The Marine "A"

The Marine "A" (designed by AE Baxter Engineering and constructed by the James Stewart Company in 1925) is one of the four grain elevators that were recently purchased by a company that hoped to utilize them in the construction of an ethanol plant. Those plans have fallen through, and the entire area remains inactive, even those parts of it that had been functioning as recently as 2000.

As I mention on page 405 of American Colossus, when Orrin and I were last there, in 1992, "on one of the walls in the basement of the Marine 'A,' there [is] a very detailed, almost gentle multi-colored chalk portrait of the Standard Elevator, which sits across from the Marine 'A' on the Buffalo River. Accurate but not fussy about the details, this careful portrait was made by someone who either had a photograph to work from, or knew the Standard by heart. Such a portraIit could only have been made with adequate lighting, which hasn't existed in the basement of the Marine 'A' since 1965, when the elevator was closed down and abandoned."

Note: those aren't spires that one seems to see along the top of the elevator; those are Y-shaped spouts, seen in relief. (When you see Orrin's pictures of the Standard Elevator, which I will post in the next few days, you'll see what I mean.)

On this, the side of the Marine "A" that faces the water, Orrin has captured one of my attempts at graffiti art. It says, Ruin of the modern spectacle. The ruined structure that dominates the picture is the bottom of one of the elevator's two mobile marine towers ("loose legs").