on the
roof of the structure provided the extra
room needed to store it upright. It was
the most distinctive external feature of
Dart’s elevator and those that followed its Grain scoopers emptying a lake vessel.
(Courtesy of Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society)
example. At first this pioneer “marine leg,”
as these boat-to-elevator devices came a series of posts, struts, and girders.20 With
to be called, was equipped with two-quart their exteriors covered with boarding, the
buckets that were twenty-eight inches first elevators resembled enormous sheds
apart. Dunbar’s original system was able or barns. Their tall, ungainly proportions
to raise 600 bushels an hour, ten times the and steeply sloping roofs evoked a
amount human workmen had been able to decidedly medieval appearance. Perhaps
carry. Soon, however, with improvements, this is what attracted H. H. Richardson to
the capacity of the marine leg rose to them, for the great Romanesque revival
2,000 bushels an hour and the elevator’s architect, who had projects in Buffalo in
storage capacity increased from 55,000 the late 1860s and early 1870s, nurtured a
bushels to over 110,000 bushels. Dart keen desire to design a grain elevator.
and Dunbar owed a serious debt in their
invention to miller Oliver Evans, who earlier Despite their old-fashioned look, the new
had devised a similar conveyer system Buffalo elevators increased the speed
to handle flour and grain in his milling with which grain could be transferred from
operation in Philadelphia. boat to barge and made it possible to store
safely large of amounts of grain at the site.
While the mechanization of grain handling Dart and Dunbar provided the third element
that went on inside the early elevators necessary together with motorized lake and
represented the application of new ideas rail transportation that brought the age-old
to an age-old industry, the materials and grain industry into symmetry with the vastly
methods used to construct the first elevators expanded scale of modern life. By 1860,
were not new. Wood, a plentiful material in the Dart Elevator had spawned ten similar
the Great Lakes basin, allowed for quick structures on the Buffalo waterfront and
and inexpensive construction. (Dart also given the city a storage capacity of over 1.5
involved himself in the burgeoning Western million bushels. With an addition of sixteen
New York lumber trade.) Heavy timber more elevators by the end of the Civil War,
frames sustained these early structures that Buffalo surpassed the grain commerce
contained rectangular storage bins built of London, Odessa, and Rotterdam to
on the traditional crib system. In order to become the world’s largest grain port.
support the enormous weight of the stored Without the invention of the versatile and
grain (100,000 bushels weighs about 3,000 efficient elevator, this meteoric rise would
tons), and because these elevators were have been impossible.
located on mud and sand adjacent to the
river, it was necessary to erect them on “Grain elevators make ideal structures
pilings. Typically, closely spaced log piles for the storage of grain,” writes industrial
were driven deep into the soft earth to form historian Henry H. Baxter, whose ancestors
a solid foundation on which the elevator designed many of Buffalo’s later elevators.
could be raised. A basement course of “In the elevator’s bins, grain can be
stone or brick was laid on the pilings to a kept dry, cool, free from vermin, and
height of about sixteen feet, above which safe from pilferage. Moreover, elevators
rose a framed superstructure of oak, elm, or make it possible to weigh and sample
beech. The internal bins were supported on grain to determine the quality, quantity,

26 Monuments of a Vanished Prosperity

Francis R. Kowsky
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

and grade as a basis of payment.”21 In shipped local grain to market via the Ohio
addition, Buffalo’s early elevator operators and Mississippi to New Orleans, was home
developed the ability to dry and clean the to twenty-seven grain elevators and did an
grain they received here sometimes in less annual grain business that totaled more
than optimal condition. Often the grain in than 50 million bushels.23 The busiest time
ship holds became wet during the lake of the year for the port was from the middle
voyage. In order to prevent damp grain of September, when the grain harvest
from spoiling, it needed to be dried before began, until the middle of November, when
being put into storage. Dunbar’s Reed lake traffic ceased due to ice and cold
Elevator had a typical drying facility (called weather.
a Marsh dryer) attached to it. The marine
leg lifted the grain from the hold to a large From the time of the Civil War to the
metal surface some 800 feet square that closing of the American frontier in 1890,
was perforated with tiny holes. As the Buffalo experienced declining and rising
moist grain was raked across this surface fortunes as a center of grain and flour
it was dried by a blast of hot air from transshipment. Buffalo’s prosperity was in
below. The grain was then drawn through large measure determined by developments
a current of cold air to cool it before being in national transportation patterns and the
shunted into a storage bin. A system for shift of the nation’s main wheat growing
cleaning grain shipments of chaff and other region from the Midwest to the Northwest.
impurities involved dropping the grain into From the middle of the 1860s to the middle
a large cylinder and drawing off the lighter of the 1870s, Buffalo remained a strategic
chaff that rose in the air by means of a point in the movement of grain from the
steam-powered exhaust fan. A combination West to the Atlantic seaboard. But rivalries
drying and cleaning system invented by between the ever growing railroads and
Buffalonian George Clark was put into the lake vessels for the transport of grain
operation in the middle of the 1860s in eastward soon threatened Buffalo’s role
a separate building adjoining the large as a major point of grain transfer from lake
Richmond Elevator.22 vessels to canal and rail transport. In the
ten years between 1875 and 1885, Buffalo
Part II: Increased Grain Trade and was severely affected by the diversion of
the Evolution of Grain Elevator western grain shipments to railroads from
lake steamers.
Design, 1860s-1890s
During this period Midwestern railroads
The Post-Civil War Era, 1865-1890: The were able to siphon off a major portion
Decline and Rise of Buffalo as a Center of the grain transport business from the
of Grain Transshipment lake steamers. This was made possible
by the consolidation of shorter lines into
By 1860, the breadbasket of America had through lines, the laying of steel rails that
moved from the Ohio Valley to embrace the permitted heavier loads to be carried by
entire Great Lakes basin. New York and bigger engines, the construction of terminal
Pennsylvania bordered this vast expanse facilities and railroad grain elevators,
of wheat production to the east, Iowa and and the manipulation of transshipment
Missouri to the west, and Wisconsin and fees. Shipping by rail became attractive
Michigan to the north. (Corn production to farmers because it was faster and
had taken over the area to the south, cheaper than by boat and they could avoid
including Illinois, Ohio, and Tennessee.) transshipment charges because trains went
Much of the grain produced in these areas directly to ports, bypassing Buffalo. By
now found its way north across the Great 1872, ninety-nine percent of the flour and
Lakes to Buffalo. By 1860, American sixty-seven percent of the grain shipped
vessels on the lakes totaled over 450,000 eastward from the Midwest went by rail
tons of carrying capacity. From Buffalo, rather than over the lakes.24 Insurance
the grain of the lakes basin traveled by costs were also much lower to rail shippers
canal or railroad to the Eastern Seaboard. and they could be assured that their grain
In 1861, Buffalo, which before 1825 had would not be subject to heating the way it

Monuments of a Vanished Prosperity 27

Francis R. Kowsky
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

was on slower moving vessels and canal and over fifty percent of the flour moving
boats. At the same time, the shipment of eastward from the thriving Lake Superior
grain on the Erie Canal steadily declined. region.27 Moreover, by century’s end,
Chicago surpassed Buffalo as the leading Buffalo enjoyed a stronger position than
center of Great Lakes grain trade during ever before in the advancing saga of west-
this dark period for Buffalo. From 1868 to to-east transport of grain and flour. In
1875, Buffalo accounted for over half of the actual volume, this meant that 128 million
grain that arrived in New York City; after bushels passed through the port in 1891;
1875, this amount was reduced to less by 1898 this amount had nearly doubled to
than thirty percent.25 To many observers, 221 million bushels.28 In 1885, a reporter
Buffalo seemed doomed to shrink into informed the readers of Harper’s Monthly
insignificance in the landscape of the Magazine of the marvel of Buffalo’s nearly
American grain trade. mammoth grain elevators. They formed “an
elephantine procession a mile long, with a
But the situation turned around dramatically combined storage capacity of 9,250,000
after the middle of the 1880s. Buffalo was bushels and a transfer capacity of 3,102,000
given a new lease on life as a result of the bushels, or, in other words, the power of
expansion of the hard spring wheat belt receiving lake vessels and transferring
across Minnesota and the Dakotas. This to canal-boats and cars daily 3,000,000
major agricultural phenomenon (which bushels of wheat, a rate unequaled by any
was matched by a similar growth of grain port in the country.”29 Optimistically facing
farming in Kansas and Nebraska) was the new century, Buffalo’s extraordinary
to restore Buffalo to its position as the collection of thirty-four grain elevators, in
strategic transfer point in the westward to the words of industrial historians Thomas
eastward movement of grain and flour. Leary and Elizabeth Sholes, “could unload,
These new grain fields of the Northwest weigh, sort, and transfer huge amounts of
were west of Lake Superior and far to the grain from and to ships, or into storage for
north of the central Midwestern rail system local use or for future transport to hungry
that was centered on Chicago. At the head Eastern cities.”30
of Lake Superior, Duluth, Minnesota now
became the great collection point of grain The Decline of the Erie Canal
for this new region as well as a major flour-
milling center. To get their products to Despite the boost that Lake Superior
markets, shippers restored wheat and flour grain trade gave to the port of Buffalo, it
traffic on the lakes. The journey by steamer had little effect in arresting the decline
from Duluth at the head of lakes navigation of the Erie Canal. Already during the
to Buffalo at the foot was about the same Civil War, the volume of wheat and flour
distance as from Duluth to Chicago. In shipped from Buffalo to New York City via
addition, new rail lines in Minnesota allowed the canal began to fall off. After the war,
millers and grain shippers to bypass the the amount declined precipitously from
congested freight yards of Chicago and to a high of ninety-six percent in 1868 to a
shorten the distance to Atlantic ports by mere twelve percent in 1898. Closed by
placing grain cargo on lake freighters bound cold weather in winter, often impassable
for Buffalo at Gladstone. “The ascendancy due to repairs, and generally plagued by
of the Northwest,” observes Sweeney, “put mismanagement, the canal fell victim to the
Chicago off, and Duluth on, the direct line superior advantages of speed, reliability,
between the wheat areas and the Eastern and economy offered by the railroads.
markets; it also produced adjustments New York and Midwestern rail companies
in the location of the flour milling industry experienced great expansion after the Civil
which passed the leadership in place and War. They now began to erect terminal
traffic from the Chicago lake and rail routes facilities and even their own grain elevators
to the Duluth-Superior lake route.”26 which served as intermediaries between
rail lines and railroad-owned steamboat
As a result of these geographic shifts, companies. To capture business away
Buffalo was back in business. By 1893, from the canal (and from each other), they
Buffalo handled two-thirds of the grain would guarantee shippers freight rates and

28 Monuments of a Vanished Prosperity

Francis R. Kowsky
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

unbroken shipment from western grain developed a system of mechanized

fields to the East Coast. They were also shovels. In 1891, a writer from Scientific
not above practicing rate discrimination to American visited Buffalo and described this
garner business from competitors. Under process, which employed a large shovel or
these circumstances, by the time it was fifty scraper suspended from a rope, as follows:
years old, the Erie Canal -- that glorious “The rope is attached to steam apparatus
enterprise that had bestowed the gift of by which it is taken in at the proper time, as
prosperity on Buffalo -- was doomed to if on a windlass. The operative draws the
obsolescence as a feature in the booming shovel back into the car of grain and holds
eastward transport of grain from America’s it nearly vertical and pressed down into the
heartland to the Atlantic seaboard. By the grain. The rope draws along the shovel
end of the nineteenth century, rail cars had with the grain in front of it and a number of
replaced canal boats on the land side of bushels are delivered at each stroke. In
Buffalo’s many grain elevators. “To win the this way a couple of men can very quickly
heart of this queen city today,” wrote an empty a car.” The men who worked these
observer in the mid 1880s,”you must court shovels were comparable to the scoopers
her in the role of a railway king.”31 who unloaded the hulls of grain freighters.
And like their marine counterparts, the
By the 1890s, railroads were also delivering boxcar laborers were under pressure to
grain to Buffalo elevators, in competition maintain a brisk pace. “The movement
with lake steamers. In fact, so much grain of the shovels,” observed the Scientific
arrived by train that there were often 1,000 American reporter, “succeeds one another
cars waiting to be unloaded in Buffalo’s with sufficient rapidity to keep the men in
freight yards. Often, it took over two active movement.”33
months for a boxcar to be unloaded. By
1885, the situation had become so bad Lake transport also underwent significant
that it posed a threat to Buffalo’s position changes during the post-Civil War period.
as a grain depot; railroads began to divert Chief among them was the shift from
grain shipments to other places rather wooden hulled ships to steel-hulled vessels.
than have their rolling stock mothballed for The Spokane, the first such steamer on the
long periods here. Led by S. F. Sherman, Great Lakes, went into service in 1886. It
the Buffalo grain transshipment industry heralded a new fleet of vessels that could
took significant measures to improve the carry increased loads of raw materials,
situation. In 1886, two new large elevators, including grain, iron ore, and coal. The
the Lake Shore and the International, were new freighters also called for improvements
constructed expressly with rail freight to Buffalo’s harbor facilities. Docks and
service in mind. The International Elevator slips were enlarged to accommodate their
was the first important elevator to go up greater size and the enlarged quantities of
outside of the Buffalo harbor area. It was their cargoes.
erected on a site along the Niagara River
served by the new Belt Line railroad and In the middle of the 1880s, a major
near the International Railroad Bridge. A expansion of Buffalo’s port facilities was
tall, narrow structure with a 1,700-foot- undertaken. A 4,000 foot breakwater was
long track side loading dock, as well as an constructed about a half mile from the
internal rail loading dock, the International shoreline, beyond the Buffalo River. By
Elevator stood between the railroad and 1903, several miles of new lakeshore
the Erie Canal. With a daily capacity of dockage had been created behind the
320,000 bushels, it received grain from breakwater. This area came to be called
Canada’s Union Pacific Railroad and the the Outer Harbor, while the original port
Grand Trunk and Michigan Central roads. It facilities that lay inland along the Buffalo
could transfer this grain to canal boats or to River henceforth were known as the
the cars of seven other eastward bound rail Inner Harbor. With this new anchorage in
lines.32 view (and that provided in the Erie Basin,
which the city had created in the 1850s
behind an earlier breakwater), Buffalo, by
To unload boxcars filled with grain, handlers now commonly referred to as the Queen

Monuments of a Vanished Prosperity 29

Francis R. Kowsky
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

steamer and depositing it into the hold of

a waiting canal barge moored alongside.
After observing the performance of the
loose leg, which he compared to an
elephant’s trunk or a mosquito’s proboscis
that is thrust “into the very vitals and
bowels of the ship,” Trollope went inside an
elevator. His careful description of the inner
workings of these extraordinary structures
is the best first-hand account we have of
how these early elevators functioned:

Thus the troughs [the loose leg conveyer

belts], as they ascend, are kept full, and
when they reach the upper building they
empty themselves into a shoot, over which
a porter stands guard, moderating the
shoot by a door, which the weight of his
finger can open and close. Through this
doorway the corn runs into a measure and
is weighed. By measures of forty bushels
each, the table is kept. There stands the
apparatus, with the figures plainly marked,
over against the porter’s eye, and as the
sum mounts nearly up to forty bushels he
closes the door till the grains run thinly
through, hardly a handful at a time, so that
The Grain Elevator District in 1875 the balance is exactly struck. The teller
(Source: NOAA, U.S. Department of Commerce, Lake standing by marks down his figure, and the
Survey Center) record is made. The exact porter touches
City of the Lakes, would soon, claimed a the string of another door, and the forty
contemporary, “rival the traffic of the river bushels of corn run out at the bottom of the
Mersey and vie with that of Liverpool in measure, disappear down another shoot,
number of docks and warehouses.”34 slanting also toward the water, and deposit
themselves in the canal boat. The transit of
Advances in Grain Elevator Design, the bushels of corn from the larger vessel
1860-1890 to the smaller will have taken less than a
minute, and the cost that transit will have
Dart and Dunbar had established the been -- a farthing.
grain elevator as the structure essential to
Buffalo’s success as a grain transshipment And these rivers of corn are running
port. In 1861, the British novelist Anthony through these buildings night and day. The
Trollope visited the Queen City and secret of all the motion and arrangement
recorded his impressions of the flourishing consists, of course, in elevation. The corn
grain trade he saw there. “As ugly a is lifted up; and then lifted up can move
monster as has been yet produced,” said itself, and arrange itself, and weigh itself,
Trollope, of the elevators that crowded the and load itself.36
busy Buffalo waterfront. He likened them to
dinosaurs with “great hungering stomachs Trollope also remarked on how the grain
and huge unsatisfied maws.”35 Yet he arrived in Buffalo loose, in bulk, not in
admired the efficiency with which these sacks. “We in England,” he said, “are not
modern-day industrial brutes processed accustomed to see wheat traveling in this
enormous amounts of grain (which, in open, unguarded, and plebian manner.
English parlance, he referred to as “corn.”) Wheat with us is aristocratic, and travels
Trollope found especially fascinating the always in its private carriage.”37
operation of unloading grain from a lake

30 Monuments of a Vanished Prosperity

Francis R. Kowsky
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

elevators.

Conveyor belts also were added to

the basement level of elevators, which
eliminated the need for elevating legs
down the length of the structure. By means
of this innovation, grain being removed
from a bin “could be spouted onto the
basement conveying system and taken
to some convenient point in the house
where elevator legs were located. Fewer
legs were required per unit of storage
as outgoing grain from any bin could be
directed to a single elevator leg.”39 Now
elevating legs could be grouped at one
end of the elevator only, in a “workhouse.”
From the workhouse, a “headhouse” or
low gallery extended across the top of the
elevator and housed the bin floor conveyor
system. This headhouse replaced the
tall cupola of older elevators. The now
demolished Lake Shore Elevator, erected
in 1886, was regarded as the first fully
The Grain Elevator District in 1925 evolved example of this forward-looking
(Source: NOAA, U.S. Department of Commerce, Lake
Survey Center)
system. At the same time, the loose leg
became housed in a tower that nearly stood
After the Civil War, Robert Dunbar separate from the elevator itself. From this
continued to design and build elevators soon developed the “marine leg tower,” a
on the Buffalo waterfront. He constantly moveable structure set on wheels housing
made improvements over those Trollope loose legs that could be moved along the
had known. By the middle of the 1880s, length of the elevator to unload grain from
the largest elevators could stow one million waiting vessels moored alongside. By 1894,
bushels of grain and elevate stores from four of these moveable marine towers were
boats to bins at a rate of 19,000 bushels an working parts of Buffalo elevators.
hour. A significant development that made
such speed possible and which actually “It was my felicity to catch a grain steamer
changed the outward form that later and an elevator emptying that same
elevators would take was the introduction steamer,” wrote Rudyard Kipling during a
of horizontal transfer systems to move visit to Buffalo in the late 1880s. His colorful
grain to the internal storage bins. The description of the operation of these mighty
horizontal conveyor system allowed grain new marine towers continued:
to be distributed to bins some distance from
a fixed elevator leg. The heads of elevating She was laden with wheat in bulk from
legs and related weighing equipment were stem to stern, thirteen feet deep lay the
housed in a tall cupola or monitor (often clean, red wheat. . . . They maneuvered
containing windows to light the interior) the fore-hatch of that steamer directly
that ran the length of the structure above under an elevator . . . 150 feet high. Then
the storage bins. And economy dictated they let down into that fore-hatch a trunk,
that the bins now be lined up in straight as if it had been the trunk of an elephant .
rows so that “grain might be distributed to . . And the trunk had a steel nose to it and
them from the least number of horizontal contained endless chains of steel buckets.
conveyers.”38 Thus, the long, lateral form
of the twentieth-century concrete elevator, The captain swore, raising his eyes to
with stacks of silos lined up beneath an heaven and a gruff voice answered him
upper “headhouse,” began to replace from the place he swore at. Certain
the tall, vertical shed form of the earliest machinery, also in the firmament, began

Monuments of a Vanished Prosperity 31

Francis R. Kowsky
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

to clack and the glittering, steel-shod nose transshipment on the Buffalo waterfront.
of the trunk burrowed into the wheat and Nimbs’s wooden floating elevators, and
the wheat quivered and sunk upon the others built following his example, could
instant as water sinks when the siphon hold up to 5,000 bushels of grain. They
sucks, because the steel buckets within were seldom used, however, to store grain
the trunk were flying upon their endless for any length of time. Rather these floating
round, carrying away each of its appointed elevators, which, like their stationary sisters,
morsels of wheat. were equipped with steam-powered marine
legs and conveyor systems, were used
The elevator was a Persian well wheel — a to transfer grain from one ship to another
wheel squashed out thin and cased in a or, in some cases, to unload grain from
pipe, a wheel driven not by bullocks, but by vessels calling at stationary elevators and
much horse-power, licking up the grain at mills that lacked their own mechanical grain
the rate of thousands of bushels the hour. moving equipment. According to historians
And the wheat sunk into the fore-hatch . Thomas Leary and Elizabeth Sholes, the
. . till the brown timbers of the bulkheads huge C. and J. M. Horton floating elevator
showed bare. Then men jumped down could handle 72,000 bushels of grain each
through the clouds of golden dust and day, an amount that rivaled the efficiency
shoveled the wheat furiously around the of some of the city’s larger stationary
nose of the trunk and got a steam shovel of elevators.42 The heyday of these unusual
glittering steel and made that shovel also, and picturesque structures, however, was
till there remained of the grain not more short lived. Few if any apparently survived
than a horse leaves in the fold of his nose into the twentieth century.
bag.40

By the early 1890s, Buffalo’s wooden Part III: 1890s to 1930s: The
elevators had evolved away from Dart’s Evolution of the Modern Elevator
barn-like structure to a form that, internally,
anticipated the classic concrete elevators
that would soon replace them. The Buffalo’s Leading Position in the Wheat
elongated arrangement of rows of bins, Trade, 1890 to 1929
the vertical workhouse at one end, the low
headhouse extending across the top of “It is evident that, considering both primary
the row of bins, and the moveable marine and secondary markets,” says grain trade
leg tower already were characteristics of historian Peter Sweeney, “Buffalo was the
Buffalo grain elevators erected by the early leading wheat market of the United States”
1890s. With Dunbar’s Bennett Elevator for the first three decades of the twentieth
specifically in mind, architectural historian century.43 The establishment of the wheat
Henry-Russell Hitchcock observed that growing in the Northwest and the pattern of
while “the battle of styles was fought out grain shipment from that region to Buffalo
uptown and downtown, Dunbar continued to accounted for this success. Grain receipts
build great elevators along the lake front . . continued to increase during the boom
. Their vast, unornamented surfaces, bold years of the 1920s, after which a long and
cantilevers and clearly organized functional steady decline set in. In 1900, the city
forms suggest architectural possibilities handled 111 million bushels of wheat; by
for America which even Sullivan hardly 1928 the quantity had risen to 280 million
grasped.”41 bushels. However, after 1944 a precipitous
decline in grain receipts took place. The
The marine towers of late nineteenth- reasons were complex, but the drying up
century elevators might be said to have of the grain trade here was due to such
been anticipated by Arunah B. Nimbs’s factors as the rise of Pacific coast ports,
invention of the floating elevator. Nimbs, such as Seattle, Tacoma, and Portland in
a Buffalo entrepreneur inspired by the Dart the United States and Vancouver in British
Elevator, built the first of these curious Columbia, the improvement of the Welland
structures in 1866, thus adding another Canal and the Oswego Canal, which
chapter to the unique history of grain allowed more and more traffic to bypass

32 Monuments of a Vanished Prosperity

Francis R. Kowsky
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

Buffalo by taking the St. Lawrence River arrangement provided for the rebate of tariff
route to Montreal, and the general decrease duties on Canadian grain imported to the
in grain production as demand fell off United States if, after milling here, it was
during the Depression. But the period from exported directly to foreign markets.
1890 to 1940 might well be considered the
city’s golden age of commercial supremacy All of this economic activity called for
in the grain transshipment industry. expanded grain storage facilities in
Buffalo and the construction of large-
At the same time, the upgrading of the Erie scale flour milling facilities. Engineers met
Canal into the New York State Barge Canal the challenge by literally reinventing the
made canal transport once again a viable grain elevator. Most of the older wooden
alternative to rail transport between Buffalo elevators were now replaced by ones
and New York City. During the 1930s, more utilizing new designs and materials. The
grain actually moved on the canal than on concrete bins of the new age of elevators
the rail lines. Railroads, however, continued greatly improved these structure’s fireproof
to carry grain to places other than New safety and expanded their storage capacity
York City over lines that extended fan-like significantly. Just as the period from 1890
from Buffalo to the East Coast. to 1940 was a golden age of grain trade
and flour milling in Buffalo, it was also a
Paralleling the robust trade in grain was golden age of grain elevator construction.
a rise in the amount of flour milled in In 1931, Buffalo possessed thirty-eight
Buffalo. The upward trend began at the elevators with a total capacity of more than
turn of the century and continued, with 47 million bushels of grain. And the world
a brief setback during World War I, until took notice, especially the leading lights of
it reached a peak in the 1930s. By this the international architectural profession
time, Buffalo surpassed Minneapolis as who were forging a new design aesthetic
the nation’s center of flour making.44 The for the modern era. Many marveled at
reasons for Buffalo’s ascendancy were Buffalo’s extraordinary waterfront lined with
several. Among the leading ones were mammoth concrete silos that foreshadowed
the slower rate of population increase in an architecture of austere functionalism.
the Northwest, which reduced consumer Those like Walter Gropius, Bruno Taut, Le
demand, and the increase nationally of Corbusier, and Erich Mendelsohn drew
the number of large commercial bakeries, lessons that helped change the course of
which caused a reduction in home baking. modern architecture.
These mechanized bakeries required less
and less of high quality Northwestern flour, The Search for Fireproof Construction
which had been the staple of America’s
kitchen bakers. But perhaps the most Nearly all the elevators erected in Buffalo
important factor working in Buffalo’s favor before the 1890s were made of wood.
was economic. “Flour milled in Buffalo,” While this made for relatively inexpensive
explains Sweeney, “from wheat received and quick construction, it also possessed
by lake from Duluth and shipped by rail to many limitations as well. The biggest
New York had a five-cent rate advantage drawback to timber was its flammability.
per hundred pounds over flour milled at The early elevators often fell prey to
Minneapolis and shipped rail-lake-rail destruction by fire. When the Eastern
through Duluth and Buffalo to New York. Elevator went up in Buffalo in 1895, it
This advantage had a markedly stimulating contained eight million board feet of timber.
effect on Buffalo milling.”45 In other words, Four years later, all of it was destroyed in
it was cheaper for shippers to send grain a grand conflagration. Combustion might
directly from Duluth to Buffalo for milling suddenly occur from overheated grain or
and then to New York for export than to from grain dust explosions that occurred
send it first to Minneapolis for milling and especially when grain was being loaded
then to Buffalo for transshipment to New into or unloaded from the elevator. There
York. Finally, under an agreement with the were also threats from exterior causes,
Canadian government, much Canadian chiefly sparks and hot cinders from
wheat was milled “in bond” in Buffalo. This locomotives, for elevators were located

Monuments of a Vanished Prosperity 33

Francis R. Kowsky
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

close to railroads. Cladding the exteriors of elsewhere began to explore seriously

the elevators with corrugated metal sheets the use of new, fireproof materials in
appears to have done little to prevent fires the construction of grain elevators.
started by passing trains. Dunbar’s Reed Experiments with fireproof materials
Elevator, which was described as “the most centered on steel, tile, and concrete. (By
complete elevator in all its appointments in this time, most elevators, even timber
Buffalo” when it went into operation in 1862, ones, rested on concrete pier foundations.)
was probably the first to have employed The search eventually led to the revision
corrugated iron to protect its marine tower; of the elevator as it had been known up
the rest of the exterior and the roof wore a until that time. The first experiments with
shield of slate.46 Boilers needed to generate fireproof construction were made using
steam for steam-powered machinery also metal technology. Already in 1861, an
posed a serious fire hazard. In addition to elevator with cast iron bins twelve feet in
being easily ignited, timber elevators were diameter and fifty feet in depth was built on
prone to settle under the weight of a full the Brooklyn, New York waterfront. Later
load of grain, and rodents and other vermin in the same decade, steel bins were used
had little trouble infiltrating their interiors. for the first time in an elevator that went
For all of these reasons, insurance costs for up in Philadelphia. It appears that the first
such structures were quite high, a fact that attempt to construct a fully fireproof, non-
was another incentive for entrepreneurs to timber elevator in Buffalo was the Plympton
search for new materials and construction Elevator. Erected in 1868, it was built of iron
techniques. and steel components, including cylindrical
metal bins, rather than with the rectangular
Writing in 1902 in the Northwestern Miller, bins of timber framed elevators. It also
a leading grain industry periodical, E. S. had an attached workhouse made of brick
Rollins explained the relationship between and iron. The high cost of construction,
insurance and grain elevator economy. however, seems to have discouraged
Saving on insurance costs, he said, imitators of the Plympton, which went down
could represent the difference between in the early 1890s. Ironically, this was just
profitability and loss to an elevator operator, at the dawn of a new age of metal elevator
especially in slow economic times. Rollins construction.
offered this example:
During the last decade of the nineteenth
Now a fire-proof plant of 1,500,000 bushels century, steel emerged as an important
capacity would cost $195,000, against building material. Its most well known
$150,000 for the wooden, but would save application was to the development of the
$13,875 per year on insurance. This is metal-framed skyscraper, the building type
a very good saving, and would pay the that changed the look of America’s cities.
difference in the cost of construction in Designers also saw steel as a material that
less than four years. Moreover, this saving could be used in the construction of grain
amounts to over seven percent per year on elevators to render them virtually fireproof.
the total cost of the fire-proof plant. This With improved methods of industrial
means that a company might build a fire- production, steel became an economical
proof elevator, borrow the money with alternative to timber. This was especially
which to pay for it, and pay the interest on true since timber prices began to rise in
the bonds with what would be saved on the 1890s. And investors might recuperate
insurance. More than this could be done, the cost of a steel elevator compared to a
in fact, for money can be borrowed at five timber one solely on the reduced premiums
percent yearly, and as the fire-proof house that insurance companies charged for
would be a net savings of seven percent metal construction. In this shift from wood
yearly on its cost, there would be a net to steel for elevator construction, Buffalo
saving of two percent per year.47 played a major role.

The Steel Bin Elevator The pioneering examples of steel bin grain
elevator construction in Buffalo were the
In the 1890s, engineers in Buffalo and Electric Elevator and the Great Northern

34 Monuments of a Vanished Prosperity

Francis R. Kowsky
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

Elevator. Both of these elevators, which practice for many later elevator builders.
went into operation in 1897, also marked And the bin design itself departed from
the switch from steam to electrical powered the rectangular shape of previous timber
machinery. Electricity had become available crib bins. Cylindrical bins, it was thought,
from the Adams Power Plant in Niagara were stronger than rectangular ones and
Falls in November 1896. These two giant were less likely to suffer damage when
elevators represented some of the earliest grain was emptied quickly from them. Both
applications anywhere of electrical energy of these aspects of the Electric’s design -
to industrial use. The Electric Elevator - exposed bins and cylindrical silos -- had
(demolished in 1984) stood adjacent to their limitations in the minds of elevator
the Buffalo River and consisted of steel engineers, but their use here definitely
bins resting on concrete foundations with marked a new stage in elevator design
a tall, corrugated iron workhouse at the and construction. “An experimental and
wharf end and a steel-frame horizontal transitional building of unusual form,”
transfer system for the distribution of Reyner Banham, the architectural historian
grain above the bins. The bins, which who was the first to study Buffalo’s grain
had hemispherical bottoms to facilitate elevators, declared of the bygone Electric.48
the flow of grain, rested above basement
conveyor belts that carried grain to and The Great Northern Elevator would
fro below grade. The most striking feature have looked less radical in its outward
of the Electric Elevator’s appearance to appearance to its contemporaries than did
the eyes of people familiar with its wooden the Electric Elevator. In its shed-like form,
ancestors would have been its cylindrical it resembles the shape of primitive wooden
bins standing completely exposed to view. elevators. Its ninety-nine foot tall steel bins
Unlike earlier timber grain elevators, the are sheltered inside a vast, 300 foot long
Electric had no structure sheltering its structure of brick curtain walls equivalent in
bins from the elements. Exposed bins height to a ten-story building. Its designers,
and machinery would become common bridge architect Max Toltz and elevator

The Great Northern, one of two steel bin elevators built in Buffalo, under construction.
From Scientific American 77, Dec. 25, 1987 (Courtesy of Buffalo State College)

Monuments of a Vanished Prosperity 35

Francis R. Kowsky
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

engineer D. A. Robinson (both of whom (Later, additional bins of smaller diameter

were employees of the Great Northern yet were added between the main bins and
Railroad that built the elevator49), thought the outer walls.) Thus, the final storage
that by enclosing the metal bins they could capacity of the Great Northern reached
better protect the grain being stored in ninety percent of the available ground
them from the extremes of cold and heat. space.
To shield the grain from summertime
temperatures was especially important in After the Electric and the Great Northern,
order to prevent it from overheating and a number of steel elevators went up on
sprouting. The horizontal conveyer system the Buffalo waterfront. These included
for distributing and weighing incoming and the Great Eastern Elevator (1901),
outgoing grain was housed in a four-story- the Iron Elevator (1902), the Monarch
high, corrugated iron headhouse atop the Elevator (1905), and the Dakota (1901).
elevator. When this elevator was still in (Other than the Great Northern, none of
operation, Banham, who I remember as a these steel elevators survives.) The most
man who could see drama and poetry in spectacular of the group was the Dakota,
all architecture, described the inside of the which replaced an earlier timber elevator
headhouse as “almost cathedral-like: long, destroyed by fire, and which lasted until the
lit by ranks of industrial windows in the 1960s. Its tall, exposed steel bins and very
corrugated roofing on either side, filled with large headhouse attracted the attention of
a golden-gray atmosphere of flying grain the early modern German architect Walter
dust sliced by low shafts of sunlight.” His Gropius, who published a photograph of it
description continued: in his essay, The Development of Modern
Industrial Architecture.
The space is laced lengthwise by flat
rubber belt conveyors loaded with grain and Steel, however, proved to be less
laced diagonally by more movable chutes satisfactory than originally envisioned as
for directing the flow of grain. Weigh bins a fireproof material. Fire, of course, would
over the heads of the main bins measure not burn the metal, but heat generated by
the flow, batch by batch, as it goes from bin a grain fire could cause severe structural
to bin. The whole is monitored by men who damage to the bins and the steel support
watch steelyards connected to the weigh structure. A fire in a steel elevator in Fort
bins and mounted on desks whose legs are William, Ontario, in the early twentieth
in the form of cast-iron Doric columns . . . 50 century demonstrated how vulnerable
to heat steel could be. The Fort William
The internal arrangement of the Great fire became so intense that the steel bins
Northern Elevator differs considerably from and other components actually melted.
that of the Electric Elevator. The Great “Steel is an ideal material for constructive
Northern’s bins, which are formed of plates purposes,” observed engineering writer
of steel riveted and welded together, stand E. P. Overmire at the time, “but it requires
on steel pillars several feet above the expensive fireproofing to render it safe
concrete floor of the elevator. (Another set from internal, as well as external, attacks
of steel I-beams supports the headhouse from fire.” Demonstrating an industry-
and the upper level conveyor system.) wide change of heart, the owners of the
Some of the bins could hold 70,000 bushels destroyed Fort William rebuilt their elevator
of wheat, while others were subdivided in wood, convinced, said Overmire, “that
horizontally to accommodate lesser wood will not be more easily destroyed
amounts of grain from smaller shipments. than was the steelwork.”51 The last steel
(This is a feature of the Great Northern that elevator to go up in Buffalo during the
looks forward to the design of later concrete period of significance was an addition
elevator design.) But the use of cylindrical made in 1922 to the Kellogg Elevator. By
bins resulted in about a twenty percent loss then, reinforced concrete had become
of storage space over the old rectangular universally recognized as the superior
bin system. The engineers mitigated this material for elevator construction in Buffalo
problem by introducing eighteen narrower and elsewhere.
bins between the forty-eight main bins.

36 Monuments of a Vanished Prosperity

Francis R. Kowsky
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

The Great Northern: 300 foot long brick curtain wall.

From Scientific American 77, Dec. 25, 1987 (Courtesy of Buffalo State College)

The Ceramic Tile Elevator lighter weight of ceramic bins reduced the
load that foundations were required to bear.
During the first decade of the twentieth Although many tile elevators were built in
century, industrial engineers also the Midwest, Canada, and at East Coast
experimented with ceramic tile in an effort ports, they made little impact on Buffalo’s
to make their elevators fireproof. As early grain storage industry. Only two were
as the middle of the 1890s, Ernest V. constructed in Buffalo: the 150,000 bushel
Johnson (who was the son of the designer Washburn Crosby “A” Elevator, which
of the earlier iron Plympton Elevator) consists of tile tanks eighty feet tall and
patented a practical system of tile bin twenty feet in diameter, erected in 1903
construction that was used by the Barnett- according to the Barnett-Record Company
Record Company of Minneapolis, a builder patented system (these bins are now part
of many tile elevators. Some bins were of the General Mills complex),52 and the
constructed on a rectangular plan, but most 100,000 bushel Maritime Milling Elevator
ceramic bins were cylindrical with internal (now demolished).
steel bands for reinforcement. Those
built by the Barnett-Record Company also Despite tile elevators’ many advantages
captured the space between the bins for when compared to concrete elevators,
storage by constructing linking walls of which were becoming practicable at
arched tiles reinforced by metal tie rods. about the same time, tile structures were
This innovation would be important for expensive to build and maintain. The large
the later design of concrete elevators, number of mortar joints needing to be
which would usually adopt this practice of dressed slowed the process of construction
reducing wasted space by linking cylindrical and afterward required constant vigilance
bins with intermediate walls. to prevent leaks. And because tiles were
normally produced in pre-fabricated sizes
There were several advantages to ceramic geared for large bins, it was often difficult
tile bins. They not only were completely to obtain materials with which to build
fireproof and heat resistant, but their hollow smaller elevators. “Tile bins introduced
walls were better than steel at insulating at the turn of the century,” states the
grain from the extremes of heat and cold. Historic American Engineering Record,
For this reason, tile silos did not need “were already considered obsolescent by
to be protected from the weather by an 1913.”53 Nonetheless, architectural historian
enclosing structure; the cylinders could Reyner Banham regarded their exposed,
be left exposed to the elements. And the unadorned silos as an important step

Monuments of a Vanished Prosperity 37

Francis R. Kowsky
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

toward the great concrete elevators of the were required to scientifically study and
early twentieth century. In his eyes, the tile- understand the physical properties of grain
bin system represented “an intermediary when at rest and when in motion.
between the primitive phase of cylindrical
bin construction and the classic concrete Experiments in the early twentieth century
phase that was to ensue so soon after.”54 by various engineers revealed that static
Reflecting upon the German art historian grain in storage bins acted like a semi-
Wilhelm Worringer’s theory of an American liquid, exerting less lateral pressure on
“ultimate Metaphysic of Form,” Banham the bin walls than vertical pressure on the
declared that he found evidence of it bottom. These pressures were related to the
“in the sight of these grudging, lowering ratio of the diameter of the bin to its height,
shapes crouched under a leaden winter but after three times the diameter had been
sky, unlovable but compelling respect.” He reached, vertical pressure increased very
reflected that they were “the Protestant little. Thus, it seemed safe to build taller
work ethic monumentalized.”55 He bins than ever before. Physicists also came
continued: to understand that vertical pressure was
influenced by the angle of friction of the
The age of the steel and tile elevators grain and that no excess pressures were
marked an important chapter in the history created when the grain was moving during
grain elevator construction. Developments draw off if the outlet were in the center of
during this period passed on an important the bin bottom. All of this newly discovered
legacy to the age of reinforced concrete arcane knowledge would be essential to
elevators that was to follow. First, because engineers designing the grand concrete
of the complex problems involved in elevators that were soon to go up along the
building with steel, the highly trained Buffalo waterfront.
modern structural engineer now took
charge of elevator construction. Second, The Concrete Grain Elevators of the
the cylindrical shape became the standard Early Twentieth Century
form for bins. (This allowed individual bin
sizes to exceed the 15,000-bushel capacity The search for a durable and economical
of timber crib bins.) And third, engineers method of constructing grain elevators

Ceramic Tile Elevator A (1903) built as a part of Washburn-Crobsy Washburn-Crosby Elevator, presently General Mills, Buffalo, NY
complex. Photo by Lynda H. Schneekloth From E. Mendelsohn, Amerika 1926 (Courtesy of Buffalo State
College)

38 Monuments of a Vanished Prosperity

Francis R. Kowsky
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

culminated in the early twentieth century grain centers in the United States. Indeed,
when reinforced concrete became the one can say that Haglin’s Peavey’s Folly
standard material with which these huge not only revolutionized the construction of
structures were built. (Steel bins, however, grain elevators, but even influenced the
proved highly practical and remained in course of modern architecture.57
common use throughout the twentieth
century.) The development represented Haglin also introduced an innovative
the climax of an evolutionary process that system of concrete construction that
had gone through wood, steel, and tile would be widely imitated. Dispensing with
elevator design. During the nineteenth full scaffolding, he substituted a type of
century, engineers had selectively applied formwork called “slip form” that consisted of
concrete to foundations and floors of wood, two rings held apart by sturdy yokes. Once
steel, and tile elevators. However, “[T]he the concrete that had been poured into the
era of the true concrete elevator,” states formwork had set, the two rings were raised
the Historic American Engineering Record, to the next level by means of jacks. Vertical
“is defined by the application of reinforced “jacking rods” built into the system of steel
concrete to the construction of storage reinforcements in the concrete allowed for
bins.”56 And the Buffalo waterfront came the steady rise of the slip form until the full
to possess the world’s most impressive height of the silo was reached. Thus the
array of these monuments of early modern entire silo would “grow” as the concrete set
engineering. and the formwork moved upward. Peavey’s
Folly, which had a diameter of twenty feet,
Concrete had been used to construct grain rose in this manner to a height of 124 feet
silos in Europe as early as the 1890s. with walls twelve inches thick at the base
The Belgian elevator engineer Francois and only five inches thick at the top. This
Hennebique enjoyed a wide reputation clever method of construction, which would
for his work with concrete. The Waever’s be used extensively in Buffalo, was first
Mill Granery at Swansea in Wales was employed to erect an actual commercial
also well-known internationally. Built on a elevator in 1900. In that year, Haglin built
rectangular plan, it contained one hundred, the Peavey Elevator in Duluth. Like later
seven-foot-square bins, sixty-six feet deep. concrete elevators in Buffalo, connecting
In the middle of the 1890s, Minneapolis walls linked the tangential cylindrical bins
grain dealer F. H. Peavey sent his engineer, to create interspace storage bins.58
C. F. Haglin, to Europe to study Belgian,
Welsh, and other developments there The many advantages of concrete for
in concrete grain elevator construction. grain elevator construction accounted for
Haglin learned a lot about reinforced the near universal adoption of this method
concrete from his trip and in 1899 erected of construction for large elevators by the
at Minneapolis the first reinforced concrete second decade of the twentieth century.
bin elevator in the United States. Known As the Portland Cement Association
as “Peavey’s Folly,” it consisted of a single pointed out in 1917, concrete provided the
cylindrical concrete bin. While it shared surest form of fireproofing for elevators
material with its European counterparts, and mill buildings. Perhaps the best proof
Peavey’s Folly’s cylindrical design (the of that fact, stated the Association, was
legacy of American experiments with that “no insurance need be carried on the
steel and tile elevator design) made a structure, as it cannot burn.”59 Concrete
radical departure from the rectangular silos also could be counted on to preserve
“warehouse” system of transatlantic grain the grain from damp. In fact, they were
storage facilities. (The silo system was so reliably waterproof that manufacturers
better-suited to the American method of of Portland cement, a material far more
moving grain in bulk rather than in sacks, easily ruined by wetness than grain (which
which was common practice in Europe.) could be dried), had adopted the cylindrical
It was the unassuming prototype of the concrete grain bin to store this important
characteristic American concrete grain silos building material. Concrete also provided
that avant-garde European architects would unexcelled protection against rodents. And
come to admire in Buffalo and at other because it would not rot, it also insured

Monuments of a Vanished Prosperity 39

Francis R. Kowsky
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

stored grain against the ravishes of insects, of Haglin’s work in Minnesota, Wait refined
which, if they did happen to infest a bin and improved the type, grouping many tall
could be easily destroyed by fumigation silos together to form the characteristic
in the airtight atmosphere. Furthermore, unadorned corrugated exterior that
concrete basement tunnels for moving distinguished the modern elevator from its
grain were watertight and permanent. “The shed-like predecessors. The largest and
concrete cylinder elevator,” stated Reyner finest example of his work is the abandoned
Banham, “is still so omnipresent because Concrete Central Elevator of 1915 to 1917.
it represented an almost excessively good It shares one of the innovations for which
investment when first built. If it was solidly he was known, the raised basement. Grain
enough made to carry its load, maintain an stored in the great concrete bins fell through
equable thermal environment, and resist funnel-like steel bottoms into a system
fire for long enough to amortize the original of conveyor belts. The ground floors of
investment, then it had to be well enough Wait’s elevators were impressive open
made to last more or less forever -- and be spaces overshadowed by the immense
well enough made to be extremely costly to steel bottoms of the numerous bins. Of the
demolish.”60 twelve foot high, window-lit basement of the
Concrete Central Elevator, Reyner Banham
With improved mixtures of concrete (who wrongly attributed Concrete Central to
and the adoption of the practice of slip A. E. Baxter) remarked that it “was palatial
forming, concrete also came to be used in size compared with what was customary
to construct the headhouses, workhouses, in the trade.”63 Other designers, however,
and overhead galleries as well as the rarely imitated Wait’s generous basement
grain bins themselves. In earlier days, workspaces. The now-abandoned Marine
these elements were built with structural A of 1925, notes Banham, “put the bins
steel and clad with corrugated iron. The on foundations some six feet below grade
Washburn Crosby C2 Elevator of 1913 was level and pierce[d] their walls at the bottom
the first in Buffalo to employ a concrete to allow the conveyors to pass through.”64
gallery; A. E. Baxter’s Ralston Purina
workhouse of 1917 had the first workhouse As the twentieth century progressed,
and headhouse constructed of concrete industrial engineers like A. E. Baxter
in Buffalo. These were built quickly by transformed the meandering Buffalo River
the slip forming method that engineers into a striking corridor of monumental
employed to raise the cylindrical bins. concrete elevators. The story begins in
Indeed, speed of construction was another 1906, with the American Elevator (presently
important positive aspect of concrete grain Peavey Elevator), the first concrete
elevator construction. “The timetable for elevator erected on the Buffalo waterfront
the construction of an elevator,” states the and the first anywhere to be constructed
Historic American Engineering Record, by continuously pouring concrete into
“was usually extremely tight. Slip forming slip forms.65 The story effectively ends in
began only when spring was far enough 1954, then the Connecting Terminal Annex
advance, yet the promoters expected the was constructed. Between these years,
building to be operational by autumn to some forty-two concrete elevator projects
receive the first of that year’s crop and (some of these were additions to existing
ensure that storage was full at the close of elevators) were undertaken along the banks
the navigation season in mid-December.”61 of the Buffalo River and on the shores of
By the 1920s, it was common for engineers the outer harbor.66 Various improvements
to erect elevators, headhouses, and to the harbor district’s infrastructure also
workhouses of concrete. (Marine legs, followed to accommodate railroad, lake
which were mobile, were erected on steel vessel, and truck access to the area. (The
frames and covered with corrugated iron present power-driven lift bridge at Ohio
plates.) It is from this period that Buffalo’s Street was built in 1962. A bridge first
classic concrete elevators date.62 spanned the Buffalo River at Michigan
Avenue in 1873; the current vertical lift
Harry R. Wait designed many of Buffalo’s bridge there dates from 1960 but replicates
concrete grain elevators. Following the lead an earlier bridge put up in 1933.) Today,

40 Monuments of a Vanished Prosperity

Francis R. Kowsky
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

some fifteen elevators remain, including simple structures of industrial building such
Baxter’s handsome Standard and Concrete as grain elevators and big silos . . . These
Central. Of this number, several are still in examples of modern engineering, designed
use for storing grain or other materials. for practical use only, and obviously
without any decorative assistance from an
The Influence on Modern Architecture architect, made a deep impression by their
simple structure reduced to basic forms
Together with their significance as of geometry such as cubes and cylinders.
monuments of early industrial engineering, They were conceived as patterns
Buffalo’s grain elevators came to play an exemplifying once more the essence of the
indirect role in the evolution of modern pure form of use, gaining its impressive
architecture.67 Beginning with the German effect from its bare structure.69
architect Walter Gropius’s essay on
modern architecture in the Jahrbuch des Part IV: The Decline of Buffalo as
Deutschen Werkbundes of 1913, Buffalo’s a Grain Transshipment Port after
grain elevators appeared in publications
by advanced European architects. They 1959
praised them as examples of modern
functional design uncluttered by ornament, Most historians agree that Buffalo’s golden
picturesque composition, or historical age as a world port of grain transshipment
references. Gropius illustrated his remarks came to an end with the opening of the
with photographs of the Washburn-Crosby St. Lawrence Seaway.70 In 1959, when
complex and the Dakota Elevator. A few President Eisenhower and Queen Elizabeth
years later, Erich Mendelsohn, another celebrated the opening of the Seaway,
influential German architect, published his no Buffalo business leaders were there
photographic essay Amerika: Bilderbuch to cheer them. It now became possible
eines Architeckten. Among other powerful to load grain in Upper Great Lakes ports
images of new industrial architecture, such as Duluth, Chicago, or Detroit directly
it featured views of several elevators onto ocean-going vessels. By taking the
Mendelsohn had seen on a recent trip to expanded Welland Canal from Lake Erie to
Buffalo. And in 1927, the great French Lake Ontario and from there following the
modernist, Le Corbusier, declared in St. Lawrence to Montreal, these vessels
Towards a New Architecture: “Thus we had direct access to the Atlantic. There
have the American grain elevator and was no longer any need to unload grain
factories, the magnificent FIRST FRUITS in Buffalo and put it onto canal boats or
of the new age. THE AMERICAN railroad cars for surface shipment to East
ENGINEERS OVERWHELM WITH Coast ports. “With no reason for ships
THEIR CALCULATIONS OUR EXPIRING bound either for the ocean from the West or
ARCHITECTURE.”68 To back up his claim from the ocean to the West to ever come to
he featured a photograph of Buffalo’s Buffalo,” observes historian Mark Goldman,
exposed-steel-bin Dakota Elevator.
Writing for an English-speaking audience,
Bruno Taut called attention to Wait’s great
Concrete Central Elevator in his widely
circulated Modern Architecture. Perhaps
Walter Curt Behrendt spoke for all of these
men, when, in 1927 he wrote in his Der
Sieg des Neuen Baustils:

To do justice, it is necessary to say, and

this will probably surprise the reader, that
it was the example of America that gave
the impulse to the German architects
when they first tried to clarify the problem
of structure. To be sure, this impulse did
not originate in the skyscraper . . . but the The Concrete Central elevator showing the raised basement, an
invention of Harry R. Wait.(Photo by Lynda H. Schneekloth)

Monuments of a Vanished Prosperity 41

Francis R. Kowsky
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

American Elevator (1906), the first concrete elevator erected on the

Buffalo River. From E. Mendelsohn, Amerika 1926
(Courtesy of the Buffalo and Erie County Public LIbrary) Dakota Elevator with exposed steel bins, praised by LeCorbusier.
From W. Gropius, Jarbuch des Deutschen Werkbindes 1913 (Cour-
tesy of the Buffalo and Erie County Public LIbrary)
“the city sat bypassed at the end of a long
dead-end street.”71 Gradually, during the 1. The text of this article is based on the National
1960s to the 1980s, the storage capacity of Register of Historic Places Multiple Property
many grain elevators became superfluous Documentation Form that the author prepared in 2002.
and their operation, usually controlled by Special thanks are due to Henry Baxter for generously
out-of-town ownership, was shut down. sharing his profound knowledge of Buffalo’s grain
Milling also slowed during the last decades elevators with me. The author is also indebted to
of the twentieth century, but, nonetheless, the remarkably complete analysis of grain elevator
managed to survive as a significant local construction in Buffalo prepared by Thomas E. Leary
industry into the present century. and Elizabeth C. Sholes for the Historic American
Engineering Record.
When in 1986 Reyner Banham published 2. Paul Emmett Sweeney, “Locational Economics and
A Concrete Atlantis, the book that called the Grain Trade and Flour Milling Industry of Buffalo”
international attention once again to (Ph.D. diss., SUNY at Buffalo, 1942), 73.
Buffalo’s important legacy of concrete grain 3. Sweeney, 87.
elevators, he cast his prose decidedly in 4. Sweeney, 99.
the past tense. Many of the structures he 5. Sweeney, 92-3.
wrote about had already disappeared. 6. “Great Elevator Enterprise,” Buffalo Express, 7
But a significant number endured, even if November 1886, 3.
unused. “In such spectacular urban scenes 7. “Great Elevator Enterprise,” 93.
as the view down the Buffalo River toward 8. Buffalo Commercial Advertiser, 12 April 1839,
the Ohio Street Bridge,” wrote Banham, quoted in Sweeney, 239.
“ . . . one can see that the combination 9. Sweeney, 241.
of assured durability and long-sustained 10. Sweeney, 104.
functional relevance has given concrete 11. Sweeney, 104.
elevators a monumental longevity.”72 12. Michael N. Vogel and Paul F. Redding, Maritime
Buffalo (Buffalo, NY: Western New York Heritage
Institute Press, 1990), 25.
13. “Death of Joseph Dart,” Buffalo Express, 29
September 1879, 4.
14. Joseph Dart, “The Grain Elevators of Buffalo,”
Publications of the Buffalo Historical Society (1879),
399.
15. Vogel and Redding, 24.
16. “Famous Inventor: The Death of Mr. Robert
Dunbar,” Buffalo Commercial, 18 September 1890, 6.
17. Dunbar’s Bennett Elevator replaced his earlier
Francis R. Kowsky is a SUNY distinguished Professor Dart Elevator.
in Art History at Buffalo State College. He prepared 18. “Famous Inventor: The Death of Mr. Robert
the National Register of Historic Places Buffalo Grain Dunbar,” 6.
Elevator Multiple Property Documentation Form. 19. E. P. Overmire, “Modern Fireproof Grain
REFERENCES Elevators,” The Northwestern Miller 56, 18 November
1893, 1103.

42 Monuments of a Vanished Prosperity

Francis R. Kowsky
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

The Concrete Central Elevator, an example of modern functionalist design by European modern architects.
From Bruno Taut, Modern Architecture 1929 (Courtesy of the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library)
20. A description of early elevator construction is found 41. Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Buffalo Architecture,
in A.P. Boller, “Grain Elevators, Cleaners, and Dryers,” unpublished exhibition text (Buffalo, NY: Albright Art
Journal of the Franklin Institute 52, July 1866, 4-5. Gallery, 1940).
21. Henry Baxter, Grain Elevators (Buffalo, NY: Buffalo 42. Leary and Sholes, 37.
and Erie County Historical Society, 1980), 4. 43. Leary and Sholes, 131.
22. Boller, 9-11. 44. Leary and Sholes, 279.
23. Boller, 105-6. 45. Leary and Sholes, 315.
24. Sweeney, 119. 46. Boller, 7. Another failed attempt at fireproof
25. Sweeney, 129. construction was tried at the City Elevator (erected
26. Sweeney, 127. Chicago remained the primary in 1850). It was built with exterior and interior brick
market for corn and oats, which were mainly grown walls that isolated the wooden bins in compartments.
south of Lake Superior in the central Midwestern corn However, this elevator fell prey to fire in the mid-
belt. 1860s.
27. Sweeney, 130. 47. E. S. Rollins, “A Revolution in the Elevator
28. Sweeney, 130. Business,” The Northwestern Miller 53 (23 April,
29. “The City of Buffalo,” Harper’s New Monthly 1902), 825.
Magazine 71 (July 1885), 194. 48. Reyner Banham, A Concrete Atlantis: U.S.
30. Thomas E. Leary and Elizabeth C. Sholes, Industrial Building and European Modern Architecture,
Buffalo’s Waterfront (Charleston, SC: Arcadia 1900 – 1925 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986) 127.
Publishing, 1997), 23. 49. According to the assistant engineer on the project,
31. “The City of Buffalo,” 196. R. H. Folwell, the president of the railroad himself,
32. A detailed account of the International and J. P. Hill, decided that the elevator would be built of
the Lake Shore (which was located on the Buffalo steel rather than wood. For a detailed description of
waterfront) is found in “Great Elevator Enterprise,” its construction, see Folwell’s “A Steel Structure,” The
Buffalo Express, 7 November 1886, 3. Weekly Northwestern Miller 45 (4 February 1898),
33. Scientific American, quoted in Leary & Sholes, 38. 175-9.
34. “The City of Buffalo,” 194. 50. Folwell, 121.
35. Anthony Trollope, North America, vol.1 51. Overmire, 1103-4.
(Philadelphia: Lippincot, 1862), 181. 52. These were only storage bins related to the
36. Trollope, 181-2. adjacent Frontier Elevator; they had no marine legs.
37. Trollope, 182. 53. Historic American Engineering Record, 12.
38. Historic American Engineering Record, Buffalo 54. Banham, 134.
Grain Elevators (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department 55. Banham, 136.
of the Interior, 1998), 5. 56. Historic American Engineering Record, 66.
39. Historic American Engineering Record, 5. 57. Peavey’s Folly, which was never enlarged beyond
40. Rudyard Kipling, “Buffalo’s Wheat Elevators” its single silo, still stands and is listed on the National
(1889), reprinted in Carl Carmer, The Tavern Lamps Register of Historic Places.
are Burning: Literary Journeys Through Six Regions 58. For a detailed description of the construction
and Four Centuries of New York State (New York: process, see Historic American Engineering Record,
McKay Co., Inc., 1964), 429-30. 15-39.

Monuments of a Vanished Prosperity 43

Francis R. Kowsky
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

59. Concrete Bins and Elevators (Chicago: Portland

Cement Association, 1917), 6.
60. Banham, 174.
61. Historic American Engineering Record, 48.
62. Historic American Engineering Record, 66.
63. Banham, 156
64. Banham, 156.
65. Historic American Engineering Record, “American
Elevator, HAER No. NY-249,” 3.
66. For a complete list of concrete elevators erected
in Buffalo, including dates and capacities, see Historic
American Engineering Record, 70-72.
67. For a full discussion of the importance of America’s
grain elevators and factories to the modern movement
in architecture known as the International Style, see
Banham, chapter 3, “Modernism and Americanism,”
181-253.
68. Quoted in Banham, 224.
69. Banham, 230-1.
70. Navigational improvements on the Mississippi
River also contributed to Buffalo’s decline, as more
and more Midwestern grain began moving south
again to New Orleans. Furthermore, in the 1970s,
the Interstate Commerce Commission revised the
artificially low rates that it had maintained for decades
for shipping grain by lake vessels. This had the effect
of making it cheaper to ship grain by rail than by water
from the Midwest to the East Coast.
71. Mark Goldman, High Hopes: The Rise and Decline
of Buffalo (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1983), 271.
72. Banham, 175-7.

44 Monuments of a Vanished Prosperity

Francis R. Kowsky
 The Grand Ladies
of the Lake

The Standard, American, and Perot Elevators along the Buffalo River as viewed from from the Ohio Street Bridge.
(Photo by Lynda H. Schneekloth)

Ivonne Jaeger, Architect

Halle (Salle), Germany

Ivonne Jaeger
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

The Grand Ladies of the

Lake
Introduction

Consider this a formal introduction to the is the last steel bin elevator in the world,
sixteen* grand grain elevators that sit and the Washburn-Crosby “A”, a part of
along or near the Buffalo River in Buffalo, the General Mills complex, is an example
New York. With the exception of three, all of the tile bin elevators. Both the steel and
of them are concrete silos, many of them tile were transitional technologies between
complexes built over time. the wooden elevator and the concrete and
steel elevators.
The exceptions are in themselves
interesting because they represent the In this chapter, the elevators are presented
history of grain elevator construction geographically, with the farthest Buffalo
technology from the earliest built in River elevator, the Concrete Central,
the 1800’s through the mid 1900s. The introducing the set. This is followed by
Wollenberg is a wooden elevator built for the series of elevators traveling west
train transshipment and is not located on along the river. The outlying elevators
the river. It is reminiscent of the cadre of are then presented, including the Cargill
wooden elevators that dotted the river Pool on the Outer Harbor, with the railroad
district in the 19th century and similar to the transshipment elevators, the Wollenberg
thousands of rural elevators that held grain and H-O Oats, last.
in local communities. The Great Northern

*There are now fifteen. The H-O Oats

elevator and its daylight factory were
demolished in 2005-2006.

All photographs used in this section are

being published for the first time in this
book. They were taken by Lynda H.
Schneekloth unless otherwise noted.
Material for this brief summary of each
elevator was derived from Thomas E. Leary
and Elizabeth C. Sholes, Historic American
Engineering Record, Library of Congress
and Francis R. Kowsky, “National Register
of Historic Places Multiple Property
Documentation Form,” 2002, submitted Ivonne Jaeger was a Fullbright student at the
to the National Park Service in support of Department of Architecture, University at Buffalo,
the National Historic Register Listing of the SUNY when she prepared this work. She is now an
Buffalo Grain Elevators. architect in Halle (Salle), Germany.

46 The Grand Ladies of the Lake

Ivonne Jaeger
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

Map of Buffalo’s Grain Elevators, 2005.

(Courtesy of Urban Design Project, University at Buffalo)

The Grand Ladies of the Lake 47

Ivonne Jaeger
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

The Concrete Central

Elevator
high moveable marine towers. A further
moveable marine tower in the same pattern
was added during construction in 1917. The
isolated square concrete tower lying about
one hundred yards to the south is a fixed
marine tower.

The Concrete Central represents one type
of construction: the square pyramid headed
pillars in the basement support the overall
bin slab on which the bins were raised by
the slip form method. The massive structure
has been abandoned since 1966. It was
placed on the National Register of Historic
Places in 2003.

The Concrete Central Elevator, located

between the Buffalo River and the track of
the former New York Central Railroad, was
designed by Harry R. Wait. The elevator,
built in three sections from 1915 to 1917, is
a quarter of a mile long. It was the largest
transfer elevator in the world in 1917. The
268 bins could store 4.5 million bushels
of grain. The original Elevator A, built in
1915 below the workhouse, was extended
to the north in 1916 by Elevator B. The
southward extensions were conducted
in 1917 and are known as houses C, D,
and E. Originally, the elevator sections A
and B were equipped with two 150 foot-

48 The Grand Ladies of the Lake

Ivonne Jaeger
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

The Cargill Superior

Elevator
This elevator was the first reinforced
concrete elevator built by the local engineer
A.E. Baxter, who worked for the Monarch
Engineering Company. The construction
began in 1914. The first section, known
as Superior A, had a storage capacity of
1.5 million bushels. In 1919, Superior B
was added immediately to the east of the
existing Superior A. Both sections are
linked, although complex B changes the
angle in plan and follows the shore of the
river. A further Annex C was built in 1925,
likewise on the eastern side. The extension
aligns with the existing Superior B, but it
is structurally separated from the earlier
parts of the elevators. Nevertheless, the
bin floors maintain the same height, and a
bridge provides a continuous gallery on top
of the elevator between section B and C.

The original complex was already started in

1899 by Husted Milling Company with a mill that was destroyed by an explosion
and a wood crib-binned elevator. In 1907, in 1912. After this event, the Husted
the company built its first concrete elevator Company commissioned the Monarch
Engineering Company to build a reinforced
concrete elevator, Superior A. During
the construction the operating company
changed into Superior Elevating Company
with E. M. Husted as president. Cargill, a
international grain trader, purchased the
Superior Elevator in 1939. It closed in the
1960s.

The Grand Ladies of the Lake 49

Ivonne Jaeger
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

The Marine A Elevator

The original Marine elevator, a wooden of the original construction of Marine A is
cribbed construction, was built about almost unaltered. After the opening of the
1870 for the Buffalo-based Abell Family. St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959, the elevator,
An annex followed in 1894. This elevator which was only a transfer elevator without
was equipped with Buffalo’s first moveable an associated mill, closed.
marine tower. In 1925, the new Marine
A Elevator was constructed, and the old This elevator is scheduled to be retrofitted
building became known as Marine B. and incorporated into the ethanol plant
development by RiverWright Energy, to
This elevator is the only example of T.R. open in 2007.
Budd’s construction method that provided
an elevator that was slip formed from
the foundation slab upwards, including
a roomy basement. All loads were direct
compression to the foundation slab via
bin walls or basement pillars. Former
construction raised the bins on a full bin
slab above basement columns that bore
the weight. Today, the pure simple form

Photo by Johannes Runge

50 The Grand Ladies of the Lake

Ivonne Jaeger
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

The Lake and Rail Elevator

The International Milling Elevator
The ConAgra Elevator
In 1929, the Lake and Rail South Annex
and the Southwest Annex were built. The
South Annex follows the pattern of the
North Annex, but the Southwest Annex on
Childs Street has a distinctive appearance.
The elevator is triangular in plan to provide
a maximum storage up to the property
line. The final addition, the Northwestern
Annex, was built in 1930. To maximize the
storage capacity of the outerspace bins,
the cylindrical main bins are enclosed
by straight exterior walls. This elevator,
closed by ConAgra in 2002, was bought
by RiverWright Energy in 2006 and will be
retrofitted for an ethanol plant to be opened
in 2007.

The complex was built in four stages

between 1927 and 1930 for International
Milling, Inc., which had established a
milling operation in Buffalo in 1926 and
1927. The elevator was built in conjunction
with the mill and was equipped with two
marine towers. In 1928, the North Annex
was added. A three-story mill warehouse,
a railroad loading shed, and a fixed marine
tower were built between the mill and the
annex soon after the completion of the
annex.

The Grand Ladies of the Lake 51

Ivonne Jaeger
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

Photo by Ivonne Jaeger

The Perot Malting Elevator

American Malting Elevator
Genesee Brewing Elevator

Photo by Ivonne Jaeger

This elevator, built in 1909 for the malting This elevator is scheduled to be retrofitted
company Perot, was recently operated by and incorporated into the ethanol plant
Fred Koch Malting Company. The complex development by RiverWright Energy, to
consists of two parts, a grain elevator and a open in 2007.
building to the east containing germinating
compartments for the malting process.
The elevator has no marine tower and was
connected to the American Elevator by an
overhead conveyer.

The plant was built in two sections. Nine

bins without interspace bins were built
at some distance from the Buffalo River
in 1909. The construction of a set of bins
with interspace bins along the Buffalo River
followed in 1933.

52 The Grand Ladies of the Lake

Ivonne Jaeger
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

Photo by Ivonne Jaeger

The Exchange American

Elevator
The Peavey Company Elevator
Russel Miller Milling
Company Elevator

This elevator was designed and built by the The invention of slip form construction
James Stewart Company for the American greatly accelerated the speed of erection
Malting Company in 1906. It was one of the of an elevator because concrete could
first reinforced concrete grain elevators in be poured constantly. R.H. Forwell and
Buffalo based on the slip form construction. W.R. Sinks, engineers of Barnett Record
In 1922, Russel Miller Milling Company Company, devised this system of raising
purchased the complex and converted the slip forms using jacks that acted upon rods
malt plant into a mill. The new mill building incorporated into the bin wall as building
was completed in 1924 and a further annex progressed.
to the south of the existing elevator was
constructed in 1931. The elevator was This elevator is scheduled to be retrofitted
equipped with a single fixed marine tower and incorporated into the ethanol plant
located at the northern end of the building. development by RiverWright Energy, to
In 1954, Russel Miller Milling Company open in 2007.
was purchased by Peavey Company, one
of the largest grain companies in the United
States.

The Grand Ladies of the Lake 53

Ivonne Jaeger
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

Photo by Ivonne Jaeger

The Electric Annex

The Cargill Electric Elevator
The Eastern Grain Elevator
just for turning the grain. The complex
covered six halls with a storage capacity
of six million bushels of grain. Between
those halls the grain was handled by
power shovels. The bins discharged into
a sub-basement conveyer tunnel. This
construction type is called “tunnel design.”

The Electric Elevator was the first elevator
that used electricity as a power source. The
original construction consisted of nineteen
freestanding cylindrical steel bins. The bins
were served from an adjoining workhouse
incorporating one movable and one fixed
marine leg. The original black steel bins
were demolished in 1984.

A concrete annex was built in 1940

and 1941. From the outside, the annex
resembles conventional cylindrical bins.
However, the whole storage system was a
new development that lowered the storage
cost. The concrete elevator was equipped
with a marine leg, a small elevating leg

54 The Grand Ladies of the Lake

Ivonne Jaeger
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

The Standard Elevator

The Hecker Elevator
The Nesbitt Elevator
The Pillsbury Elevator

The Hecker Company, a family company,
started with a small milling operation in
1913. In 1924 the company became a
subsidiary of the Standard Company and
built the Standard Elevator.

The elevator, located on the Buffalo River

near the Ohio Street Bridge, was erected
in two sections in 1928. The construction
is not architecturally as pure as other
elevators because of the decorative
elements like a modulation of wall
surfaces, brackets, and a roofline. The first
construction phase had sixty main bins with
a storage capacity of three million bushels.
This phase also included six square bins
where grain could be washed and dried.
Upon completion, the structure provided
the largest single unit of conventional bin
storage in Buffalo.

The bins, with a wall thickness of eight

inches, rise from the foundation slab to a
height of 124 feet. The main bins’ capacity
of 102,400 bushels was more than four
times that of the main bins in the Central
Concrete Elevator. A further annex,
constructed in 1941, has a capacity of two
million bushels stored in sixteen main bins.
The Standard Milling complex closed in
1981, but the elevator now stores grain for
the ADM Milling facility on Ganson Street.

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Ivonne Jaeger
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

The Agway Elevator

The Cooperative Grange League
Federation Elevator (GLF Elevator)
The Wheeler Elevator
to the east of the main mill was the pellet
mill built in 1961. In 1964, GLF merged
with the Eastern Farmer Exchange and the
new company was named Agway Inc. The
plant stopped working in 1974. The current
owner is the Great Lakes Fishing Club.

This elevator is situated in the south of the

Spencer Kellogg complex and occupies
the site of a former wood elevator from
the 19th century owned by the Wheeler
family. The replacement of the wooden
elevator began after a fire in 1909. The
new concrete elevator was known as the
Wheeler Elevator or Elevator B. It was
the first concrete elevator with outerspace
bins in Buffalo. The complex had a fixed
marine leg. In 1929, GLF purchased the
Wheeler Elevator. Immediately after the
purchase, the company added a new
feed mill on the west side of the elevator.
Grain often became wet after shipping,
so the company built a drier house to the
northwest of the Wheeler Elevator in the
same year. Elevator C was built in 1936
together with a two-story warehouse and
a railroad loading shed. The erection of
Elevator A in 1941 was the final phase of
elevator construction. Elevator A is very
easy to identify, with two tall workhouses on
either end of the elevator. The last addition

56 The Grand Ladies of the Lake

Ivonne Jaeger
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

The Spencer
Kellogg Elevator
The St. Mary’s Cement Elevator
Elevator is the only known elevator in
Buffalo that had this arrangement similar to
wooden elevators.

In 1923, the company constructed a

loading elevator that consisted of steel
storage bins on the southern side. In 1936,
three freestanding cylindrical loading bins
were added. This complex is used as a
cement storage facility and is joined by a
head transfer system to a set of bins on the
north.
The elevator consists of two parts that
originally were developed by two different The marine towers and the steel bins of
companies. The elevator towers are the Spencer Kellogg Elevator have been
separated by a former slip, now filled in. demolished. The workhouse and the four
loading bins remain.
Spencer Kellogg started in the early 1890s
to develop a wooden grain elevator on the
southern side of the slip. On the northern
shore of the slip, Coatsworth built a bigger
plant after the wooden elevator burned
down in 1984. This complex was purchased
by Kellogg, and Kellogg replaced the
complex of Coatsworth in 1909 with a new
concrete elevator. The old plant on the
southern side, also known at that time as
Kellogg B, remained until the completion
of the new complex. In 1912, Spencer
Kellogg demolished Kellogg B and filled
the little slip, and the new complex of the
northern side became known as Kellogg
B. The basement of this new elevator
accommodated railroad loading and
unloading directly under the bins. This type
of basement was a common arrangement
in wood elevators. The Spencer Kellogg

The Grand Ladies of the Lake 57

Ivonne Jaeger
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

General Mills
The Frontier Elevator
The Washburn Crosby Elevator
and in 1961 the original mill of 1886
was replaced by the C Mill. Mill B was
dismantled in the 1960s. Today General
Mills still operates. As the pictures show,
the storage units receive grain by water
and rail through procedures comparable to
the classic waterfront transfer elevators of
Buffalo’s past.

The site of General Mills was at one time

the site of the home and farmstead of
Daniel Joncaite, the first entrepreneur
in Buffalo. In 1909, Washburn Crosby
built a set of nine bins known as Elevator
A next to the flour mill on South Michigan
Avenue that was already built in 1886.
The company used tiles as construction
material. In 1909, the company built a
further elevator called Elevator B and a
flour mill called B Mill. The mill operations
were electrically driven, unlike the steam-
powered original mill of 1886. An illustration
of the Washburn Crosby Elevator formed
a part of the photographic collection for
Walter Gropius’ 1913 publication Jahrbuch
des Deutschen Werkbundes entitled Die
Entwicklung moderner Industriebaukunst.

During the next decade, several annexes

followed, such as the parts of the Frontier
Elevator in 1909, 1913, and 1925 also
known as C1, C2, and C3. In 1922,
General Mills erected a four story concrete
warehouse along the City Ship Canal,

58 The Grand Ladies of the Lake

Ivonne Jaeger
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

The Great Northern

Elevator
The Pillsbury Elevator
The Great Northern Elevator was
constructed in 1887 with a capacity of
2.5 million bushels. It was one of the first
elevators that used electricity as a power
source. The wooden construction was
replaced by cylindrical steel bins to provide
more fire resistance. The steel bins were
enclosed by a 2.5 foot thick brick shell
wall. Steel was expensive, and the bins
were susceptible to rust and corrosion.
The Great Northern is, like the old wooden
elevators, the last of Buffalo’s “working
house” elevators, in which the storage bins,
work spaces, and conveying apparatus There are thirty bins that are 38 feet in
were all located within a single structure. A diameter, and eighteen bins that are 15.5
typical wooden bin could carry about 5,000 feet in diameter. The present two marine
bushels of grain. In comparison, the Great towers were built in 1922 and are not
Northern bin could hold 74,000 bushels. the original ones. Originally, the elevator
was equipped with three movable marine
towers, but those were destroyed by storm.

Today the Great Northern sits next to the

milling facility at ADM.

The Grand Ladies of the Lake 59

Ivonne Jaeger
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

The Connecting
Terminal Elevator
In 1950, a drier tower of structural steel
was added to the north side. The southern
section, slightly separated from the main
complex, was constructed in 1954, the last
storage facility built in Buffalo.

This elevator is located on the west side

of the Buffalo Ship Canal, directly at
the confluence with the Buffalo River.
The previous wood construction was
completely destroyed in 1914. The owner,
the Pennsylvania Railroad Company,
commissioned a new concrete elevator
immediately in 1915.

The original elevator, designed by A.E.

Baxter, was only equipped with one marine
tower. The second marine tower with the
same pattern was added at a later date.

60 The Grand Ladies of the Lake

Ivonne Jaeger
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

The Cargill Pool Elevator

Saskatchewan Cooperative Elevator

The Cargill Pool Elevator is the only

grain elevator on the lake itself, which
allowed a service of deeper draft ships.
It was completed in 1925. The storage
capacity of the original complex was
approximately one million bushels. It is the
first elevator in Buffalo built by a Canadian
farmer’s cooperative, the Saskatechewan
Cooperative Wheat Producers. The
cooperative was a response to market
pricing over which farmers had no control.

A section added one year later doubled

the capacity of the existing elevator. The
125 bins (main bins, interspace bins,
and outerspace bins) have the length of
two football fields. The mainhouse and
annex were fixed formed construction; the
workhouse above is slip formed.

A railroad loading and unloading shed

abuts on the north side. The elevator is
equipped with two movable marine towers
of structural steel with corrugated iron
cladding. Currently, the 200 foot-high
elevator is used as a marina and boat
storage facility.

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Ivonne Jaeger
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

The Wollenberg Grain

and Seed Elevator
This elevator, a typical country elevator, is Company that the company dismantled to
the only surviving wood crib-binned elevator make space for its new concrete elevator.
in Buffalo. It is situated on Goodyear The construction shows traces of this
Avenue along the Belt Railroad. These previous use. The accompanying mill on
wooden elevators were characteristic the northwest side of the elevator was
constructions of the landscape inland and constructed in the same year.
along the Buffalo River. Except for the
foundation, the entire construction of those The machinery was driven by electric
elevators is of wood. motors. The capacity of 25,000 bushels
is accommodated in twenty bins. The
The Wollenberg Elevator was built in 1912 Wollenberg was placed on the National
of second-hand material from the original Register in 2003.
wood elevator of the Spencer Kellogg

Photo by Thomas Yots

62 The Grand Ladies of the Lake

Ivonne Jaeger
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

The H-O Oats Elevator

corner of the complex was, constructed
in 1931. In 2005, the elevator and
surrounding nine acres were purchased by
the Seneca Nation for casino development.
In December 2005, they demolished the
1912 daylight factory that was a part of the
complex and in June 2006 they demolished
the elevator.

The development of the street site began

in 1893 with the construction of a wood-
framed food mill and a wood-framed feed
mill. In the same year, the wood crib-
binned elevator with exterior brick walls
were erected. This original complex burned
down. In 1912, a four-story factory was
built of brick. The free-standing steel bins
were built in 1914. The seven-story high
concrete-framed, brick-paneled building,
which functioned as store and warehouse,
was added in 1928. The concrete elevator,
L-shaped in plan on the southeastern

The Grand Ladies of the Lake 63

Ivonne Jaeger
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

REFERENCES

Baxter, H. H. (1990). Grain Elevators. Buffalo, NY:

Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society.

Brown, W. J. (1993, Fall). Walter Gropius and grain

elevators: Misreading photographs. History of
Photography, 17(3), 304-8.

Engel, G. (1997). Buffalo Grain Elevators. (Text by

Winifred Nerdinger, Anne Heritage, Trans.) Cologne,
Germany: Konig.

Historic American Engineering Record (1998). Buffalo’s

Grain Elevators. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of
the Interior.

Tielman, T., Ed. (1990). Buffalo Waterfront: A Guidebook.

Buffalo, NY: Preservation Coalition of Erie County.

Yots, T. (2002). Reading the Wollenberg: A Preservation

Dilemma. (Thesis, M.Arch.) Buffalo, NY: SUNY at
Buffalo.

64 The Grand Ladies of the Lake

Ivonne Jaeger
 Projects and Proposals

(Drawing by Joshua Price)

Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

Projects and Proposals

Introduction

They were, however, buildings of great

quality and power . . . like an avenue of
mighty tombs . . . [C]ertainly, no other city
in the world possessed so concentrated
a set of historically valuable elevators as
Buffalo then did . . .

R. Banham

The Buffalo grain elevators are seductive.

Among others, architects, landscape
architects, and photographers are
compelled to interact with them, as is
evident by the attention paid to them by the
early modernists described in the chapters
by Stiener and Kowsky.

Now that all but three of the elevators

are abandoned and in disrepair, there
is contemporary surge of interest in
addressing them. Designers and citizens
have offered a variety of ideas of how we
might interact with them, how to find ways
to reveal them, to manipulate them, to
reuse them and to celebrate them.

The Buffalo Grain Elevators have been

used as the basis for studio projects by
archiecture and landscape architecture
students at the University at Buffalo,
Cornell University and Columbia University
in the last few years. It is a privilege to
offer the students’ proposals and projects
for your reveiw.

Lynda H. Schneekloth, Editor

66 Projects and Proposals

 Buffalo Grain Elevators

Buffalo Grain Elevator

Heritage Trail

(Photo by Lynda H. Schneekloth)

Graduate Design Studio

Lynda H. Schneekloth
University at Buffalo, SUNY

Buffalo Grain Elevator Heritage Trail 67

Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

Buffalo Grain Elevator

Heritage Trail
The City of Buffalo is home to the largest The assignment for a graduate studio at the
collection of grain elevators in the world. Department of Architecture at the University
Their existence speaks to the central role of at Buffalo was to design a heritage trail to
Buffalo in the history of grain transshipment connect the elevators. The project was
from the Midwest to markets on the east not to design the elevators or find adaptive
coast and beyond. Today only two of the reuses for them, but rather to interpret and
fifteen remaining large elevators are in use. transform the landscape around them.
Yet their presence remains and their story The goal of this imaginal exercise was to
waits to be told. As Reyner Banham says explore the means by which the elevators
in A Concrete Atlantis, “It was a privilege could acknowledge the industrial history
to know them in their ravaged antique of the region by making them physically
grandeur.” and visually accessible in their current
condition.

This studio was taught by Professor Lynda H.

Schneekloth.

68 Buffalo Grain Elevator Heritage Trail

 Buffalo Grain Elevators

Strategy One:
The Agrarian Landscape
Jim Churchill
Sean Friedo
Michael Ross

The industrial landscape of Buffalo’s

waterfront was based on the transhipment
of grain from the Midwest to ports of the
east. The grain was a commodity that
moved in and out of ships and elevators as
it was transported across the nation.

This proposal attempts to reveal the grain

origin of the industrial landscape by actually
using fields of grain, orchards and medicinal
gardens on the vacant land between the
huge grain elevators and other industrial
buildings. It is anticipated that the use of
plants would also serve to bio-remediate Open spaces on Kelly Island transformed into agricul-
the landscape of the contaminated soil left tural fields.
from the industry.

Patterns of plantings using grain, vegetables, and orchards.

Buffalo Grain Elevator Heritage Trail 69

Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

Strategy Two:
Heritage, Education,
and Recreation
Julia Kirton
Swapna Kulkarni
Priyanka Gupta

The proposed Grain Heritage Trail moves

along the Buffalo River among the various
elevators and other industrial buildings. It
is suggested that this trail offer diverse
experiences. The area near the Great
Northern Elevator on Kelly Island serve as
the urban center with a formal landscape
among the ruins, and a performance space
is located near the pools, reminiscent of
former slips. The areas near the Cargill
and Concrete Elevators are for more
active recreation such as biking and rock
climbing.

70 Buffalo Grain Elevator Heritage Trail

 Buffalo Grain Elevators

Section through Great Northern and Agway

Section of Great Northern Garden

Public space between grain elevators.

Buffalo Grain Elevator Heritage Trail 71

Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

72 Digital Trace
Joshua Price
 The Digital Trace:
Reconstructing Forms and Migrations

Joshua Price
Cornell University
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

The Digital Trace

Abandoned grain elevators stand as
imposing vertical punctuations on Buffalo’s
wind-swept industrial waterfront. This
vast, horizontal landscape was composed
at a scale that responded to the national
economy and expanding commercial
activity of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
It was a landscape constructed for
international connectivity, for ease of
transport, and as a corridor through which
goods were stored and moved.
A correlation between attrition, decay, and movement
as absence and neglect subsumes change.
How might this history of progress,
transportation, movement, attrition, and migratory element in and of itself. Like
decay not only be understood and those things which have abandoned this
interpreted, but also represented? One landscape -- people, industry, money -- this
strategy would be to acknowledge that the site must also “migrate” in order to once
long and colorful evolution of this place more be vital and renewed.
has been tied irrevocably to the notion of
“migration.” Such a strategy could reflect The digital realm (and the Internet) have
the movement of industry, people, goods, the potential to allow Buffalo’s industrial
and money into and out of the city. It could landscape to migrate across space. It
highlight Buffalo’s various forms of physical is the proposed vehicle through which
and cultural transportation, specifically the landscape’s theoretical and historical
the movement of its economy and its form may be realized and its migration
population from one place to another. accomplished. It is not sufficient to envision
Finally, it could identify a migration of form the site as a purely visual or textual item.
and landscape, a migration that transcends It must also be interpretive, interactive,
physical boundaries and subsumes decay. representative, and also inspirational.
A digital construction of Buffalo’s
Critical to this concept of migration is the industrial waterfront landscape should
notion of “movement.” People, money, and not be assembled to replace the actual
industry have vacated much of Buffalo’s landscape, but rather to provoke interest
waterfront locations. Currently, one could in it. This digital migration is a first step in
argue that the inherent possibilities of establishing a framework for interpretation,
this landscape lie not in the migration or design, and rehabilitation of a decaying
“movement” of people to this site, but in the site.
interpretation, intervention, manipulation
and design of the site as a moving, The proposed method for achieving this

In the environment of the digital trace, data creates form, indicates time, and imparts trends and histories.

74 The Digital Trace

Joshua Price
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

Invasive plant species line the roads and parking lots adjacent to the grain elevators and grow up through the many
fractures in the pavement. The succession of life and the ecological and aesthetic palette from which it was drawn
are visceral and tangible. Some things have migrated from the landscape and some have remained to weather and
change, representative of a past as much as a current condition.

The Digital Trace 75

Joshua Price
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

Cycles of movement and transportation.

digital migration is through the creation the representative trace of a presently
of the digital trace. The digital trace is a abandoned, weathering, decaying physical
three-dimensional line-form constructed form in Buffalo’s industrial landscape. Each
from two two-dimensional datasets. Due digital trace may be applicable to only one
to its inherent nature, the digital trace industry, one grain elevator, one history. It
is intrinsically linked to the specific data is this trace which possesses the potential
conditions from which it was created. The to migrate across space and to become
significance of the digital trace and its the over-arching physical and digital
potential to effectively render its original thread through which various applicable
composite information are entirely reliant data are used to compose an historical
on two distinct factors: time, and the interpretation, or digital representation,
perspective from which it is being viewed. of a place. The digital trace interprets
and designs the landscape of data, the
The data used to construct the digital landscape of memory, the landscape of
trace reside in specific and separate two- experience, the landscape of weathering,
dimensional forms (i.e., line graphs). the landscape of decay, and the landscape
Each form has a constant of time as of migration.
its z-axis component, with a variable x-
axis and y-axis. The digital trace, then, The physical act of viewing Buffalo’s
becomes a single interpretation of these grain elevators, comprehending their
varying datasets in a unique three- scale and extent of decay, walking around
dimensional corollary form. When viewed
orthographically, it is meaningless regarding
the portrayal of source data, but when
viewed in section displays a representative
two-dimensional dataset/condition.

In Buffalo’s industrial waterfront district,

each industry’s particular history is unique.
In this proposal, each digital trace relates
to the (subjective) conceptualization of that
industry’s history as represented through
certain datasets and via the line-form of the The digital trace is a cacophony of data and imagery when viewed
digital trace. This digital line-form becomes orthographically.

76 The Digital Trace

Joshua Price
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

to create a designed digital landscape

which is both a timeline and a multimedia
history contained within an abstracted form,
within an abstracted environment.

Depictor of a hypothetical digital trace and the relation-

ship between socioeconomic catalysts and the physical
forms they generate.

them, and hearing the various latent and

explicit sounds and textures inhabiting
this landscape – the literal remains of a
people and industry – is an experience
which is irreplaceable. Buffalo’s industrial
landscape offers a dynamic, unique quality
that cannot be duplicated. In a real sense,
it is a landscape of absence, where the
physical scale of the components, whether Joshua Price’s proposal was developed in a
the buildings or now abandoned parking Landscape Architecture Graduate Studio at Cornell
lots surrounding them, reflects a history University under the direction of Peter Trowbridge and
which is incredibly different from the present Aditya Pal.
condition. But it is this juxtaposition of
physical contrasts, scale, and ever-present
elements of decay which highlight a very
different and very complex past.

The proposed digital trace is not an attempt

to replace or recreate these qualities of this
site’s industrial history or even to generate
a history of this place. It is designed,
rather, to identify a specific pattern of
migration which was, and remains, an
inseparable component of Buffalo’s
industrial waterfront. Through the Internet
and other computer technologies, the
digital trace and its associated data are
intended to provide information regarding a
place by creating a unique physical journey
across space via the digital realm. Just as
money, jobs, goods, and people migrated
into, through, and out of Buffalo, so does
the digital trace “migrate” through its own
distinct mode.

The digital trace is a model for

interpretation, representation, and designed
migration. Visual, textual, and/or auditory
elements may be added to the digital trace Digital traces: view in section grain reciepts.

The Digital Trace 77

Joshua Price
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

78 Reforesting Buffalo’s Grain Elevator District

Catherine Callahan
 Reforesting Buffalo’s Grain
Elevator District

Houses of the Old First Ward Neighborhood, shadowed by grain elevators.

Catherine Callahan
Cornell University
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

Reforesting the Grain Architecture at Cornell University, led

by Halprin Fellow Aditya Pal and Peter
Elevator District Trowbridge. Our task was to create a
historical landscape interpretation for the
Scores of abandoned grain elevators line area that takes into account its rich and
the banks of the Buffalo River as it snakes unusual history.
its way through the edge of the city toward
Lake Erie. Massive buildings of concrete Site Issues and Strengths
and steel, the elevators stand as silent
witnesses to stories of a once bustling The waterfront area has to grapple with
industry and its accompanying canal issues of limited access, incompatible
system that connected the Midwest to industrial land uses, and pollution, along
New York City. Their slow decay provides with a depressed city economy resulting
a haunting backdrop for the empty streets in a lack of demand for real estate. These
and howling winds blowing off the lake. issues make the site unsuitable for typical
waterfront uses such as parks, residential
What can the city of Buffalo do to revitalize development, and waterfront recreation that
this treasured but dilapidated industrial have revitalized other cities. The elevator
landscape? This was the principal question district, although underutilized, is still a
posed by our graduate studio in Landscape working industrial area, populated by large
trucks and loud machinery. Cold winds
blow off Lake Erie, rendering the entire
district unpleasant in the winter. And much
of the waterfront soil is polluted with toxic
chemicals.

Nonetheless, the strengths of the district

are intriguing. The elevators themselves
are impressive constructions that speak of
a time when was Buffalo was a prosperous,
bustling city. It was the elevators that
ushered in Buffalo’s heyday, providing a
Process Collage means of storing grain in bulk from the

Elevators along the Buffalo River. The Great Northern is on the right.

80 Reforesting Buffalo’s Grain Elevator District

Catherine Callahan
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

Midwest until it could be transferred to

New York City and other Northeastern
destinations via the Erie Canal.

Today the small urban canals that once

served the area are filled in and paved over.
The New York State Thruway runs above
what was once the Erie Canal. The Ohio
Street Basin, once a turning basin for large
boats, is now a neighborhood park. Along
the southeastern edge, the site is bordered
by the Old First Ward district. This working
class Irish Catholic neighborhood housed
the “scoopers” who manned the elevators.
Their descendents still occupy the tiny
well-kept houses that sit in the elevator’s
looming shadows. Visitors who know the
history can find traces and remnants of the
story, but almost no interpretive signage
exists.

Form Follows Function

The early European modernist architects

such as Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier
recognized the stark beauty of Buffalo’s
grain elevators. They were drawn to the
elevators as the embodiment of the “form
follows function” ideal, which was a driving
tenet of the modernist movement. “Form
follows function” held that the aesthetics of
a design should be derived from its function.
As models of American efficiency, ingenuity,
and industrialization, the elevators’ design
was driven solely by the function of storing
grain. The buildings consist of rows of
huge cylindrical bins devoid of pretense,
decoration, or ornamentation. These bins
can be seen today in the exterior shapes
of the buildings, and it is these cylindrical
forms that are a defining element in the
Great Northern, Floor Plan
district’s landscape. (Source: Keplinger 1996)

A New Function

This design proposes a new interpretation

for the “form follows function” ideal by
revealing the form behind the function. This
is done by placing the floor plan of one of
the elevators, the Great Northern, over the
landscape. By bringing the floor plan out
into the landscape, the spatial form behind
the function is revealed. But there is a twist
here as the form loses its original function
or, alternatively, gains a new function. By
playing with modernist ideals, we can bring Process Collage

Reforesting Buffalo’s Grain Elevator District 81

Catherine Callahan
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

Process Collage

the essential forms of the elevators into the

landscape where they will relate visually to Clusters of existing elevators relate
the existing forms. to sections of the Old First Ward
neighborhood. The neighborhood relates
The floor plan of the Great Northern to the park, the park to traces of historic
Elevator was chosen as an archetype. canals, and the river to the elevators and
Built in 1899, composed of steel and brick, neighborhoods. Whatever new function
the Great Northern was an engineering these superimposed forms assume, they
advance in its day. Its form was adapted will create a visual dialogue with the tall
into concrete and used in grain elevators forms of the elevators.
around the world. As such, the cylindrical
form of the bins has become a kind of The Final Design
archetype of the grain elevator.
Through a reforestation model, the final
When the floor plan is laid over the site, design reappropriates the function of the
new relationships become visible, inscribed floor plan from that of housing grain to
within circular boundaries. housing plants. The process of revegetation

Process Sketch Process Sketch

82 Reforesting Buffalo’s Grain Elevator District

Catherine Callahan
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

The Final Design

follows a successional mode where

annuals (in this case grains) are followed
by meadow grasses, which are followed by
shrubs, then pines and finally hardwoods.
The reforestation proposal has several
social and environmental advantages. It
provides green space for the residents of
the neighborhood and for visitors to the site
and a habitat for birds, insects, butterflies,
and other wildlife, it filters runoff from area
hardscape, and finally, the plants provide a
level of phytoremediation in removing toxic Process Sketch
elements from the soil.

By inscribing the area in circles, the design

connects the grain elevators with the Ohio
Street Basin (now a community park) and
to the residential neighborhood of the First
Ward. Where possible, the connecting
spacers between the bins become paving
and overhead structures. Other site-specific
installations create a dialogue with the
grain elevators and their history including
the transportation of the area. For example,
huge letters, such as are on the sides of Process Sketch
the elevators, would be crafted out of steel
and placed along the old canals.

The grain elevators themselves remain as

an integral part of the design. As a visual
witness to the history of Buffalo’s heyday,
the elevators continue to decay, providing a
monolithic backdrop in the new landscape. Catherine Callahan’s proposal was developed in a
Landscape Architecture Graduate Studio at Cornell
University under the direction of Peter Trowbridge and
Aditya Pal.

Reforesting Buffalo’s Grain Elevator District 83

Catherine Callahan
Rediscovering Concrete Atlantis

84 Vertical Architecture: The Connecting Terminal

Mauro Cringoli and Rhona Vogt
 Vertical Architecture:
The Connecting Terminal

Connecting Terminal
(Courtesy of Mauro Cringoli)

Mauro T. Cringoli
Rhona Vogt
University at Buffalo, SUNY
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

Vertical Architecture:
The Connecting
Terminal
During the Fall 2002 semester, a graduate
architecture studio of the University
at Buffalo, School of Architecture was
organized by Associate Professor Frank
Fantuazzi. The studio was named
“Farewell Horizontal” after the title of a
science-fiction novel by K.W. Jeter, in which
he describes a society that lives within
a colossal cylinder. The primary focus of
the studio, like the novel, was to explore
vertical space in relation to the human
body.

The studio explored methods and issues

stemming from the potential adaptive
reuse of grain elevators: the material,
structural, and spatial possibilities that
re-inhabiting the elevators provides. The
Connecting Terminal, located on 100
Furhmann Boulevard, became the specific
grain elevator used by the studio. The
Connecting Terminal was recorded and
documented on site, as this data was
vital to the student design processes.
The studio was to develop a housing
scheme, the provisional program type. The
proposals were to provide considerable
flexibility in accommodating numerous
rehab approaches. Each student selected
the specific number and type of units to be
included in their projects as their decisions
were to be consistent with their design and
organizational strategies.

Many different types of projects came out

of the studio. Every student focused on a
different concept of the mammoth concrete
cylinders. Gordon Matta-Clark was evoked
in one project, while another focused on
transformable living spaces. This article
presents only two of the projects, yet clearly
indicates the range of what the students
produced.

Plan of Concrete Central

(Source: City of Buffalo)

86 Vertical Architecture: The Connecting Terminal

Mauro Cringoli and Rhona Vogt
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

Project One
Rhona Vogt

This project began with the idea of an

endo- and exo-skeleton. New rebar would
wrap around the forms of the elevators,
creating web of structure. Once this
skeleton is in place, new additions can be
inserted into it. These additions would bear
their weight on the framework rather than
that of the original structure. In this case,
the original structure can be removed by
each individual tenant according to their
desires.

Inserted into the cylinders are fabric tent

structures. They would be designed to fit
the user’s needs. The tent skin would attach

to the elevator at the skeletal formwork

in the form of tension cables. Since the
formwork covers the elevator, there
are endless possibilities of connections
between the two. This arrangement also
gives the user/tenant an endless range
of possibilities for rearrangement of their
space. Fenestration and entrances would
connect to the skeletal formwork and the
fabric structure would stretch to meet them.

Once the fabric structures are inserted, the

tenants can remove the original concrete
of the structure to let light into their space
as they please. This in turn would create a
constantly evolving form that would be the
result of the elevator’s inhabitants.

Vertical Architecture: The Connecting Terminal 87

Mauro Cringoli and Rhona Vogt
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

Project Two
Mauro Cringoli

Because of the grain elevator’s repetitive within their dwelling. For example, the
plan, architecture can be developed within approximate time for brushing teeth is
the parameters of a single hollow cylinder. three minutes. This measurement, along
This scheme stresses the relationship of with all other necessary tasks throughout a
machine-like functions to the elevator. typical day at home, can provide sequence
in time, which can be expressed into a
Form and time were equally important spatial order. The spatial arrangement is
factors during slip-form construction, organized by sequences into individual
as concrete setting time was vital. The floors within different levels for consuming,
cylindrical form provided the maximum entertaining, cleansing, meditating, and
compressive strength to hold grain. The sleeping.
towering height of the elevators also
allowed ease of mobility and proximity The user engages the dwelling space by
for the elevator’s marine leg as grain was inserting themselves from the top of the
lifted into and stored within each bin. Each elevator and proceeding down on a circular
cylinder too, allowed workers to monitor five foot diameter elevator through each
and record the quality and life of stored sequenced level.
grain at various times of the year.

Architecture proposals were formulated

based on human scale and human timing.
This was achieved by standardizing the
average day or schedule of an inhabitant

88 Vertical Architecture: The Connecting Terminal

Mauro Cringoli and Rhona Vogt
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

This work was prepared in an Architectural Graduate

Studio at the University of Buffalo, SUNY under the
direction of Frank Fantauzzi.

Vertical Architecture: The Connecting Terminal 89

Mauro Cringoli and Rhona Vogt
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

90 A Proposal for Concrete Central

Ivonne Jaeger
 A Proposal for
Concrete Central

Concrete Central Elevator

(Photo by Ivonne Jaeger)

Ivonne Jaeger, Architect

Halle (Salle), Germany
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

A Proposal for
Concrete Central

Waste lands are the inverse face of urbanization,

the abandoned areas, the unfulfilled obligation
of the city, its negative.
Jacques De Courson

The buildings [Buffalo’s grain elevators] are

like individuals with their own history . . . and
passing time shapes their personality, like it
does with us humans. itself, and even fewer visit the industrial
Gerrit Engel heritage along the Buffalo River and Lake
Erie. The Buffalo River is quiet. Most of the
silos, the symbols of Buffalo’s industrial
Industrial production in the last century history, are completely cut off from their
created large volumes of goods for industrial life line. They are dilapidated, and
storage and manufacturing that required parts have been torn down. The buildings
the unique collection of Buffalo’s grain stand neglected, with broken windows and
elevators. The elevators also demonstrate graffiti, and most of them are full of junk.
that if the economic conditions change, They appear, as Reyner Braham already
and manufacturing declines, the industrial wrote in 1986, “like an avenue of mighty
landscape that remains is seen as useless. tombs.”1
Without reuse and investment, solutions
for these areas are often seen solely in One notable abandoned grain elevator,
terms of demolition and new construction. the largest elevator built on the Buffalo
Often, demolition reserves the land without River, is the Concrete Central Elevator.
a specific plan; communities create such The building, abandoned since 1966, is
areas for new investments, though for a museum of silence. It has the particular
years no users are found. hollow acoustics and the smell of
abandoned buildings built of concrete and
Buffalo has a huge potential to lure tourists steel. The steel skeletons of the marine
with its cultural and industrial heritage. towers are rusty and peel like a leprous
Fifteen of Buffalo’s large grain elevators skin. Wall panels of the towers fall apart
remain. Furthermore, the Buffalo/Niagara and reveal the inside of the towers. It gives
region, which includes Niagara Falls, the impression that the resistance of the
attracts approximately twelve million building is weakening.
tourists per year. However, just a few of
those tourists spend their time in Buffalo

The path provides a glimpse of the landscape outside for a short moment, and immediately retracts back into the
darkness of the bin.

92 A Proposal for Concrete Central

Ivonne Jaeger
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

positions of
the body in space

section

A Proposal for Concrete Central 3

Ivonne Jaeger
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

as Juhani Pallasmaa emphasizes: “[T]he

Modernist design has housed the intellect
and the eye, but it has left the body and
the other senses as well as our memories
and dreams homeless.”2 Karen A. Franck
and R. Bianca Lepori affirm that “[w]e are
distanced both from the past experience
and from present sources of sensation.”3
My proposal brings the user close to the
life that the building sustains and attempts
to awake bodily experiences.

“We understand our surroundings if we

interact with them.”
Franck and Lepori4

To understand the elevator, I cut a

new path through the building using the
geometry of an ellipse that intersects
If we look straight ahead, we see the sequence of cuts. the different physical conditions in the
In some locations, the path intersects the outside walls, elevator. The ellipse shows various
so that light slices through the darkness of the bins. sectional moments in the silos, reveals the
inside and the outside, and shows all the
The new program for Concrete Central, I different parts of the building including the
suggest, would transform the elevator into basement, the bins, the top of the elevator,
a vibrant place. If citizens and tourists are and the marine towers.
given a reason to come to the site and
experience the elevator, the building would My design aims at images belonging to the
again be filled with movement instead of industry of grain transshippment and thus
stillness and emptiness. The project would to the site: track systems and movement.
also keep what is interesting about the People experience the space in a moving
elevator: the existing, fascinating character sphere on a newly installed track system.
of industrial ruins, their history, and the The sphere designed for one single person
traces of their past. can be reoriented. Our relationship to
all the cells in the building is structured
Architecture should offer very special by the position and the location of our
spatial experiences that speak to our bodies. Depending on the location of the
whole sensory realm. Today’s architecture sphere in the building, it turns upwards
relies heavily only on the visual sense, or downwards, to the left or to the right,

We experience the space of Concrete Central in a sphere Our gaze unconsciously projects the body onto the walls,
that can be reoriented. we recognize the immense size of the void. Imagine the
body being turned into the horizontal position in such a
bin: we would experience the entire length of the bin.

94 A Proposal for Concrete Central

Ivonne Jaeger
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

forwards or backwards. This reorienting REFERENCES

of the body calls our attention to special 1
Banham, Reyner (1986). A Concrete Atlantis: U.S.
situations and views in the elevator. Industrial Buildings and European Modern Architecture
1900 - 1925. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 20.
The design also recognized the realm of
hearing. Being inside the bins, one hears 2
Pallasmaa, Juhani (1996). The Eyes of the Skin:
the long sound of an echo. The sound puts Architecture and the Senses. London: Academy
one in direct interaction with the physical Edition, 10.
space. The ear experiences the impact of
the cylindrical form and the material of the 3
Franck, Karen A. and Leponi, R. Bianca (2000)
bins, or, to use Pallasmaa’s words, “We Architecture Inside Out. London: Wiley - Academy, 16.
stroke the boundaries of the space with our
ears.”5 4
Franck and Leponi, 19.

5
This work is adapted from Ivonne Jaeger’s Masters Pallasmaa 1996 (note 2), 20.
Thesis at the Department of Architecture, University at
Buffalo, SUNY. Mehrdad Hadighi and Frank Fantauzzi
served as her Thesis Advisors.

A Proposal for Concrete Central 95

Ivonne Jaeger
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

96 Childs Street Music Center

Takushi Yoshida
 Childs Street
Music Center

(Drawing by Takushi Yoshida)

Takushi Yoshida
Columbia University
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

Childs Street unprecedented building forms of wood and

steel that performed the tasks of elevating,
Music Center weighing, distributing, and storing. High-
tech is the main phase of any machine
and in this phase, the building technology
Machine Aesthetic of Buffalo’s dramatically developed in response to
Grain Elevators increasing demand. As a result, a machine
takes on more sophisticated configurations
The Buffalo grain elevators are typical and forms, reflected in the abstract and
examples of abandoned industrial precise forms of concrete cylinders based
buildings. These are the buildings of “The on mathematical calculations of the
First Machine Age,” and their aesthetics grain elevators. This new aesthetic was
had a large influence on modern architects. powerful, elegant, and musical.
It is important to interpret these industrial
buildings deeply, first as products of the Dec-tech is the final phase of the evolution
machine age and second as contemporary of a machine. When newer and more
monuments whose value will be lost if they efficient machines or processes are
are torn down. created, an old machine is abandoned.
Gleaming metal turns to rust, glass
I have focused on the aesthetic meanings shatters, and concrete becomes overgrown
of the elevators as machines. The grain with weeds. These signs imply death,
elevator was invented to handle and store impersonality, and as a result, a fear of
grain in an efficient way; it is a “machine” the machine. The aesthetic experience of
for grain trading. When we see the grain death and decay is the reverse aesthetic of
elevators historically, we can find that life and order.
they have created distinctive machine
aesthetics. These distinctions can be Dec-tech is an inevitable and very important
separated into the following phases: Paleo- phase of a machine because it tells us
tech, High tech, and Dec-tech (Decayed, about not only the high time of machines
Decreased, and Decadent). but also their negative side. In rethinking
and reusing machines at this stage, it is
When the grain elevator was invented, it important to keep and reveal the aesthetics
created a new configuration in response of Dec-tech.
to its functions and the new configuration
led to a new form. Buffalo’s grain
elevators in the Paleo-tech period created
DEC - Decayed, De-
creased, Decadent

PRE-TECH PALEO-TECH HIGH-TECH DEC-TECH

Ruin
Use Value

Wood Elevator Steel Elevator Concrete Elevator

Nature

1800 1825 1842 1900 1954 1959 2000

The opening of The opening of the St.

the Erie canal Lawrence Seaway

98 Childs Street Music Center

Takushi Yoshida
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

Project: A Music Center curved lines to follow the train tracks. At

night, the grain elevators are lighted to
Considering the size of the buildings, it emphasize the primary forms of tubes and
is more appropriate to accommodate a boxes.
program that requires large spaces rather
than an assembly of many small rooms. The Design Strategies
program should also be public, considering
the historical and cultural significance of the I used three strategies to intervene into
elevators. I propose converting the complex the existing structures: infilling, imposing,
on Childs Street into a music center. Not and opening. “Infilling” uses the existing
all of the buildings on the site are to be structure as it is, such as a concrete bin’s
filled with new program. Some parts of the wall as a wall of the new use. “Imposing”
buildings are left so that visitors can see is the method of inserting a new structure
and walk through these spaces and learn inside of the existing structure, independent
how grain elevators worked. of, yet enclosed by, the existing structure.
As for “opening,” the concrete bins are cut
The Music Center consists of a performance thinly in order to preserve the aesthetics
theater, a concert hall, a music academy, and minimize structural interruption.
a museum of musical instruments, and a
recording studio. This new Music Center
takes advantage of the form of the grain
elevator.

In order to preserve the machine aesthetics

of Dec-tech, I have kept the current
decayed exterior of grain elevators as intact
as possible, including rust on steel and dirt
and moss on concrete surfaces. At the
same time, I maintained the layer of nature
that has already appeared on the site.

Visitors take moving walks to approach

the center of the site and the elevators.
The circulation is an interpretation of the
mechanism of grain shipping and the
enclosed moving walks are designed as

Childs Street Music Center 99

Takushi Yoshida
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

The Peavey Company Elevator new floor the old bins exist, visible through
the glass used in parts of the main floor.
The Peavey Company Elevator consists of On the ground level, there are existing
twelve by four bins in parallel rows. The machineries such as conveyers. The newly
diameter of a tube is twenty-four feet and installed transparent elevator in the main
ten inches, and the height is eighty-nine lobby takes people up to the roof level of
feet and eight inches. ninety feet to enjoy the view of the city.

I converted the Peavy Company Elevator Electric Elevator Annex

into a concert hall for 1,800 people. To
accommodate the space, the internal The Electric Elevator annex is a very
twenty tubes have been removed. In order unusual elevator. It seems to have seven
to make most of this narrow form, the shoe rows of fifteen bins, but inside it is hollow
box type traditional audience format like and not filled with concrete tubes. Instead,
Grosser Musikvereinssaal in Vienna has it is divided into six large rooms. One-third
been adopted, and the outer bins are used of a tube section is open vertically except
for balcony seats. the ones in the center row. The diameter of
a tube is thirty feet and the height is ninety
The new floor is detached from the feet.
concrete bins so that visitors can see the
whole bins from top to bottom. Below the

100 Childs Street Music Center

Takushi Yoshida
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

I converted the Electric into a performance

theater. The adaptive reuse includes
one large theater for 2,400 people and
one small one for 600 people. In order to
accommodate the new structures, some of
the concrete tubes inside were removed.
Visitors enter on the ground level and
take escalators up to the main lobby. This
routine mimics the way grain was elevated
for shipping.

For the Electric, I have adapted the strategy

of “imposing.” The large theater has a box
form with double balcony. The small theater
has a wide tube form and an arena style
seating.

The theater consists of three structural

systems: concrete bin, theaters, and
interstitial floors. They are structurally
independent and the connections are made
by bridges. The bridge is of steel grating
so that people can recognize that they are
walking through one system to another.
Between the existing walls and the new
structures there is a gap to differentiate the
new forms from the original building.

This work is adapted from Takushi Yoshida’s Masters

Thesis in Historic Preservation at Columbia University.
Professor Bentel served as his Thesis Advisor.

Childs Street Music Center 101

Takushi Yoshida
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

102 Silo Dreams

Hadas Steiner
 Silo Dreams:
The Grain Elevator
and Modern Architecture

Washburn-Crosby Silo in Buffalo, NY.

(Courtesy of Buffalo and Erie County Public Library)
Hadas Steiner
School of Architecture and Planning
University at Buffalo, SUNY
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

Silo Dreams which began with the first elevator built

in Buffalo in 1842.3 With more and more
The ability to hoard was at the heart of the vessels arriving in the newly dredged
Neolithic economy that gave birth to the Buffalo harbor after the opening of the
earliest known cities, and that capacity Erie Canal, invention was applied to the
continued to fuel urban development until process of loading and unloading grain by
the threshold of the twentieth century.1 local entrepreneur Joseph Dart, and his
Agricultural abundance, however, relied engineer, Robert Dunbar. The distinctive
on the efficiency and capacity of a system feature of the large shed by Dart and
devised to preserve surplus, and much Dunbar was not its wooden container
effort was invested over time in the which had the contours of a large barn,
improvement of storage. By the era of the but a vertical system that combined the
imposing cylinders that would transform the extant mechanisms of the bucket conveyor,
destiny of Buffalo, New York, the technology steam engine, and rope-and-pulley power
introduced by the ceramic jar had increased train to replace the time-consuming job of
manifold in scale. A peculiarly American stevedores. The system was so expedient,
socioeconomic process, from the vast reducing what had been a week of labor
dimensions of agricultural big business to to a matter of hours, that subsequent
the individual tales of immigrant laborers, storage facilities followed the Dart model.
crystallized in the form of a vertical Ultimately, though, fires in the bins,
architectural machine designed to draw whether started by the self-combustion that
bulk grain from arriving lake vessels and occurs when grain is stocked in confined
spout it to departing canal barges, as well conditions or the airborne cinders from
as store and protect it from rodents, damp, nearby locomotives, made experiments
and combustion.2 Now more or less devoid in the 1890s with steel, ceramic tile, and,
of their function as part of such a network, later, concrete, more economical than the
the colossal, often empty bins retain the continuous cycle of rebuilding. During this
symbolic essence of an urbanism built on period of experimentation, the physical
commodity exchange. properties of stored grain were studied,
and tall cylinders were adopted as the
The grain elevators clustered along the standard form for the bins. In the end, the
inner and outer harbors of the Buffalo advantages of concrete meant that by the
River and Lake Erie are the culmination second decade of the twentieth century,
of more than a century of experimentation the material came to be used for most large

American Elevator as seen in Mendelsohn’s 1926 Amerika.

104 Silo Dreams

Hadas Steiner
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

elevators, as is the case with most which A Concrete Atlantis made the claim that the
remain on the Buffalo waterfront. quintessence of European modernism was
rooted in two types of American industrial
Another story, this time one beyond buildings, the daylight factory and the
the confines of the grain business, grain elevator, and that the “dialectical
begins where the generation of form confrontation between sculptural forms and
by social and economic forces ends. In gridded space,” which defined the influential
the 1910s and 1920s, photographs of style of Le Corbusier, derived from “the
grain elevators circulated in European closed forms of American industrial storage
architectural publications dedicated to containers and of the openly gridded loft
modern architecture, prominent Buffalo space of regular American factories.”6
examples included. That the functional Usually the work of Auguste Perret is cited
dictates of grain storage could produce the as the earliest architectural application
uncontrived beauty of the platonic cylinder of reinforced concrete and, in fact, many
was taken as proof of modernist values. of the techniques and patents used in the
Such industrial buildings, it followed, were American structures that the modernist
at least as modern as any contemporary would admire came from Europe. But the
architecture with masterly authors, such early European examples are miles from
as Louis Sullivan or Frank Lloyd Wright. the aesthetic of the silo: only after WWII
On the authority of these images, avant- does such weighty rawness make an
garde European architects began to design impact on European architecture in any
non-industrial buildings that resembled measurable way.7 Banham’s conviction
an American industrial type that they had was that the use of reinforced concrete
never physically experienced. Thus images was more hardheaded when applied to
of grain elevators influenced the way that economic conditions in the United States,
Europeans thought about the general state rather than to formal considerations within
of American architecture, as well as the the effete world of design. Thus Banham’s
developing aesthetic of modernism and the discussion of the massive elevators as
discussion over the future course of the fundamental to the modernist imagination
discipline. at the same time as the theory and practice
of lightweight architecture was heading
As Reyner Banham observed in his book towards the transparency of steel and glass
A Concrete Atlantis: U.S. Industrial Building was, indeed, an ideological innovation.8
and European Modern Architecture (1986),
despite the avid interest of the modernists It has been said that Banham’s text is not
in functional structures, the influence of thorough or extensive enough to do the
grain elevators on the development of a subject of the American industrial legacy
non-industrial architectural aesthetic had justice.9 Indeed, A Concrete Atlantis is
not been critically considered. Banham, an not a history of industrial building in the
influential British architectural critic, was United States, or even in Buffalo, nor
struck by this gap in the historical narrative its relationship to European modern
when he came to teach in Buffalo at the architecture. The strength of the argument
State University of New York from 1976 to lies in revealing the richness of what others
1980.4 Banham had trained with one of the had disregarded as “tons of deserted,
eminent historians of classic modernism, decaying concrete.”10 By the time the
Nikolaus Pevsner, and had already built European modernists took note of the
an iconoclastic reputation through the elevators and proclaimed them to be
controversial study of the forgotten roots pioneering technology, they were, from an
of modernist technological ideology.5 industrial point of view, on their way out.
The experience of Buffalo’s industrial By the time Banham recalled international
legacy was a notable one for Banham, attention to the legacy of Buffalo’s
and he forcibly argued a case for the elevators, a number of the featured
crucial aesthetic role that these utilitarian structures had already disappeared.
structures had played beyond their regional Indeed, the text includes a lengthy plea for
function. the protection of industrial buildings from
the fate of Wright’s nearby Larkin Building,

Silo Dreams 105

Hadas Steiner
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

which had been demolished in 1950. notion that America was a place where
modernity was already a reality. Unfettered
The evaluation of the grain elevator by the historicist considerations of style and
by European architects as a beautiful other corruptions of Old World civilization,
form was itself a transformation that the American engineer produced solutions
accompanied the shift from wood, via steel that derived their aesthetics from the
and tile, to concrete. The British novelist pure application of mathematics to need.
Anthony Trollope had compared the early Structural inevitability was to modernism
elevators with their lifting mechanisms what the “State of Nature” had been to the
unfavorably to elephants in the 1860s, as Enlightenment philosopher: the equivalent
would his compatriot, Rudyard Kipling, of a vernacular for industrial times.
in 1889. For Trollope, the structures Such belief in the purity of engineering
were like dreadful monsters with “great supposed that twentieth century grain
hungering stomachs and huge unsatisfied storage facilities did not draw on historical
maws” standing amongst the chaos of the precedent, for industrial architecture, thus
docks.11 Local people, if the press is any modern architecture, was not supposed to
indication, agreed with their guest literati have antecedents but to spring fully from
that the elevators were “indescribably the present demands of function, material,
ugly structures” with “naught all regard and construction. That, in sum, is what the
for architectural ethics and producing the slogan “form follows function” entails.
most horrible extreme to ‘a thing of beauty
and joy forever’” -- in short, as the byline By now it is common knowledge that
claimed: “Examples of hideousness in Modernism (not to mention the logistics of
Architecture.” There is still public sentiment grain storage) drew inspiration from what
that the elevators are not only unsightly came before.13 If rationalism had been
but, now empty, pose a threat to health and sufficient to generate form, why would
the economic development of the desolate it be that, as Banham asks, “a design
Buffalo waterfront. school could look like a factory, or an
apartment block in Paris could resemble an
The awe generated by firsthand observation automobile plant in the Detroit suburbs?”14
in the latter half of the nineteenth century Poring over the paradigmatic monuments
contrasts with the photographic encounter of the great architects alone will not suffice
that inspired architects in the early twentieth to explain such contradictions. Without
century. The avant-garde had the romantic knowing about the development of the
daylight factory, for example, one would
be at a loss to understand why the Fagus
Shoe Factory by Walter Gropius would
be touted as the first truly modern work of
architecture. Resemblance to industrial
buildings, to silos or factories, was an
available iconography for the promise of
functional honesty, structural economy,
and, above all, up-to-the-minute structural
engineering. Utopian, in the old-fashioned
sense of remote in place but not in time
from the European experience, America
was, literally and figuratively, “a concrete
Atlantis.”

Banham’s interest in American industrial

buildings may have come into focus
during his time in Buffalo, but he, like the
modernists before him, had first seen
the grain elevators as hazy images.
Washburn-Crosby Elevator in three different cities. Reproduced alongside seminal texts of
(Source: Banham 1986, 209) architectural modernism, the photographic

106 Silo Dreams

Hadas Steiner
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

subjects were intended as an iconography than a year soliciting these pictures from
of pure geometry and clear construction. sources in America and Canada.15 Many
The association of elevators with pure of the images do appear to be drawn from
form appears to have entered modernist the repertoire of the American concrete
consciousness via Wilhelm Worringer’s industry, but some of them had been
comparison of contemporary silos to the published in the general media before.
monuments of ancient Egyptians in his The Dakota image, according to William J.
celebrated text, Abstraction and Empathy Brown, was a reprint of a “garishly colored”
(1908). In addition to the fact that the postcard published by the Buffalo Evening
concrete silos bore an uncanny likeness News in 1903.16 The photo of the Buenos
to the massive columns of New Kingdom Aires silo, as Mark Jarzombek has pointed
temples, ancient Egypt was associated out, was published in 1909 in the popular
with the history of grain storage through the magazine Illustrirte Zeitung as part of a
biblical story of Joseph stockpiling grain for feature on the turbine engine.17
the seven years of famine, as well as the
myth that the pyramids functioned as silos. It is also clear that whatever the source,
little was known of the structures in the
Struck by the resemblance, Walter Gropius photographs. Neither the Dakota nor the
likened American industrial buildings to Washburn Crosby elevators illustrated
architecture where symbol and structure the argument that formal clarity follows
are unified as they are in the pyramids function, for example.18 The particularities
in his classic Jahrbuch des Deutschen of materials were reduced to grey-scale;
Werkbundes essay, “Die Entwicklung diverse physical locations, from harbor to
moderner Industriebaukunst” (1913). The prairie, were unaccounted for, as was the
layout of the article intensified the force of fact that many of the sites were the product
visual example by inserting seven pages of agglomeration over time. Regardless
of illustrations before the text. As such, of their origin, photographic quality, or
images of grain elevators and factories, technical content, however, Gropius’
including the tile Washburn-Crosby complex illustrations became a staple of modernist
(1903) and the steel Dakota Elevator doctrine. The influence of silo aesthetics
(1901, demolished in 1966) of Buffalo, were was palpable across the ideological field
what the reader first encountered. Gropius of avant-garde practitioners, from Antonio
also included concrete examples, but Sant’Elia and his designs for the futurist
these were located in Canada and South Città Nuova (1914), to Erich Mendelsohn’s
America. In 1913, Gropius’ conclusion that energetic, expressionistic sketches of
America -- rather than Germany -- was the elevators made from these illustrations.
‘Industrial Motherland’ would have come In 1919, Le Corbusier asked Gropius if he
as a surprise the industrialists, artists, and could use some of the elevator photographs
architects to whom the manifesto was most in the French architectural magazine,
immediately addressed. L’Espirit Nouveau. The influence might have
ended here. However, in 1927, some of
Little tangible is known about how Gropius these images reappeared in LeCorbusier’s
came to possess these relatively esoteric Towards a New Architecture, which rapidly
photographs. Nonetheless, because of
the primacy placed on the imagery and
the subsequent wide-ranging circulation
of these uncommon images, the source
continues to the subject of scholarly
interest. Banham notes that the once
current legend that Carl Benscheidt (for
whom Gropius designed the Fagus Shoe
Factory and offices) came back from
America with a package of images from
the Atlas Portland Cement Company is
Washburn-Crosby Elevator as published in Walter Gropius,
unlikely. Sigfried Giedion, according to Jarbuch des Deutschen Werbundes, 1913
Banham, reported that Gropius spent more (Courtesy of the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library)

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Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

distinct and tangible within us and without

ambiguity. It is for this reason that these
are beautiful forms, the most beautiful
forms. Everybody is agreed to that, the
child, the savage and the metaphysician.19

Le Corbusier then listed what cultures had

architecture -- Egyptian, Greek and Roman
-- because they built pure volumes, and
which did not -- the Gothic is dismissed
as a sentimental fight against the forces
of gravity. Le Corbusier declared in
summation: “Thus we have the American
grain elevator and factories, the magnificent
FIRST FRUITS of the new age. THE
AMERICAN ENGINEERS OVERWHELM
WITH THEIR CALCULATIONS OUR
EXPIRING ARCHITECTURE.”20 The
structural rationale of cylindrical storage,
together with the solution of packing the
circular bins to eliminate wasted space
in the floor plan, was celebrated by Le
Corbusier as “Forms assembled in light.”
Sant’Elia Power Station 1913
(Courtesy of Costa Meyer, 1995)
Of all the photographs Le Corbusier
borrowed from Gropius, that of the Buenos
Aires silo is now the most famous, less for
what is in the image than for what is not. A
comparison of the Jahrbuch with Towards
a New Architecture reveals the transition
the image underwent in the journey from
one manifesto to the next. The silo, under
the misleading caption “Canadian Grain
Stores and Elevators,” has lost its chain
Sketches of Silos by Mendelsohn, 1914-1915 of pediments and a passing train. Touch-
(Source: Bahnham 1986, 10) ups have been done to a variety of details,
achieved the reputation of the book of the including the verticals of the cylinders, in
new era. order to strengthen the visual experience
of pure form and make the association
Le Corbusier’s heavily image dependent with the serial uprights of ancient Egyptian
strategy in Towards a New Architecture and Greek architecture appear more
(emulated in A Concrete Atlantis) relied convincing. In sum, Le Corbusier altered
on the juxtaposition of imagery and bold this image significantly to better suit his
assertions. He began his polemic with what purposes. Others unknowingly reproduced
he called the ‘Three Reminders’ of the Le Corbusier’s composition, including,
essence of architecture: mass, surface, and coming full circle, Wilhelm Worringer,
plan. The elevators, including the Dakota, who compared this altered image with a
sat alongside the elaboration of the very drawing of a royal burial tomb in his text on
first of the reminders, that on ‘Mass.’ Le Ägyptische Kunst (1927).21
Corbusier stated unequivocally: After Le Corbusier, numerous accounts of
architecture in both Europe and America
Our eyes are made to see forms in light; included the elevators as modern icons,
light and shade reveal these forms; cubes, from Bruno Taut’s Modern Architecture
cones, spheres, cylinders or pyramids (1929), which introduced a new elevator
are the great primary forms which light from the Buffalo waterfront, Concrete
reveals to advantage; the image of these is Central (1915-17) to a European audience,

108 Silo Dreams

Hadas Steiner
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

to Vincent Scully’s American Architecture to emphasize how all the extant elevators
and Urbanism (1969). In the manifesto in the world relate to each other as an
for the next aesthetic transition generally architectural type. The photographs of Lisa
known as postmodernism, Learning From Mahar-Kepliger have been compared by
Las Vegas (1972), Le Corbusier’s love Aldo Rossi to black and white etchings for
of grain elevators became proof of its bringing out “the purity of the geometries,
opposite: the unwavering importance of the clarity of construction, the relationship
analogy, symbol, and image over function with the landscape . . . the fresco of the
in architecture, despite all insistence American countryside constructed of a few
otherwise. And the Italian architect Aldo essential items: the grain elevator, a few
Rossi flouted Le Corbusier, calling grain trees and telephone poles give us a scene
elevators “the cathedrals of our time,” and much like the profiles of the hills in the films
admiring them, not for purity of volume, but of John Ford.”23
for their marking “the passage of time, the
slow evolution of a collective work.”22 The cooption of U.S. industrial buildings
for an international vision of architecture
In addition to the reproductions that make also provoked response from American
up the modernist record and the images artists in all media. To the American eye,
of demolished structures that compose these facilities looming on the horizon were
the historic one, the grain elevators have much more than a functionally determined
often been the subject of documentation machine. As Kevin Lippert has observed,
processes, as they were in the photographs they embodied the realities of the American
that Dorothea Lange famously took for the landscape, the passing of the family farm,
Farm Security Administration. There are changes in modes of transport, and the
typological projects, like those undertaken death of urban waterfronts.24 Karal Ann
by the Bechers, in which all the variables Marling has evocatively analyzed the
external to the building (weather, sky, scale) painting of the John W. Eshelman and Sons
are made as uniform as possible in order grain elevator in Lancaster, Pennsylvania
by Charles Demuth, My Egypt (1924), as
“bound up with the experiential dimension
of American history.”25 Frank Gohlke has
explored the scale and verticality of the
structures as an integral part of the dynamic
and shifting landscape over which they
loom.26 The more recent state of ruin has
also been called on, whether to show the
awkwardness of a form that has outlived its
function, or whether to raise metaphysical
questions about the passage of time, as
in Charles Sheeler’s Classic Landscape
(1931). In their state of disrepair, the
elevators take on a monumental, romantic
air, not unlike the effect of a crumbling
cathedral.27

Plenty of American photographers, Wright

Morris, Ansel Adams, and Ralston Crawford
included, have emphasized precisely what
the modernists loved in their photographs:
strong geometry and stoic mass. There are
also the ones by Patricia Layman Bazelon,
which Banham used to illustrate his own
empirical tour. Usually Banham took his
own shots, but this time he commissioned
Page from Le Corbusier’s Towards a New Architecture that uses the photographs from Bazelon taken with the
grain elevators for a treatise on mass.
(Source: LeCorbusier 1965, 31) purpose of making a formal impression.

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Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

Yet, as beautiful as Bazelon’s photographs “based almost exclusively on photographic

are, many of the reproductions in A evidence rather than on the ancient
Concrete Atlantis are, in keeping with the and previously unavoidable techniques
tradition of how the elevator must appear of personal inspection and measured
on the pages of an architectural polemic, drawing.”29 The modernists studied the
small and grainy. Whole pages of the elevators from photographs that had been
Yearbook and Towards a New Architecture drawn from unattributed sources and
that feature the elevators have themselves then badly reproduced; to fill in the gaps,
become images in Banham’s book, just as Banham went on an old-fashioned tour of
the images of elevator were in them. the objects themselves. Standing before
the monuments though, Banham returned
It is obvious that the importance of the grain to the small grainy reproductions that he
elevators to Modernism as an aesthetic knew so well. Photographs in hand, he
movement had little to do with the nitty-gritty tried to match them with what stood before
of slip-form construction or the workings of him decades later. This act returns to the
the belts, chutes, and pulleys about which, basic distinction, one that is particularly
it appears, the modernists knew close to pertinent to the act of preservation: what is
nothing.28 It is unlikely that they would have the difference between learning things from
inquired about the constant and dusty work firsthand experience and extrapolating from
involved in grain storage that took place in a photograph, or, as in Banham’s case,
the galleries above and below the storage vice versa?
bins. They knew little of the history that led
to the concrete elevator they so admired, or The polarity between the experience of
even that it was a doomed archetype. After buildings and the experience of buildings
all, like most people, architects and non- in images has been important to the
architects alike, the European modernists epistemological model of architecture in
experienced the elevators abstractly. the twentieth century. The architects who
Banham made the evocative point that first relied on photography in place of
modernism (and here one should keep the firsthand experience implicitly accepted
sketches Mendelsohn made from Gropius’ that to look at photographic reproduction
grain elevator reproductions in mind) was equivalent to having seen what was
must be the first architectural movement depicted in it. Trade images were thought

Typological comparison of wooden elevators.

(Source: Mahar-Keplinger, 1996, 122-3)

110 Silo Dreams

Hadas Steiner
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

Washburn Crosby Elevator, presently General Mills. From E. Mendelsohn, Amerika, 1926
(Courtesy of the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library)
devoid of contrivances and free of historical the Washburn-Crosby elevator, in a
trappings. Documentary photographs were photographic essay, Amerika: Bilderbuch
a product of optical science, as Banham eines Architeckten.32 It is clear from his
writes, and were: captions that he was astonished, first with
the size of the elevators, then with their
supposedly free from the elements of formal elements. He reflected on the scale
personal selection and interpretation that of production as something rarely seen on
must inevitably infect any artistic rendering, the “old continent,” just as Trollope had on
or even the traditional production by his American tour some sixty years prior.
architectural draftsmen of finished Mendelsohn, now in the era of concrete,
drawings from field notes. The photographs recorded:
represented a truth as apparently objective
and modern as the structures they Elevator fortresses in the transshipment
portrayed.30 port at the northeastern end of Lake
Erie where the Niagara flows into it.
But, in fact, as confirmed by Le Corbusier Unplanned confusion, in the chaos of
tampering with the “objective” photos, the loading and unloading grain ships,
industrial technology produced a railroads and bridges. Monster cranes
vocabulary of forms whose conventions with gestures of living creatures, crowds
and proportions were no less explicit than of silo compartments of concrete, stone
those of the Classical Orders that required and enamel. Suddenly an elevator with
field trips. management, uniform layered facades
against the stupendous verticality of 100
Mendelsohn did make a Grand Tour: he cylinders . . . Childhood forms, clumsy,
came to Buffalo in 1924, so impressed had full of primeval power, dedicated to purely
he been by the pictures of the elevators practical needs. Primitive in their functions
that he had engaged with back home. of ingesting and spewing out again.
He was even more overcome when he Surprised by the coinciding needs, to some
saw them in person. He then proceeded extent a preliminary stage in a future world
to produce more visual documentation that is just beginning to achieve order . . .
for the European back home. He wrote If the will to organize becomes clear in this
to his wife in Berlin: “I took photographs way, then the delirium is transformed into
like mad. Everything else so far seemed boldness and the confusion into harmony.33
to have been shaped interim to my silo
dreams. Everything else was merely He also wrote: “A bare practical form
a beginning.”31 Mendelsohn published becomes abstract beauty.”34
some of these photographs, including At the end of the day, the interest was not

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Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

REFERENCES
in the calculations of engineers -- Gropius
and Le Corbusier used photographs, not 1. Louis Mumford, ”Ceramics, Hydraulics, and Geo-
technical drawings. Nor is it about the technics,” The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transfor-
accuracy of the record -- Banham’s text is mations, and Its Prospects (New York: Harcourt, Brace
marred by easily verifiable misattributions. and World, 1961) 15-17.
The interest is not even in the factual record 2. Robert B. Riley discusses how American agriculture
of personal experience -- Mendelsohn’s in the west was transformed by the shift from subsis-
elevators are labeled generically 1 through tence farming to farming for the eastern urban market.
4, and even mistake their geographical This new market dictated the focus on wheat over
location. The interest was, and remains, oats or corn, and required the shipping of that wheat
one of standing, as Banham did, in in bulk rather than bagged, which in turn required the
silence before these powerful monuments development of both a pricing and a grading system.
of abandoned industry and trying to In addition, the process required the development of a
imagine them as they were when Trollope time-efficient vertical unloading system to replace the
and Mendelsohn drew their aesthetic laborious transfer of grain sacks from the boats to the
conclusions. As they are now, in emulsion horizontally organized “flathouses.” See “Grain Eleva-
and in the field, the elevators carry the tors: Symbols of Time, Place and Honest Building,”
philosophical resonances of the everyday, AIA Journal 66, no. 12 (November 1977), 50-55.
of bigness, of the technological, of the 3. For the complete history of grain elevator construc-
elemental. tion in Buffalo, see Francis Kowsky, “Monuments of a
Vanished Prosperity” in this volume.
4. At SUNY, Banham taught in a structure that began
its life as a daylight factory, the now disused Bethune
Hall on Main Street.
5. Banham had already built a career in Britain out of
studying what others saw as pedestrian. He dwelt on
the utilitarian in the same manner that other historians
focused on the products of calculated artistic design.
For example, he had a written book on the urbanism
of Los Angeles that took “non-architecture,” such as
highways, hamburger stands, and surfboards, into ac-
Hadas Steiner is an Assistant Professor in the count. By comparison, grain elevators and factories
Department of Architecture, University at Buffalo, seem like classical objects for historical study. Ban-
SUNY. She participated in the Grain Elevator Project ham believed that the traditional history of buildings
as a member of the Advisory Group. and cities would have to be revised to account for all
forms of human structure, including anonymous build-
ings, not just those which participated in the self-refer-
ential realm of “high art.”
6. Reyner Banham, A Concrete Atlantis: U.S. Indus-
trial Building and European Modern Architecture, 1900
– 1925 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986), 3.
7. This style, influenced by the later work of Le Cor-
busier and the early work of Peter and Alison Smith-
son, came to be known as Brutalism.
8. It is not that none had registered this observation
before. Banham himself quotes the remarks of Walter
Curt Behrendt from 1927: “To do justice, it is neces-
sary to say, and this will probably surprise the reader,
that it was the example of America that gave the im-
pulse to the German architects when they first tried
to clarify the problem of structure. To be sure, this im-
pulse did not originate in the skyscraper . . . but the
simple structures of industrial building such as grain
elevators and big silos.” Quoted in Banham, 230-231.
The Kellogg Elevator as photographed by Mendelsohn
From Amerika, 1926 (Courtesy of the Buffalo and Erie County 9. Henry Baxter of AE Baxter Engineering has com-
Public Library) piled a list of factual errors in Banham’s history of the

112 Silo Dreams

Hadas Steiner
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

Buffalo elevators, including significant omissions and a Spring 1980, 25.

dozen factual errors regarding the elevators and their 26. Frank Gohlke, Measure of Emptiness: Grain El-
designers. For lists of other relevant material that Ban- evators in the American Landscape (Baltimore, MD:
ham did not cover – a sufficient explanation of how Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992).
this kind of architecture became known and assimi- 27. A classic example of this sentiment: “The elevators
lated in Europe; European examples of banks, stores, rise up out of the prairie like cities of dreams, towers
hotels, newspaper buildings, and offices; early work of gleaming silver or gold, or blinding white in the late
with reinforced concrete – see the reviews by Andrew day reflection of the sun. Up close you find they stand
Saint, AA Files 14 (Spring 1987), 106-8, and Elizabeth in ruins. Like an ancient castle in kingdoms that no
C. Cromley, Journal of the Society of Architectural His- longer work, they pierce the prairie sky with the soli-
torians 46, no. 3 (September 1987), 301-2. tude of their abandonment. Weathered and peeling,
10. Saint, 107. their windows gone, their doors awry, they are roost-
11. North America, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Lippincot, ing places for pigeons, places where time no longer
1962), 181. exists.” Ruth Rudner, “Grain Elevators,” Parabola 17,
12. “Ugly but profitable: The grain elevators of Buffalo: no. 1 (February 1992), 39.
Examples of hideousness in architecture – A wonder- 28. See, for example, the critique leveled by George
ful branch of the city’s commerce – Its inception and O. Carney in “Grain Elevators in the United States and
development,” The Buffalo Commerical (2 April 1891). Canada: Functional or Symbolic,” Material Culture 27,
Quoted in William J. Brown, “Walter Gropius and no. 1 (1995), 1-24.
Grain Elevators: Misreading Photographs,” History of 29. Banham, 18.
Photography 17, no. 3 (Fall 1993), 305. 30. Banham, 18.
13. The nineteenth century roots of modernism were 31. Banham, 6.
the subject of Banham’s dissertation, published as 32. In Technics and Civilization (New York: Harcourt
Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (London: Brace and Company, 1934), Louis Mumford reprinted
Architectural Press, 1960). one of Mendelsohn’s photographs alongside a refer-
14. Banham, 7. ence to Worringer.
15. Banham, 195. 33. Erich Mendelsohn, Amerika: Bilderbuch eines Ar-
16. Brown, 306. chitekten (Berlin: R. Mosse, 1926), 36-40. Translations
17. The IZ was a conservative magazine published taken from the reprint, Erich Mendelsohn’s Amerika
in Berlin. See Mark Jarzombek, “The Discourses of (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1993), 44-7.
a Bourgeois Utopia, 1904 – 1908, and the Founding 34. Aus nackter Zweckform wird abstrakte Schonheit.
of the Werkbund,” Rethinking German Modernism Mendelsohn, 40.
(Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art in conjunc-
tion with the J. P. Getty Center for the History of the
Humanities and the Arts), 131. Jarzombek has also
uncovered archival evidence that some of the images
were taken on an espionage mission disguised as a
cultural visit by a Germany seeking to overcome its
vulnerability to French attacks on the grain supply.
18. As William J. Brown has pointed out, the Dako-
ta’s inner mechanics and cylindrical bins could not
be seen in a photograph as they were sheathed in
steel. The distinction between the early tile cylinders
of the Washburn-Crosby and later concrete additions
was also not apparent from Gropius’ photograph. See
Brown, 107.
19. Towards a New Architecture (London: Architectural
Press, 1965), 31.
20. Towards a New Architecture, 33.
21. Munchen: R. Piper, 1927, 56. This transposition is
noted by Brown, 307.
22. Lisa Mahar-Keplinger, Grain Elevators (New York:
Princeton Architectural Press, 1993) 7.
23. Mahar-Keplinger, 7.
24. Mahar-Keplinger, 83.
25. Karal Ann Marling, “My Egypt: The Irony of the
American Dream”, Winterthur Portfolio 15, no. 1,

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Hadas Steiner
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

114 Challenging the Imagination

Tom Yots
 Challenging the Imagination:
Adaptive Reuse of Grain Elevators

(Courtesy of Granary Associates)

Thomas Yots, Historian

City of Niagara Falls, NY
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

Challenging the
Imagination
When we got to that . . . place, that grain
elevator, they took me on that . . . belt, and it
was scary because I couldn’t see anything and I
felt that I was swaying and I was going to fall off
. . . Finally when we got to the top, they pushed
me out of the walkway and told me not to turn or
move or else I would fall in . . . it was so small a
place to stand . . .
Lauren Balfour The recovery of the Industrial Landscape in the Emscher
Landscape Park. (Photo by Robert Shibley)

This segment of Lauren Balfour’s City of centuries. In the Neolithic village of Catal
Light (1999) takes place in the massive Hyuk, residents built their new mud brick
wooden Coatsworth Elevator on Buffalo’s dwellings on the foundations of earlier
waterfront. The author needed little help structures. An entire Medieval village
in creating the mood on the pages of her was built within the walls of a former
novel, since the mere mention of a grain Roman amphitheatre, reusing the walls as
elevator on Buffalo’s waterfront brings fortification for the village. Today, whether
to the reader images of intrigue, danger, shopping in the trendy shops of Boston’s
and fascination. Today, soaring concrete once wholesale market, Fanuel Hall, or
elevators are the last manifestation of the sipping cappuccino in the former chocolate
giant grain storage/processing machines on factory in Ghiardelli Square in San
Buffalo’s waterfront. Most of the elevators Franscisco, one can still feel the history
have been abandoned or are in minimal while experiencing the new use. In Buffalo
use at this time and they beg the question itself, SUNY’s School of Architecture and
as to what should be done with them. Planning has classrooms, studios, and
Demolition is financially prohibitive for the computer centers in rooms which once
monolithic concrete structures and it seems housed the inmates and staff of the local
doubtful that they will again see use as insane asylum. In another example, the
grain storing entitites. The answer appears great Gothic structure which was Buffalo’s
to be simpler: find new uses for these Main Post Office became the downtown
venerable structures, applying the concept campus of Erie Community College, saving
of adaptive reuse. a familiar local landmark while bringing new
life to a struggling neighborhood.
Adaptive reuse has been with us for
Industrial complexes offer a vast store
of material for adaptive reuse. From
daylight factory buildings to redeveloped
landfills, former industrial sites have been
successfully reconfigured for new uses.
One of the most extensive examples
of this is the Emscher Landscape Park
in Germany, where an entire region of
abandoned industrial sites has been
redeveloped into a vast park where
ecology is the theme and adaptive reuse
is the means to the end. Flowing through
Germany’s Ruhr Valley, the Emscher River
became an industrial sewer for the various
coal, steel, and chemical industries sited
along its banks. In the later 1980s, with
a population of over two million people
Bike riding in the former industrial site at Duisburg Nord Landscape and a high unemployment rate, attention
Park. (Photo by Robert Shibley)

116 Challenging the Imagination

Thomas Yots
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

attractive again.”2 The journal article

goes on to espouse adaptive reuse as a
way to avoid high new construction costs
and to benefit from tax incentives while
capitalizing on the “strong emotional
appeal” in the preservation of locally
popular landmarks. Markets and factory
buildings, hospitals and post offices, each
present reuse opportunities to create new
uses in structures designed and built for
public access from the onset.

How does this happen with grain elevators

-- mechanical structures whose primary
usage was the storage of grain with minimal
involvement by workers? Successful
adaptations have occurred in the U.S. and
Europe. Some of these projects have kept
the grain storage portion of the building
inactive, opting to occupy what had been
The entrance to the grain elevator, “the Granary,” in Philadelphia,
that houses the offices of an architectural firm, Granary Associates the public access areas of the operation.
(Courtesy of Granary Associates) Others have taken invasive steps, opening
was focused on improving the outlook for up bin walls to provide windows and
this economically and environmentally balconies for use by people who will occupy
threatened district. The challenge of the former storage spaces. In yet another
Emscher River region was so great that it approach, installations have kept the entire
was deemed impossible to approach this grain elevator intact while generating a
through traditional redevelopment schemes. new use with something placed within the
Abandoned industrial buildings as many as storage bins.
ten stories high and land devastated by
strip mining and chemical landfills required One example of the “pedestal approach,”
a new and highly aggressive approach. where the bins remain unused and
The answer was to create a region of instead serve as a pedestal or separation
“industrial monuments” through which between occupied spaces, is the Granary
hiking trails move, connecting a “regional in Philadelphia. This former grain silo
network of leisure areas.”1 Newly created today serves as the headquarters for an
recreational spaces resulted: abandoned architecture and design firm called the
steel plants became concert venues, natural Granary Associates. It is a building with
gas storage tanks house cultural fairs, a history remarkably similar to several
and children’s exploration centers occupy Buffalo elevators. Built in 1925 to replace
former machine houses. The traditional a previous wooden elevator that had been
role of private funding as the sole source destroyed by a grain explosion, the Granary
of finance for reuse was not feasible here. was constructed using the slip-form method
Instead, a carefully crafted plan driven by a that built virtually all of Buffalo’s concrete
state-supported entity put together national grain silos. This ingenious construction
and local government funds with private method allows the circular bins to rise in
and not-for-profit development sources to successive layers to create a continuous
fund this huge project. monolithic form as succeeding layers bond
to the previous layers which are still in
Europe has not been alone in creating the setting stage. The Granary, an inland
successful adaptive reuse schemes. In silo, had a waterfront connection via the
the Journal of Property Management, Jan Reading Railroad and was active in the
Campbell writes of successful projects in grain storage and transfer business until
the United States, stating that adaptive the late 1960s. Trains delivered grain that
reuse “. . . gives run-down, outmoded was deposited into sub-grade vaults and
buildings a new vitality that makes them redistributed to the bins via a belt-driven

Challenging the Imagination 117

Thomas Yots
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

floors comprising the lower level and a

unique three-story 12,000 square foot living
space was fit in the areas above the bins.
The grain bins remained undeveloped,
leaving essentially two-thirds of the space
vacant. However, in what has to be an
uncanny twist on reuse, the eighty foot
bins themselves provided a much needed
separation of work and living spaces for
the designer, who in a 1979 Architectural
Digest interview stated: “I think it is clear
that anyone who works in close proximity to
a living environment must arrange a strong
psychological division.”3 The Granary
Associates bought the building in 1988,
adding 15,000 square feet in a project
employing federal tax incentives. Although
Interior of the Granary. three of the bins have been retrofitted
(Courtesy of the Granary Associates) as stairways and an elevator, sixty-nine
scoop elevating system. Grain left the silo of the seventy-two former bins remain to
via wagons which would be positioned this day unoccupied. In accordance with
beneath the appropriate storage bins. the Granary’s placement on the National
Register of Historic Places and the use
By 1970, the Granary was no longer in of Historic Preservation Tax Credits in the
use as a grain storage facility. After some rehabilitation, the original weighing and
faltering attempts at reuse, the elevator processing equipment remains in storage
was rehabilitated by designer Kenneth below the ground level.
Parker for the site of his interior design
firm and penthouse apartment in 1977. With the exception of rehabilitated
Parker used 30,000 square feet of the surfaces, the face of the Granary is quite
complex, including the lower level open similar to its original configuration. Such
spaces and upper level workhouses, for his is not the case with another grain elevator
conversion. Parker’s design firm, Kenneth adaptive reuse, the Quaker Inn in Akron,
Parker Associates, occupied the three Ohio. The Quaker Square website invites

A Postcard of the Quaker Oats Mills in Akron, Ohio.

118 Challenging the Imagination

Thomas Yots
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

“Sleep in a Silo . . .””, an advertisement for the Quaker Inn Hotel in Akron, Ohio.
(Courtesy of Quaker Inn)

you to “Sleep in a Silo . . . Dine in a Mill and incorporates thirty-six of the bins into
. . . Shop in a Factory.”4 Here, holes the hotel. The windows and balconies on
have been punched into the concrete silo the building’s exterior are necessities for
walls to allow for hotel room windows and accommodating hotel guests.
balconies. Ferdinand Schumaker began
the Quaker Oats Company in Akron in While such a drastic alteration of a façade
the 1850s and developed it into the City’s is often shunned by preservationists, it
largest employer. The company pioneered appears great latitude was given to this
advertising and marketing schemes project and the community’s aspirations
that allowed it to flourish and become a are summed up in the Historic American
major staple of Akron’s economy. The Engineering Record where it is stated that
Quaker complex grew to occupy multiple the complex “has been ‘recycled’ into a
grain elevators, processing plants, and successful regional specialty retailing center
production facilities. By the 1970s, the by maximizing the quality and character
company had abandoned much of this of these handsome industrial structures.”5
site, leaving little prospect for industrial Even if one is concerned with the loss of
reuse. The Quaker Square project began integrity of the slip-form built concrete walls
in the late 1970s, rehabilitating the former or bothered by the mahogany Colonial
oats factory and silos into commercial decor of the hotel rooms, it should be noted
retail space as well as restaurants and that this adaptive reuse does make use of
the Quaker Inn hotel. “Sleep in a silo” is the actual bin space, “storing” people in
the motto of this hostelry and one does, the exact places that housed 1.5 million
indeed, sleep in what had been the round bushels of grain.
bins of the silo built originally in 1932. The
approximately twenty-four foot diameter of A third and compelling example of adaptive
the bins produces a room size that in fact reuse, the Silophone, involved a vacant
coincides with the ideal square footage for waterfront elevator in Montreal. Architect
a hotel room. The adaptation reuses some Thomas McIntosh and musician Emmanuel
of the original grain processing equipment Madan used Silo #5, a part of an industrial

Challenging the Imagination 119

Thomas Yots
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

Silo #5 in Montreal, Canada that was used as the site of the Silophone.
(Photo by Diana Shearwood. Courtesy of Emmanuel Madden)

complex on the St. Lawrence River. The for public interaction. Once transmitted
elevator’s fate has an eerie familiarity for into the silo, the sound was transformed
anyone aware of the history of the grain into an unparalleled acoustic experience
industry in Buffalo. Built in four stages from by the immense spaces that produced a
1906 to 1958 to a final size of 115 bins, reverberation time of over twenty seconds.
the giant grain silo was closed in the early In addition to the interactive element, the
1990s as the movement of grain bypassed Silophone drew thousands of visitors to
the Port of Montreal for other trade routes. the waterfront to experience live concerts
The elevator sat abandoned, saved from as the instrument was played by noted
demolition by the high cost of taking down musicians. The value of the Silophone
a steel and concrete structure of its size. project was the ability of the architect and
McIntosh and Madan entered the picture composer to find a use for the building
in the late 1990s with a design using the based on the very same qualities that
silo as a musical instrument, fitting the allowed it to function effectively in the
approximately one hundred foot high by storage of grain: the size, shape and
twenty-five foot in diameter bins with sound material of the bins. The Silophone project
producing equipment allowing music to operated for nearly two years at a budget
be created in the unique acoustics of the of over $300,000 Canadian dollars. 7
concrete cylinders.
As communities look for long term, stable
The instrument was configured to accept development ideas for grain elevators, it
sound from telephone transmission or would be wise to consider the number of
from an Internet website, thus allowing cities outside the U.S. where abandoned

Looking up into Silo #5, one of the silos used in generating the
acoustical experience of the Silophone. Playing the SiloPhone.
(Photo by Diana Shearwood. Courtesy of Emmanuel Madden) (Photo by Diana Shearwood. Courtesy of Emmanuel Madden)

120 Challenging the Imagination

Thomas Yots
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

silos have become apartments (both The very nature of the grain elevator as
rental units and condominiums). In the a machine presents both challenges and
February 26, 2003, issue of Australia’s opportunities for reuse. The more refined
Daily Telegraph, Marrickville Mayor Barry and specific a machine becomes (and
Cotter, referring to a proposed adaptation the concrete grain elevator reached the
of the Waratah Mills grain elevator, said pinnacle in each of these categories),
“You can’t get much more creative use of a the more difficult it is to find another
building than turning silos into apartments.”6 acceptable use for it, different from its
In Buenos Aires, a former grain mill and original design. However, there is a certain
its storage bins have been innovatively sublime attraction to these giant monolithic
converted to dwelling units boasting twelve structures which transcends many of the
foot ceilings and circular floor spaces. obstacles presented for reuse. Because
Amsterdam’s Silodam project has seen both the grain elevators have found a niche in
the conversion of an existing 19th century popular culture, as the quote that begins
silo to apartments and the construction this chapter shows, it does seem possible
of an adjacent modern unit taking full that we will find new uses for them.
advantage of its link to both the historic silo
and the Amsterdam waterfront. Similarly, However, imagination and daring are
a project intended for the Northern Roller needed to nudge the Buffalo grain elevators
Mill building in Auckland, New Zealand has into a prominent position in the revitalized
been proposed by Manson Developments. lake and river landscape. Whether as
The ambitious project saves the mill and residential units or commercial entities,
silo buildings built in the late 19th and works of art or interpreted ruins, Buffalo’s
early 20th centuries and, like the Silodam grain elevators sit poised today, ready to
in Amsterdam, incorporates new buildings take that step into a world of reuse. The 19th
with the adapted Neoclassical historic century’s invention which became the 20th
structures. century’s workhorse is about to become the

Silodam, Amsterdam. Project by MVRDV (2002).

(Courtesy of Brian Rose)

Challenging the Imagination 121

Thomas Yots
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

REFERENCES
21st century’s venue for redevelopment: a
fitting new step in a lifetime of service to 1. Emscher Park, online at http://www.uneptie.org/pc/
the community. The silos stand as equals ind-estates/casestudies/Emscher.htm
among architectural giants in Buffalo such 2. Journal of Property Management 61, no. 1
as the Darwin Martin Complex, Kleinhans (January-February 1996), 26.
Music Hall, and Richardson’s Psychiatric 3. “The Granery,” Architectural Digest (October 1979),
Center. The challenge is there for industry, 135.
government, and the arts to grasp the 4. Sleep in a Silo, Quaker Square (2002), online at
concept of adaptive reuse and breathe http://www.quakersquare.com/sleep_fr.htm
imagination and spirit into these noble 5. Historic American Engineering Record, OH-17, data
structures. page no. 7, online at http://memory.loc.gov
6. The Daily Telegraph, Syndey, Australia, online at
http://www.dailytelegraph.news.com.au/

Thomas Yots is the Historian for the City of Niagara

Falls. He was co-director of the Grain Elevator Project
on behalf of the Landmark Society of the Niagara
Frontier. Yots prepared the nomination forms for the
Wollenberg Elevator.

122 Challenging the Imagination

Thomas Yots
 “Where is the Fun in a
Grain Elevator?”

Inside the inside of Marine A.

(Photo by Johannes Runge)

Michael Frisch
Professor of History and Senior Research Scholar
University at Buffalo, SUNY
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

“Where is the Fun in a The first was the designation of two of the
elevators -- the Concrete Central Elevator
Grain Elevator?” and the wooden Wollenberg Grain and
Seed Elevator -- on the National Register
There is every reason to be wary of the of Historic Places, after a successful
Letters to the Editor column of a major application developed by a coalition
metropolitan newspaper. Readers are of preservation and heritage groups,
not necessarily representative of the architects and historians, and city officials.
broader public; those who choose to The announcement was accompanied by
write to a newspaper are not necessarily repeated official declarations that the step
representative of all readers; and those signaled an opportunity for Buffalo, a city
letters chosen (and edited) for publication where the grain elevator marine leg was
are not necessarily representative of all invented in 1842 and where the dramatic
those letters received. Yet most of us landscape of elevators -- unmatched
sense that this medium somehow provides anywhere in the world -- could provide
an indispensable window. If some people a crucial and distinctive linchpin for a
were moved or upset or inspired enough to development strategy of heritage tourism
actually sit down and write a letter, many and adaptive reuse.
others probably share those sentiments --
letter writing may be a far more important The second was the announcement that
an indicator than the survey data of some Archer Daniels Midland, which operates
casual telephone or shopping mall poll. And one of the two remaining active grain
reading the arguments and observations elevators on the Buffalo Waterfront,
in these letters is what many readers intended to raze an unused elevator it
evidently find useful in crystallizing their owned -- and not just any elevator, but
own opinions about an issue. Survey after rather the 1897 Great Northern, once a
survey has shown that readers turn to the landmark Pillsbury facility and at one point
editorial page in search of the letters, and the world’s largest elevator; it is now the
that they usually read them before reading sole surviving example anywhere of the
the editorials themselves. Similarly, the important brick-shell, steel-bin type. This
recently proliferating “my turn” essays announcement, and the still unresolved
or the like -- essentially an open window battle it provoked, followed by only a
for essay-length letters to the editor - few weeks a more definitive action: the
- are generally more widely read than the stunning overnight demolition of the Harbor
syndicated pundit’s columns filling the rest Inn, a tavern at the heart of what had been
of the op-ed pages. the waterfront grain elevator district, and
for decades a kind of unofficial vernacular
Thus it may be of more than ordinary museum of the waterfront grain industry, its
significance that in the spring of 2003, an workers, and its neighborhood, all lovingly
important debate about Buffalo’s grain maintained by the saloonkeeper, Eddie
elevators raged in the letters to the editor Malloy, and his family.
columns of the Buffalo News, stimulated by
two very different developments. Framed by these happenings, the letters
column condensed a debate that spread
across many dimensions of community
discussion. “The Great Northern and
Buffalo’s architecture, while not always
‘pretty,’ are as important to Buffalo
as the pyramids are to Egypt,” wrote
Richard Kegler. “There are no doubt land
developers in Rome who see the Forum as
a potential ‘gray field’ that could turn a quick
profit if only all of that old stuff could be
cleared out of the way. Too many bonehead
decisions have been made to obliterate
Hadas Steiner and Michael Frisch, touring the Buffalo Grain Eleva-
tors by boat. (Photo by Lynda H. Schneekloth) Buffalo’s heritage . . . The grain elevators

124 Where is the Fun in a Grain Elevator?

Michael Frisch
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

are one of Buffalo’s greatest assets in the say that if an old building is demolished,
rough . . . Developing historical tourism is a it demonstrates that we no longer needed
win. Demolishing history is a loss.” it. Others say that it demonstrates that we
are willing to progress and put the past
Nonsense, replied Joseph Baldi. “[Mr. behind us. I say that it demonstrates an
Kegler’s] contention that this grain elevator unwillingness to be creative and innovative
is as important to Buffalo as the pyramids in our decision-making. I urge all Western
are to Egypt is quite humorous . . . Let’s New Yorkers to make thoughtful, well-
not kid ourselves here. We are not talking rounded decisions about our city’s future.”
about demolishing the Darwin Martin House
. . . We’re talking about razing an obsolete, Stephen Miller of Buffalo, for the moment,
hulking eyesore on this city’s waterfront. had the last word in this exchange: “In
ADM Corp., one of the few Fortune 500 reply to the May 28 letter regarding the
companies left in this city, will pay for the grain elevators in Buffalo, I live in the city
cost of demolition and debris removal. In and I say ‘get over it.’ I can’t believe that
its place will be a cleaned, graded parcel of with all the problems this city is having,
land that has the potential to be a valuable someone is concerned with saving one of
piece of reclaimed real estate on Buffalo’s the greatest eyesores on the waterfront.
waterfront . . . The Preservation Board . . . You want creativity and innovation? Tear
would have us believe that tourists will flock them down and put something there that’s
to see a grain elevator. Sorry, I just don’t going to help save Buffalo! No one is going
see that happening.” to take a vacation and come here to see
the Grain Elevators, the Twin Span Bridge,
Gary Serwinowski of Lancaster agreed: or the Central Terminal Building. We need
“These big, ugly, obtrusive buildings do something other than ruins and a bridge to
absolutely nothing for the look of the bring us out of this crisis! If we are going
waterfront except to symbolize a city that to ‘embrace’ our past we need to bring
can’t, or won’t, stop clinging to its past in it to life. Look at Williamsburg, Virginia.
the hopes that it will one day be like that They don’t go there just for the history or
again . . . If people would put half as much the architecture. They go there because
energy into improving our city as they do they can get involved in the past. They can
in trying to save old dilapidated buildings see life as it was! They can see colonial
like the grain elevators, we might see craftsmen at work. They can march with
some positive change . . . I highly doubt the patriots! They can have fun! Where is
that people will flock here on vacation the fun in a grain elevator?”
to see an old grain elevator, but they
might come here if here was something This is an argument nobody can win,
modern and attractive to see or do. Just because in a sense everyone is right.
because something is old doesn’t mean it’s The elevators are important, and they
beautiful.” do have vast potential as generators of
interest and activity. At the same time,
“I’m responding to the letter from the they are dilapidated and vacant; it is hard
Lancaster resident who sees no value to imagine tourists coming -- in significant
in preserving the Great Northern Grain enough numbers to matter for development
elevator,” wrote David Ruperti of Buffalo. -- just to look at them; it is not immediately
“Perhaps he simply isn’t aware of how obvious where and how, beyond abstract
significant these ‘big ugly, obtrusive’ appreciation and the dramatic landscape,
buildings are . . . The building is no domed is to be found the sustained interest
theme park, but it does have the ability and engagement, much less the “fun”
to attract tourists who are interested Mr. Miller asks for, on which successful
in influential architecture, industrial heritage tourism depends. The defenders
technology, and the history of Buffalo’s of the elevators are surely correct, but the
waterfront. We also need to realize that critics ask fair questions that need to be
we cannot only cater to tourists . . . The answered.
grain elevator is no chicken wing legacy,
but it is still a part of who we are. Some These are, in fact, the questions too often

Where is the Fun in a Grain Elevator? 125

Michael Frisch
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

left unaddressed, the questions begged institution, building, or site, that the energy
by the very qualities -- their monumental of heritage tourism risks becoming ever
scale, their status as, for the most more fragmented and centrifugal. The
part, urban “ruins,” and their forbidding whole, in terms of overall appeal and
inapproachability -- that make the elevators legibility, can end up seeming far less than
so impressive. “It’s not preservation for the sum of the parts, and consequently
the sake of preservation,” said Bernadette there is a real limit to the overall impact
Castro, New York’s Commissioner of Parks, on the “re-branding” of a problematically
Recreation, and Historical Preservation, imaged community such as ours. We
at the ceremony marking the Wollenberg understand that in order to generate a
and Concrete Central designations. “It’s self-sustaining critical mass of heritage
preservation for the sake of the next visitation, whether tourist or home-grown,
step, of bringing that economic impact we need somehow to aggregate and
and benefit to this great region. It’s about combine the appeal of the Darwin Martin
adaptive reuse. It’s about heritage tourism.” house, the Michigan Avenue Baptist
But what is that next step, concretely? Church, the Central Terminal, and the
How do we go from general appreciation Pan American Exposition - but this seems
to demonstrable economic impact? It almost impossible to approach in practice.
may be “about” heritage tourism, but how
can we actually do heritage tourism with When we move beyond the particular city to
the grain elevators? What choices do the broader region, in our case a binational
we have, and what approaches can we Buffalo-Niagara region, the challenge of
take, understanding that critics are right in integrating a highly diverse, fragmented
sensing that asking people to come simply spectrum of stories and attractions is only
to gaze at the monumental landscape in compounded. This contrasts profoundly
appreciation will not quite be enough? with the situation faced by a small town or
a rural community at a major historic site
At that same designation ceremony, -- say, for a regionally relevant example,
Buffalo’s ever-hopeful Mayor, Anthony the Portage Railroad site or the Drake
Masiello, observed that “a test of our will Well in western Pennsylvania. In such
to move forward will be our ability to turn cases, there’s no debate about the focus
these structures into something more for heritage development: the choice of
meaningful and more useful.” In this story, and what to do with it, is relatively
essay, I’d like to offer some suggestions in straightforward.
response to this challenge, a challenge I
think it is crucial for all those interested in Given our own region’s relentless capacity
the grain elevators to engage directly. for beating up on itself, it may be helpful to
observe that the dilemma of fragmented,
Let me begin by noting that the challenge competing stories, audiences, and sites
of the grain elevators involves something is in some ways a natural and healthy
more than the unique qualities of these one for cities and regions like ours. This
structures -- their scale, condition, location, is because what makes complex urban
and landscape. In an important sense, regions interesting -- what makes a city a
they embody a broader paradox facing all city, in fact -- is the infinite multiplicity of
heritage tourism in the urban environment: stories, grounded in different dimensions
it is hard to turn any particular site, of experience from cultural to economic
monument, event, or structure into a to spiritual to political, all drawing on, and
magnet that can generate activity beyond speaking to, an equally complex web of
the immediate concerns of a particular communities and groups.
constituency, or the bounds of its own
story. That the stories are woven together in
the fabric of urban life and change over
Too often, it takes so much focused effort time is a way of saying that they are, in
to save, restore, build support and interest fact, connected, often in tangible and
for, or promote any single dimension of demonstrable ways -- ways that a more
historical interest, much less any particular integrative approach to heritage projection

126 Where is the Fun in a Grain Elevator?

Michael Frisch
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

could actually help to make tangible, of really “working” as a draw.

visitable, and exciting.
I will not deal here with the many forms
In other words, the problem of urban of adaptive re-use that could make the
heritage is in some ways the key to the elevators a living resource, as these
solution: if we can take a story outside possibilities are presented and well-
itself and show its connection to other explored elsewhere in this publication. Nor
stories, places, and aspects of urban life, will I speculate on various imaginable ways
we broaden the potential base of interest of having the elevators, even as relics,
and we help to aggregate the otherwise activated as visitation and interpretive sites
fragmented appeals of a range of themes themselves -- tours of an elevator restored
or stories. to working condition, for instance, complete
with a decommissioned ship like the
And in so doing, we can offer a bigger and Kinsman Independent alongside, its sample
more exciting story still -- how a particular grain unloaded, perhaps by its own former
city and region works, grows, and changes “scoopers,” on a regular demonstration
historically -- so that the excitement and schedule, as at so many of the increasingly
interest of every dimension can, in fact, popular factory and industrial tour sites
begin to add up to that elusive goal of so across the nation.
much heritage development: conveying a
deeper sense of the spirit, character, and Rather, for demonstration purposes, let
uniqueness of a place. In this way we may us assume that we had to work with the
leverage historic or heritage appreciation elevators as they are -- for the most part
so as to impact the broader image of the mute, empty monuments of an era past,
community and region, something so critical too decrepit for the most part to support
for contemporary growth and change in the anything but the most minimal active
very real world that cities like ours confront. visitation. What might it still be possible
to imagine, by way of a heritage tourism
I think the grain elevators may offer a strategy?
near-perfect example of the challenge and
the possibilities for response. However My approach rests on two ideas. One is
important, they are by themselves too the importance of linkages and itineraries,
static, monumental, and unapproachable whether printed or web-posted, that
to support the kind of generative heritage connect the elevators to the city and region
development I’m discussing here. By as a whole and encourage self-guided
the same token, however, if we engage explorations or even actively promoted
them creatively as resources for heritage group tours and activities. The second is
projection and programming, their story the notion that it is helpful -- with history in
has enormous potential as the anchor
and generator for visitation and active
exploration across our entire region, for
an evocation of place that speaks to the
present and future as much as to the past,
and even for the fun and active involvement
in history that letter writer Stephen Miller
correctly identified as one of the keys to
successful heritage development.

In this spirit, let me offer a few examples

of what it would mean to approach
the elevators as something other than
monuments to be looked at. A heritage
strategy could give people something more
to do, see, and experience once they have
“seen the elephant,” thus leveraging the
Workers taking a break from their work in the Standard Elevator.
elevators in ways that might have a chance (Photo by Lynda H. Schneekloth)

Where is the Fun in a Grain Elevator? 127

Michael Frisch
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

general and with this history in particular grain elevators, industries, workers, and
-- to forge links between past and present, communities could not be more central.
to connect a serious encounter with history Whether in the endlessly debated planning
to encounters and even entertainments in for how the history of the Erie Canal
contemporary culture. This is especially terminus figures in current waterfront
inviting in dealing with the grain elevators development and urban presentation, to
because the story of grain necessarily the broader planning of the Erie Canal
reaches contemporary products, Heritage Corridor, or in initiatives such
processes, or landscapes very familiar to as the Buffalo and Erie County Historical
visitors, whether from home or away, yet Society’s exciting proposal for an on-site
about which they in fact know very little. heritage and transportation museum in the
By offering ways to explore the richness waterfront’s former DL&W terminal building,
of place and community, and by offering it is increasingly clear that there will be, and
glimpses into the story of contemporary must be, a broad interpretive and visitation
icons like breakfast cereals familiar to context taking shape within which the
every visitor, we stand to increase the base elevators are crucial. Simply shaping this
of appeal beyond those explicitly drawn momentum to take maximal advantage of
to the “past,” while also underscoring a the district’s site resources will be one way
profound point about history: its capacity to to answer the critics: the elevators can be
help us engage the complexity of life and engaged within a richly developed heritage
experience in our own context. destination, one that combines a range
of human, social, political, and economic
Consider three broad categories of “stories” stories, and to which they can contribute
through which the grain elevators could enormous, irreplaceable specificity and
become so much more than just hulking interest.
monuments or architectural statements to
be either hailed or mocked, as in the letter- But that should be only the beginning of
column exchanges. an imaginative, integrative approach: with
the link of grain growing, transportation,
The first is the most obvious, and one grain processing industries, and regional
already under intense discussion and history and life made clear, cross-locale
planning -- the rich history of lake shipping, excursions could carry this theme into
the waterfront, and the Erie Canal, that is explorations capable of extending a short
the subject of intense heritage development visit into a multi-day stay. This is one of the
currently, and to which the story of the central pillars of the heritage corridor idea,

Accessing the elevators is difficult but many find it irresistible.

(Photo by Lynda H. Schneekloth)

128 Where is the Fun in a Grain Elevator?

Michael Frisch
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

like aspect of the elevators as architectural

shrines, in this broader context, is rendered
alive and dynamic while still drawing on
what is so manifestly dramatic, unique,
and irreplaceable in the grain elevator
landscape as a heritage destination.

The same points are even more

dramatically underscored if we look at the
challenge from another angle -- a focus
The Buffalo River Urban Canoe Trail takes you through the canyons on the story of the grain industry, broadly
of elevators. (Photo by Lynda H. Schneekloth)
considered, past and present. Here the
but it has more open-ended implications if monumental scale of the elevators can be
we see it as something extending beyond connected to something every resident
history and heritage as such. Imagine, for or visitor knows at first hand -- bottles
instance, a visit to the elevators and the of beer, bags of flour on supermarket
Buffalo waterfront that would be connected shelves, and boxes of cereal like Cheerios,
to excursions to Lockport and other Erie whose names everyone knows, but whose
Canal sites, as well as to the Niagara River manufacture in Buffalo is unknown to even
towpath, Black Rock, and the Tonawandas, to many residents who wonder about that
and to sites in Ontario including the strange toasty smell wafting over the city
Welland Canal. One or two day visits, from time to time when conditions are right.
conceivably, could involve viewing (or even
riding on) a supertanker going through Here there are manifest opportunities for
modern locks, an historical evocation by both history and fun. Imagine combining the
canal barge ascending Lockport’s famous kind of elevator heritage boat tour currently
lock ladder, a visit to the restored Buffalo offered, for instance, with a factory tour of
Erie Canal terminus and the remnants of the Cheerios plant, or other such facilities,
Erie Canal neighborhoods, machine shops, perhaps including a spectrum of ethnic
and factories in Black Rock, as well as to and regional bakeries. This is the kind of
the existing, working elevators and mills of obvious connection, for an exciting visitor
the contemporary grain industry. experience, that too often is obscured
by the historical orientation of heritage
Add the dimension of railroading -- crucial promoters, and the business orientation of
to the grain elevators and to virtually every contemporary developers. And yet there
other story -- and an even wider range of can be enormous power in the simple
activities, destinations, and interpretive recognition that people might, indeed,
possibilities open up, including steam be attracted by gliding waterside among
engine rides, switch-yard demonstrations, the monolithic elevators and by seeing
the Central Terminal and the DL&W, what’s firsthand “where Cheerios come from,”
left of the immense complex of rail in and that putting these together might make
South Buffalo and Lackawanna, the role of a visit to Buffalo all the more attractive
Niagara River crossings and rail history in and intriguing a prospect. The incredibly
Canada, and so on. successful Crayola Factory attraction in
an otherwise bleak Easton, Pennsylvania
Suddenly, an immense vista opens up -- a landscape is an instructive example.
vista of regional and international character
with links to things we know visitors and The implications go well beyond the
locals alike find fascinating about history waterfront, of course. One major function of
and contemporary life: a living agenda, the grain elevators was to propel Buffalo’s
rich in possibility, all of which could be enormous brewing industry. Beer and
anchored by the grain elevators, and could brewing, in turn, were at the heart of much
support, in conjunction with other sites and neighborhood life, especially in Buffalo’s
cooperating institutions, a coherent range huge German-American community. In the
of possibilities for visitation, interpretation, very different context of current lifestyles
and entertaining activities. The pyramid- and urban revitalization efforts, brew-pubs

Where is the Fun in a Grain Elevator? 129

Michael Frisch
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

and micro-breweries are both popular mute elevators and the surprisingly alive,
and of considerable serious interest. Is crackling history of visitors’ daily lives.
it so hard to imagine a set of brewing
and beer itineraries that could connect A third and final set of examples flows
the barley elevators on the waterfront to from a focus on people - as a direct and
historic brewery sites, working factories, powerful counterpoint to the overwhelming
and neighborhood taverns, and recent scale of the elevators, and a crucial
micro-brewery experiments throughout our dimension of their story. In fact, the link
region? between the elevators, their workers, and
the neighborhoods and institutions around
Or take the example of breakfast cereals them, from homes to unions to taverns, is
one step further: Buffalo’s Cheerios are unusually intimate and close. The colorful
part of much bigger story, one quickly story and richly documented world of the
reaching from Buffalo to the internationally Buffalo grain scoopers, and so many of
famous equation of Nabisco Shredded the people who lived and worked in the
Wheat and Niagara Falls. Indeed, there is elevators, is a resource just waiting to be
broader fascination in all of this: everyone mobilized in a more sustained way. There
knows breakfast cereals, but how many are existing organizations and festivals,
know when and why Americans began such as the relatively recent but highly
to eat them? How many are aware of the promising annual Buffalo River Fest in
connection that Niagara Falls came to Father Conway Park, celebrating Buffalo’s
represent, between the rise of breakfast Old First Ward and Valley neighborhoods,
cereals, dietary reform, and turn-of- that could both contribute to and be
the-century Utopianism -- for in fact the sustained by more comprehensive grain
marketing connection between the cereal elevator heritage projection. Walking
and the sublime wonder of the world was oral history tours organized and led by
neither random nor coincidental. neighborhood residents and elevator/
waterfront workers could bring the
Nabisco closed its operations in the Falls landscape and the human scale of family
recently, and the image of Niagara has and neighborhood stories together. It would
disappeared from the Shredded Wheat not take too much more effort to weave
Box, but surely there is a vivid, exciting, such opportunities into more ambitious
marketable story here waiting to be circuits -- thematically linked encounters
packaged in a way that could address that with historically linked waterfront
persistent goal of local planners, which neighborhoods or grain working families
is turning the immense tourist magnet of from Buffalo to Black Rock to Lockport to
Niagara Falls into more of an economic Niagara Falls, or into Canada and down to
generator for the region as a whole. Why Jamestown as well, for that matter, could
not imagine a two-day itinerary that would be an exciting matrix for helping visitors
forge that link between the Falls and move fluidly throughout the region, sensing
Buffalo, between shredded wheat and our its diversity and the historical processes
grain elevators and Cheerios? Broaden it that have tied it together.
out one step further - since cereals are only
one kind of food - and even more ambitious As with our other examples, a story-driven
regional itineraries could include the story approach need not be narrowly or too
of Welch’s Grape Juice in Chautauqua, literally focused on elevator workers, grain
the Jello Museum in Leroy, New York, and scoopers, and neighborhoods. Instead, the
Coffee Rich and, of course, the Anchor Bar complex history of grain in local life could
(birthplace of the chicken wing) in Buffalo suggest ways to weave a very different
itself: an archeology of instantly familiar fabric for exploration, across the many
foods and a wonderfully rich, unfamiliar dimensions of urban life.
history that could be encountered in both
instructive and, yes, fun ways. Suddenly, Consider, for instance, the dramatic story of
there is a dramatic, range of possibilities, the landmark 1899 Grain Shoveller’s Strike
with profound interpretive possibilities in the in Buffalo. At that time, access to the work
most serious historical sense, between the unloading the grain ships was controlled by

130 Where is the Fun in a Grain Elevator?

Michael Frisch
 Buffalo Grain Elevators

A group of grain elevator fans approacing the Cargill Elevator.

(Photo by Lynda H. Schneekloth)

saloons that functioned, in effect, as hiring hall saloons, had it not been shortsightedly
halls for the shippers. Because of this, demolished). Then visitors set out to follow
worker struggles on the waterfront took a the story in sites throughout the city, and
highly unusual form, with much of the elite even more broadly through the various
establishment lining up behind the unions dimensions the story involved, whether
to challenge the power of the mostly Irish literally part of the unfolding 1899 events
saloonkeepers. All of this played out in or not. Not-to-be-missed landmarks
epochal form in the protracted 1899 strike such as City Hall, the St. Louis Church,
-- a story that ended up involving unions, a Delaware Avenue mansion, the former
the leaders of the Catholic Church, the Courier Express building, and today’s
Temperance Movement, elite reformers Buffalo News could all be included in such
from Delaware Avenue society, and an an itinerary, as well as less well-known but
emerging Irish establishment as well. equally intriguing story-linked destinations
The waterfront boss then was William including taverns, union halls, lake
J. Connors, a tavern owner, brewer, shipping association offices, and reform
political figure, and increasingly important organizations. To follow such an itinerary
newspaperman, as owner of the Buffalo would do more than tell the story, by taking
Courier, later the Courier Express. visitors and residents criss-crossing the rich
texture that is the life of a city, and coming
This is a remarkable story, in which to an appreciation of Buffalo’s rich historical
enormous urban complexity is crystallized and contemporary character in the process.
-- complexity with considerable resonance
in any community from which visitors may There is nothing magical, demanding, or
come and with considerable tangibility for even particularly expensive in the kind
local residents as well. It is not hard to of approaches to heritage projection
imagine ways of leveraging such a story that I have discussed here. Much of the
in exciting, attractive, and historically approach could prove valuable even in
meaningful ways. virtual form, through imaginative websites
far more enticing than the kind of bulletin-
Imagine a day that began at the foot of a board listings our promoters have been
giant elevator (even better would have been routinely relying on. Indeed, there is a
the Harbor Inn, once one of those hiring- deeper significance and lesson in this

Where is the Fun in a Grain Elevator? 131

Michael Frisch
Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis

observation, because in some way the together. Even in their current dilapidation,
website environment and the vital life the awesome grain elevator district can
of cities have something important in be one crucial base for such approaches
common, a characteristic that speaks to the to heritage projection -- alive, human, and
broader challenge, discussed at the start of open to active exploration. In this sense,
my remarks, of effective heritage projection Mr. Miller was misplaced in his critique but
in the urban and regional context. right in principle: at and through the grain
elevators, the past can come alive, if we let
What makes cities exciting is that so many it -- and exploring it can even be fun.
stories, lives, dimensions of experience,
and worlds are all densely compacted, and
deeply intertwined. What makes visiting
cities exciting is to sense this vitality and
density, and to have the capacity to travel
across continents of experience, in effect,
simply by crossing the street from an
historic church to an art gallery or disco,
from a gated estate to a throbbing street
market. What makes negotiating a well-
constructed website exciting is the same
quality: there is not one linear path, one
necessary route, but rather, we bounce or
surf or click from one curiosity to another,
driven by individual whim or interest or a
chain of logical pursuit.

The kinds of linkages and story connections

I have been suggesting can be presented,
and explored, in the same way, both
online and in well-designed visitor guides
and activities. A visitor to the art deco
masterpiece of the former Courier Express
building, on a heritage walking tour, could
follow the story of William Connors down
to the waterfront docks, saloons, and grain
elevators where he got his start. Visitors
to Niagara Falls ought to be able to see
connections that could draw them on the
trail of grain from Shredded Wheat to
Cheerios and to the Great Northern and its
Pillsbury roots, if Archer Daniels Midland
can be persuaded to not demolish the
structure. And visitors to the grain elevators
themselves -- whether Skyway drive-bys
enticed for a closer look, or tourists on the
dramatic Miss Buffalo river crawl past the
pyramids -- ought to see a whole panoply of
regional stories, histories, and adventures
open up before them, ready for exploration
once they’re off the boat.
Michael Frisch is professor of History at the University
The monuments are there, the history is at Buffalo, SUNY. His current work focuses on new
there, the stories and their resonance in software approaches to oral history documentation via
a living, changing international city and digital audio-visual indexing.
region today are all there. With some
effort and imagination, it can all come

132 Where is the Fun in a Grain Elevator?

Michael Frisch