Presentation in Wichita, Kansas, 22 February 2010

From 2-3 pm on Tuesday, 23 February 2010, I will be giving a presentation at the Grain Elevator and Processing Society's 81st Technical Conference and Trade School, which will be held at the Century II Performing Arts 
and Convention Center
 in Wichita, Kansas. Entitled "The Mechanized Grain Elevator: How Did We Get Here?" my presentation will be part of a session coordinated by Kathy Reading, Vice President of Sales at the Seedburo Equipment Co., Des Plaines IL.

The mechanized grain elevators of today have their roots in American history. This session, by the author of a new book, will discuss how we got here, and why an understanding of the past may be useful to us in the future. What necessities led to the invention of the mechanized elevator? How did it work?  How did grain elevators become so important to the development of the U.S.? How did they influence grain handling in other countries? And what happened to the old American classics?

For more information, visit GEAPS Exchange 2010.

Mark Sommer reviews my book

“American Colossus: The Grain Elevator, 1843 to 1943,” is a provocative, thought-provoking and informative must-read for grain elevator aficionados.

Most Buffalonians today know these hulking structures as largely dilapidated ruins, detached from the critical role they once played in bringing prosperity to Buffalo, the city of their invention in 1843.

The book—so named by author William J. Brown for the elevators’ towering bulk and unapproachable facade —examines them and their forgotten role in developing Buffalo and the nation over a 100-year period.

Brown became interested in writing “American Colossus” while pursuing master’s and doctorate degrees in American literature at the University at Buffalo in the 1980s. The freewheeling book—exhaustively researched and amply footnoted, but weak in the proofreading department—doesn’t hesitate to add an unlikely array of voices to Brown’s ruminations, from Zane Grey and Karl Marx to Thomas Hobbes and William Shakespeare.

The author acknowledges a debt to the late architecture critic Reyner Banham, and repeatedly refers to “A Concrete Atlantis,” his landmark 1986 book on grain elevators. But Brown is sure to ruffle feathers by bludgeoning the revered former chair of UB’s School of Architecture for errors in scholarship.

Brown frequently cites and sometimes spars with Banham’s work while examining how the grain elevator came to be embraced by European Modernists and influence the Bauhaus style of art and architecture.

“American Colossus” is available at www.amazon.comand the Buffalo& Erie County Historical Society. It includes an appendix that lists some 122 grain elevators once in Buffalo, of which only about 15 remain. —Mark Sommer

Buffalo News, 20 December 2009.

R. Alan Wight reviews my book

American Colossus represents a unique weave of important, but often unconnected threads of American Imperialism. From waterways and railroad monopolies to oil conglomerates and Cargill, Brown discusses the evolution of the modern American grain transportation and storage system. His poetic narrative illustrates how the American Colossus (the grain trade) is used as an economic force to export the American diet and culture, along with our particular form of hegemonic capitalism. This project on the grain “system” of market dumping and local farmer destabilization that threatens our planets ecological stability goes hand in hand with the work of prominent authors such as Dr, Vandana Shiva, Michael Pollen, and Bill McKibben.

Brown walks the reader through the history of the grain elevator. He poses important questions about the classification of these hybrid “building-machines,” traces the many architectural and industrial innovations brought together to “fire proof the tinderbox,” compares and contrasts the architectural and systematic differences of America to Europe, and does this all by neatly structruing his arguments on the shoulders of such renowned historians as R. Banham and W. Cronon. Also, Brown challenges existing historical works for their accuracy regarding pictures and names of grain elevators.

In addition, this research uses poetry, cultural mythology, and religion, with a hint of autoethnographic material to relate the beginnings of our American Colossus to the reader. Brown’s voice can be heard loud and clear has he describes his first hand experiences exploring the now silent, hybrid building-machines of Buffalo, NY. From the huge grain elevators admits our concrete metropolises, to the skyscrapers of the plains, to the thousands upon thousands of local nodes spread across this vast continent; Brown uncovers one of the foundations of our Modern American Empire.

-- R. Alan Wight M.A., Sociologist, University of Cincinnati

Henry Baxter reviews my book

AMERICAN COLOSSUS
William J. Brown
Colossal Books

This book reviews one chapter in mankind's oldest industry, the processing and storage of grain, which extends at least back to 9500 BC.

The story is taken up in 1842 with the building of Dart's grain elevator which was the first storage and transfer grain elevator powered by a steam engine. This innovation reduced the number of workers by 80%, speeding up the process of transferring grain from lake boats to canal boats and so solving a serious congestion problem in the Port of Buffalo. This, combined with the Erie Canal, permitted rapid development of the Midwest and the Port of New York. The trade increased from 1,500,000 bushels in 1841 to 20,000,000 bushels in 1854.

By the standards of the day these elevators were huge, up to 200' long by over 100' high, with almost no windows or doors, and painted black resulting in an almost sinister look. In the words of English visitor Anthony Trollope, "The grain elevator is as ugly a monster as has yet been provided," an so we learn the source of "Colossus" in this book's title.

This book also considers the influence of Buffalo's grain elevator designs on European architecture. For instance German architect Walter Gropius visited Buffalo and was so impressed by the almost pure functionalism of Buffalo's elevator designs that he used the idea at his Bauhaus School of Architecture which produced designs of great simplicity and elegance.

The principal promoter of the idea that Buffalo’s elevator designs greatly influenced European architecture was Reyner Banham, Director of the School of Architecture at the University of Buffalo. Banham in his book “A Concrete Atlantis” compares the elevator designs to those of Richardson and Wright. Brown however is critical of “A Concrete Atlantis” due to its many factual errors.

A useful appendix lists every grain elevator ever built in Buffalo. 140 are included to which in fact a few more should be added. One of them, the Cargill (Urban Mill) elevator, consisted of 4 free standing steel bins serviced by bucket elevators and conveyors which were not in enclosures. So this elevator did not include a building. And you wonder what the German architects would think of how the purely functional approach which produced the buildings they so admired went a step further and eliminated the buildings themselves.

-- Henry Baxter

Western New York Heritage, Volume 12 Number 3, Fall 2009, p.18-19.

Availability through Amazon.com

American Colossus: the Grain Elevator, 1843 to 1943 is now available from Amazon.

Diet Soap interview

In March 2009, I was interviewed at length on the telephone by Doug Lain. This interview has just been "podcast" and can now be heard on the "Diet Soap" website. Doug also conducted an interview with me by email, which has been available here here since 18 March 2009.

The Consolidated Grain & Barge Co. grain elevator in South Cumminsville, Ohio

Today Isaac took me to the grain elevator formerly operated by the Consolidated Grain & Barge Company in South Cumminsville (west part of Cincinnati). It was a remarkable experience and seems to have laid the groundwork for future collaborations between us.

In ruins since October 2008, when the "top" or northern section of the structure was demolished, this grain elevator (photographed from ground-level by Joe Wessels and from space by Google Maps' satellites) is quite an oddity: it stands in complete isolation. (For more photographs of the elevator before and during this stage of demolition, visit the Queen City Disco.)

As one can see, it was once a large facility, built in at least two stages, and probably capable of storing more than two million bushels of grain in bulk. The elevator is in fact so big that one might suspect that it was originally built to receive grain for a nearby flourmill, animal-feed mill or brewery that was subsequently demolished. Positioned along the banks of Mill Creek, the elevator was in fact built to transship grain from rail cars (farms in Indiana and Ohio) to barges (markets in St. Louis or News Orleans). But there are no barge-loading facilities (nor ruins of them) on the water-side of the elevator. Furthermore, on the elevator's other side (the one visible in Joe Wessel's photo), there is only a single track laid down by the old Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton Railroad. Such a massive elevator would normally service a train shed into which four or five train tracks or "spurs" would feed.

Not surprisingly, there is very little public information about the Consolidated elevator, which bears no corporate signs or logos upon it. Its address, 3180 Beekman Street, is no longer listed. (Try 3100 Beekman, instead.) In 2000, a photographer named Casey Walker wrote that "In the background, under the viaduct, [there] is a very big grain elevator. From closer I could see huge cracks in the concrete grain elevator; I heard that it had failed as soon as it was built and was never used." Never used? Impossible. The blue plastic (!) grain-bucket that I kept as a souvenir of today's visit still had grain in it. But this fellow was certainly responding to something that is really there: this particular grain elevator is remarkably isolated from its surroundings, a true island.

Based upon my preliminary research, it seems that the first section (now destroyed) was probably built as a rail-to-barge transshipping elevator in the 1920s or 1930s, used for a while, and then abandoned in the 1940s, when the Queensgate rail terminus was built on the other side of Mill Creek. Perhaps the second section was constructed in the early 1970s, right after the formation of the Consolidated Grain & Barge Company (known today as "CGB Enterprises"). The entire facility was abandoned in 1993, when CGB transferred its operations to a facility at 3164 Southside Avenue, which is on the Ohio River, and not a narrow, minor tributary to it. Despite being left out in the rain and snow to rot, the elevator's second section is still in remarkably good condition. Though someone has taken care to prevent access to anything that might serve as stairs to the top, the reinforced-concrete structure itself is as handsome and solid as ever.