American Colossus: The Grain Elevator

Accident destroys significant marine tower in Buffalo

2011-12-07T20:36:00.010-05:00

On 2 December 2011, while demolishing part of the Agway/GLF Complex on Ganson Road in Buffalo, New York, Ontario Specialty Contracting accidentally knocked the marine tower of the old Wheeler Elevator into the Buffalo River.

(Photo courtesy WIVB.)

This is a sad end for the oldest marine tower (the building in which an elevator that unloads grain from ships is installed) left in Buffalo, the city in which the marine tower was invented by Robert Dunbar in 1843. The shaft in which the conveyor-buckets were housed can be seen, in the photo below, pointing straight down into the water, rather dejectedly.

(Photo courtesy WIVB.)

Designed and build by Monarch Engineering in 1909, the Wheeler Elevator was a modern marvel. Powered by electricity from Niagara, its marine leg could unload grain at the rate of 18,000-20,000 bushels per hour. The main house -- one of the very first in Buffalo to be built out of reinforced concrete -- could store 700,000 bushels in bins that ranged in capacity from 4,000 to 40,000 bushels. Wedged between the river and several train spurs, the Wheeler could load grain into canal boats, rail cars and even wagons. In the words of The Operative Miller, volume 15 (1910), the elevator was also equipped with "a complete system of intercommunicating telephones."

(Above: The Wheeler at its prime. Photo courtesy WIVB.)

According to an article published almost two years ago in the Buffalo News, "the complex, which shut down in the mid-1970s, was acquired for about $90,000 by Ontario Specialty Contracting" -- the complex's next door neighbor -- "in October 2009, for the purpose of partial demolition, after the city and the property's [former] owner showed no inclination to deal with repeated building code violations." That former owner, a marina operator, had used the complex only for its access to the Buffalo River.

Nice mention

2011-02-20T00:08:00.000-05:00

According to SUNY at Buffalo professor Lynda Schneekloth, writing in the 20 January 2011 issue of Artvoice, "the grand volume on the history of the type [is] by William Brown, American Colossus: The Grain Elevator (2009)." Thanks, Lynda!

Sales figures to date

2011-02-14T23:04:00.000-05:00

American Colossus: the Grain Elevator 1843 to 1943 was published in February 2009. Over the course of the last two years, it has sold a total of 140 copies: 21 through Lulu.com (the book's printer); 52 through Amazon.com; and 67 through Colossal Books. That's just almost six copies per month! We are pleased.

Talk at Great Lakes GEAPS annual educational convention

2011-01-17T21:16:00.002-05:00

Thanks to Darren Zink (Strategic Accounts Manager at Brock Grain Systems), I will be speaking at the annual educational convention of the Great Lakes chapter of the Grain Elevator and Processing Society to be held at Pokagon State Park in Angola, Indiana, on Thursday, April 7, 2011. See you there?

Wood Elevator in Cleveland: Follow-Up

2011-01-01T20:16:00.001-05:00

As I reported several months ago, there is a wood grain elevator in Cleveland, Ohio, that is said to date from the Civil War. If this is true, this elevator might well be the oldest of its kind still standing in North America.

From a distance, I have learned that the area in which this elevator is located (1635 Merwin Avenue) used to be the northern terminus of the Ohio & Erie Canal, which was in use between 1829 and 1872. There used to be a canal basin across from the elevator, which is located on the banks of the Cayahoga River. It seems that the site was once occupied by the Cleveland Steam Mill (a steam-powered flour mill) and the Cleveland Linseed Oil Works.

Unfortunately, the current owners of the structure haven't been very helpful. I called the plant manager of Cereal Food Processors (the current owner of the property) and was referred to the company headquarters in Kansas City. To date, several calls to the latter have gone unanswered.

Sales to date

2010-12-13T14:56:00.000-05:00

Since its publication in March 2009, American Colossus has sold 129 copies:

67 through the book's publisher, Colossal Books;
41 through the on-line store Amazon.com; and
21 through Lulu.com, the printer used by Colossal.

Small Book Fair in Cincinnati

2010-10-20T15:47:00.001-04:00

Between 2 and 4 pm on Saturday 6 November 2010, a Small Press Fair will be held at the Contemporary Arts Center, 44 East 6th Street, in downtown Cincinnati. Colossal Books will have a table at this event, and copies of our publications will be available for sale.

Wood grain elevator in Cleveland, Ohio

2010-07-31T11:16:00.006-04:00

My friend James Jackson was in Cleveland, Ohio, last week and took a tour of the harbor. It turns out that there is a "Civil War-era" grain elevator located on the Cuyahoga River! (The approximate date "Civil War-era" comes from the taped commentary provided by the boat tour company, which gave no other information about the elevator, which is certainly one of the few 19th century wood elevators still standing, and may well be among the oldest surviving grain elevators in North America.)

As you can see, the entire structure -- even the marine tower -- is made out of wood.

Supported upon huge beams, the marine tower is stationary and built right up against the main house. The word "FLOUR" can be made out on the top of the structure.

From this view of the marine tower, it appears that the iron casing for the elevating leg is intact.

(All photos by Jim Jackson.)

Curious email from Lulu

2010-07-20T19:19:00.000-04:00

Just got a curious email from www.lulu.com, which is the company through which I self-published American Colossus.

You recently published American Colossus: The Grain Elevator, 1843 to 1943 and made it available to the world in the Lulu Marketplace. Thank you. We're thrilled to have such a remarkable work in our catalog!

Unfortunately, the world didn't get to see it as quickly as they should have. A hiccup in our system kept your book from showing up in search results immediately after you published.

The short of it is the gremlins got us. Fortunately, we found them - big, hairy devils with beady red eyes and the complexion of toad - and dispensed with them. (We'll spare you the details). Our systems are back to the Lulu standard and all books in our catalog now appear in our search results.

They go on to offer me a discount on my next purchase(s) of the book. Funny thing, though: I didn't really notice any problems that needed to be corrected. The book's sales aren't setting any records -- 103 copies sold so far -- but I'm not complaining. We'll see what happens now.

One hundred copies sold so far

2010-06-13T09:54:00.001-04:00

Since its publication in March 2009, American Colossus: the Grain Elevator, 1843 to 1943 (Colossal Books) has sold 100 copies: 20 through www.lulu.com, 25 through www.amazon.com, and 55 through www.american-colossus.com.

GrainNet publishes a notice about my book

2010-05-17T13:22:00.001-04:00

Notice in GrainNet 16 May 2010.

Thanks, Mark Avery! It looks great.

The Standard Elevator

2010-05-11T15:28:00.001-04:00

The Standard Elevator was designed by A.E. Baxter Engineering and built by James Stewart Engineering in Buffalo, NY, in 1928. An extension was added in 1942 by M.-Hague.

In 1992, Orrin Pava and I were given a guided tour of the facility by a man named Chris, who (as I remember) was the elevator's superintendent. Then owned by Pillsbury, the facility was being used to unload boats from the Great Lakes/New York State Barge Canal and transship the grain to neighboring flour mills via railcars and trucks. But when Orrin and I returned to the place in April 2010, it appeared that the elevator, "now" owned by ADM, was no longer operating.

One of the Standard's marine legs, thrust into the hull of the J.L. Mauthe.

A view of the leg, extended from the marine tower, into the boat's hold.

At the top of the marine tower, the grain is conducted towards the main house through "Y" spouts that have been erected on top of it.

Part of the machinery that garners the grain into batches and weighs it out. Note the wheel that turns the flow on and off: not an instance of "pure" utility or "form following function," but an instance of "useless" decoration and aesthetic beauty!

A horizontal conveyor-belt system waits to receive the grain from the garner and scale above.

The chart upon which the bins inside the "B-House" -- the extension built in 1942 -- are represented. Since the contents of the various bins (both full and interstitial) are temporary, they are "recorded" in chalk and then erased when the account has been cleared.

(All photos 1992 by Orrin Pava.)

The tile bins at the old Washburn-Crosby Elevator

2010-05-10T22:21:00.001-04:00

The grain bins at the center of this picture (there are nine of them in total, only three of which face us) were designed and constructed by the Barnett-Record Company for the Washburn-Crosby Flour Milling Company in 1903. The only bins in Buffalo to be built out of tile, and one of the earliest examples of tile-bin construction in North or South America, they are now part of the General Mills Flour complex. (Photo 1992 by Orrin Pava.)

The American Elevator

2010-05-10T21:52:00.004-04:00

Designed and built by the James Stewart Engineering Company in 1906, the American Elevator is one of Buffalo's greatest elevators. It is remarkable for its storage bins, which are among the first in America to be built out of reinforced concrete, and for its marine towers. There are two of them: one mobile (on the left), the other fixed in position(right). Though these towers used ropes in their drive systems, they were still in operation during the 1990s.

Here the American's legs work upon a single vessel. Note the horizontal conveyor belt in the upper left: it carries grain over to Perot Malting, which also includes historic bins made out of reinforced-concrete (built in 1907). They are visible on the left side of the photo at the top of this entry.

In the lower left of the photo above: the spectacular ruins of the Marine "A."

(Both photos were taken by Orrin Pava in 1992.)

The Concrete Central Elevator

2010-05-09T03:30:00.007-04:00

I've already mentioned the Concrete Central Elevator, which still stands and probably remains accessible at ground level, but no higher (the stairs having been removed?).

There is a lot to see at the ground level, that is, in the "basement"of this colossal grain elevator (built between 1915 and 1917 and capable of storing 4.5 million bushels).

There is the magnificent hall-like effect created by the huge amount of space that exists underneath the reinforced-concrete structure that holds the iron hoppers and spouts that are attached to the bottoms of the grain bins. (Note that some spouts are coming down from interstitial bins, which do not require hoppers.)

A photo that documents just one of many such hoppers at the Concrete Central.

The only way Orrin and I managed to obtain this view of the three rusted-out, formerly mobile marines towers at the Concrete Central was to climb the stairs all the way to top of its neighbor on the Buffalo River, the Superior Elevator, where the degree of deterioration was just as bad.

(All photos on this page taken by Orrin Pava.)

Horn Buttons at the Superior Elevator

2010-05-09T02:29:00.011-04:00

I've already mentioned the Superior Elevator, which still stands but might not be accessible any more (stairs to the top removed?). On page 406 of American Colossus, I state:

On a wall at the bin-floor level of the Superior Elevator, next to a button that caused a horn to sound and thus alert everyone in the area that the 'loose leg' (the automotive marine tower) was about to go into operation, Orrin and I saw the stenciled image of a Native American warrior in silhouette and the word HORNBLOWER.

Either we didn't manage to take a picture of that particular graffito, or my memory has deceived me; in either case -- as you can see -- the graffiti speaks of "Horn Buttons" not "Horn Blowers." But my point remains the same: there's a close (and unusual, certainly unique) association of Native American imagery with buttons that signal by the use of horns that a marine leg is going into operation.

(Note: there is something stenciled below the phrase "Horn Button," but I can only make out a part of it, that is, its top line, which says "2 HORNS SCALE FLOOR.")

Not only is this association between Native American warriors and grain elevator operators close, it is also repeated.

Indeed, it is repeated over and over again.

What's going on here? Was the Native American warrior part of the Superior Elevator's corporate logo? Not likely: "Superior" referred to Superior Flour, not any tribe associated with Lake Superior. Was the warrior part of the logo of the unionized team that ran the elevator? Possible, but not likely in a business dominated, at least on the local level, by people of Irish descendent.

At some point, it doesn't matter, precisely because it is the appearance of Native American imagery in a ruined grain elevator (the basement floors of which were permanently flooded when Orrin and I were there in 1991 and 1992) that creates the feeling that the place is haunted by ghosts, that is to say, the ghosts of dead Native American warriors.

(All photos on this page were taken by Orrin Pava.)

Which grain elevator is this?

2010-05-09T01:39:00.007-04:00

Neither Orrin nor I can remember where he took this photograph, which shows a chart -- scrawled by hand upon a wall made of reinforced concrete -- that records the names of the boats that were unloaded (and the amounts of grain they were carrying) in 1980.

The fact that the year is 1980 suggests that he took the photo in the Great Northern Elevator, which ceased operations in 1981 and which we were given a tour of in 1992. But there are no reinforced-concrete walls in the Great Northern. Furthermore, we have no other pictures of this elevator, which suggests we didn't take any photos of it during that tour.

The photo could have been taken in the Superior Elevator, the Wheeler (aka the Agway/GLF), the Concrete Central, or the Standard Elevator, all of which have walls made of reinforced concrete. But the Superior Elevator ceased operations in the 1960s, and the Concrete Central and the Agway/GLF closed down in mid-1970s. As for the Standard Elevator, it remained in operation until the 1990s, if not later, and so wouldn't have though the year 1980 to be worthy of such notoriety.

The Marine "A"

2010-05-08T15:35:00.006-04:00

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").

The Wheeler Elevator (aka Agway/GLF)

2010-05-08T15:06:00.008-04:00

Now I'll turn to grain elevators that haven't been demolished, but may no longer be accessible to photographers. It seems fitting to begin with the Wheeler Elevator (built of out of reinforced concrete in 1909), which lies at the heart of the completely abandoned complex formerly owned and operated by Agway/GLF, because back in 1992 -- when Orrin Pavan and I snuck into the place and wondered around it for almost three hours before someone discovered our intrusion and asked us who we were -- we were told, "It's a good thing you're leaving, because if our guard dog gotta hold of you, you'd be in trouble right now." Or something like that.

In the photograph above (not taken by Orrin), the original 1909 bins plus the original marine tower (thus one of the oldest marine towers in Buffalo) appear -- if the whole complex can be likened to a baseball diamond -- at "home plate." At "first base" we see the flour mill (and more concrete grain bins that lead back from the tower) that were designed by AE Baxter and constructed by James Stewart in 1936. And at the "second" and "third bases," we see the huge annex designed by AE Baxter and constructed by Hydro in 1942.

Orrin's picture (above) finds us inside the marine tower, where we see parts of the machine's wood-and-rope drive system.

The H&O Oats Grain Elevator

2010-05-08T12:52:00.004-04:00

I might as well as continue in the direction of grain elevators in Buffalo that have been destroyed in the last few years: around the time that the Wollenberg burned down, the steel-binned H&O Oats Elevator (designed by HR Wait & Monarch Engineering in 1931) was razed to make room for a casino that still hasn't been built yet.

As I mention on page 405 of American Colossus, when Orrin and I visited the H&O Oats in 1992, the basement was permanently flooded. And, although someone had laid out a series of bridges that allowed passage to the stairs that in turn led to the top of structure, we decided to go no further than the vantage point at which Orrin took the picture above.

The Wollenberg Grain Elevator and Feed Mill

2010-05-07T18:26:00.001-04:00

Built in 1912 out of the wood salvaged from the old Kellogg "B" Elevator (which itself dated back to 1892), the Wollenberg Grain Elevator and Feed Mill managed to stay in business until 1987, when it suddenly closed and was abandoned. In 1990, the Wollenberg -- the only wood-binned country elevator in Buffalo -- was selected for documentation by the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), and in 2003 the Wollenberg was placed on the National Registry of Historic Places.

Despite these honors, the Wollenberg was never properly cleaned or secured by the City of Buffalo. In point of fact, it was one big firetrap: filled with piles of flour, grain dust and feed. On 1 October 2006, the Wollenberg was partially destroyed by a fire of uncertain origin; on 3 October 2006, whatever remained was torn down by the City of Buffalo.

In 1992, Orrin Pava and I visited the Wollenberg. These are the photographs that Orrin took.

Grain dust (and cobwebs) cover the machinery inside.

Piles of raw grain dumped on the floor.

Looking down into one of the wooden grain bins. Bags as well as raw grain are at the bottom.

Spouts in the ceiling.

Good news, everybody!

2010-05-07T09:59:00.001-04:00

During a recent trip to Buffalo, New York, my dear friend Orrin Pava gave me DOZENS of photographs that he took during our grain elevator explorations in that city during 1991 and 1992. In the coming days and weeks, I'll be posting scans of those exciting pictures to this blog. You will see it was worth the wait!

The Superior Elevator in Buffalo, New York

2010-04-26T19:43:00.003-04:00

The Superior Elevator in Buffalo, NY, circa 1925. Photographer unknown. Built in three stages by the A.E. Baxter Construction Company and H.R. Wait and/or the James Stewart Construction Company, the Superior used two electrically powered marine towers ("loose legs") and could store up to 3.7 million bushels. Note that these loose legs were restricted to the Superior "A" (built in 1915), and that both the Superior "B" (built in 1923) and the Superior "C" (1925) had to built at an angle to the original structure to accommodate one of the many twists and turns in the course of the Buffalo River.

Montreal, circa 1925

2010-04-26T19:30:00.000-04:00

At left, electrically powered mobile marine towers ("loose legs") in Montreal, circa 1925. Photographer unknown.

Buffalo, circa 1900

2010-04-26T19:23:00.003-04:00

A picture looking up Main Street, Buffalo, NY, in 1900. Photographer unknown. At the left, the Brown Elevator. At the right, moving from left from right, the Wilkeson, the CJ Wells, and the Sternberg Elevators. All of these grain elevators were designed by Robert Dunbar (the true inventor of the mechanized grain elevator), constructed out of wood and powered by coal-burning steam engines.

Sales March 2009 to March 2010

2010-03-11T09:51:00.000-05:00

This blog debuted exactly one year ago today to publicize the existence of American Colossus: the Grain Elevator 1843 to 1943, the first book-length history of the American grain elevator. To date, the book has sold 77 copies: 18 copies through www.lulu.com, 21 copies through www.amazon.com, and 38 through Colossal Books, which published the title and will be offering a second, expanded edition of the book later this year.

Feedback on presentation at GEAPS 2010

2010-02-25T16:14:00.002-05:00

Audience response:
We had 65 attendees, 94% completed the evaluation.

How would you rate the quality of this session overall?
Excellent 34%
Good 57%
Fair 8%
Poor 0%

How interesting was the session?
Very 70%
Somewhat 30%
Not at all 0%

How useful will it be at work?
Very 16&
Somewhat 37%
Not at all 46%

Was the session?
Too tech 1%
Not enough 10%
Just Right 89%

To what degree did it improve your understanding?
Very 36%
Somewhat 52%
Not at all 12%

How would you rate your speaker?
Excellent 41%
Good 52%
Fair 7%
Poor 0%

Should GEAPS offer this as a webinar?
Yes 32%
No 62%

Comments:
Good history of the industry.
Very interesting session, no operations benefit, but fun to learn about the history of the industry.
Very interesting historical background.

Text of presentation at GEAPS 2010 Wichita, Kansas

2010-02-25T15:54:00.003-05:00

The History of the Grain Elevator
by William J. Brown

I was born in a place where a huge grain elevator stood and, indeed, still stands. The elevator was built back in the 1920s. As a child, I used to see it often, riding in my parents' car on the way to Grandma's house. Many years later, I went to graduate school in a place where there were (and still are) over a dozen grain elevators, one or two of which are among the most active facilities in the USA. I became fascinated by grain elevators, and spent several years reading about them, looking at old pictures of them, exploring the abandoned elevators and getting guided tours of the ones that were still working. Eventually, I wrote American Colossus, which is a book about the history of the American grain elevator between 1843 and 1943.

Now, without reading any more, you might assume that I was born and went to graduate school somewhere on the prairies, in the American Midwest or Canada. Certainly somewhere in or near the great wheat/corn/soybean belt that is the geographical center of our great nation and this extraordinary continent. But in fact I was born in Brooklyn, New York, and went to graduate school in Buffalo, New York. If you are surprised by this -- and clearly I am hoping that you are -- it is probably because Brooklyn and Buffalo are big cities, not small towns or villages, and because both cities are centers of industry, not agriculture. To give this hoped-for surprise a voice: "What would a city boy know about grain elevators?"

Now, generally speaking, city boys and girls know very little or nothing about grain elevators; indeed, the very words "grain elevators" are often foreign to their ears. And this is because city folks on the West, East and Gulf coasts of the USA live at the terminals of the torrential streams that bring hundreds of millions of bushels of grain (and all of the many products that are derived from it) from farms in small towns in the American Midwest to supermarkets, bakeries, liquor stores and gasoline stations everywhere else. By the time all or any of that grain has reached the city folks, the grain elevators have already done their work, and so they escape notice. Of course, there are grain elevators in the big cities (port cities, especially), but these facilities generally ship grain overseas, and so the average big-city coast-dweller doesn't know or doesn't need to know what those huge, odd-looking buildings are, or how they fit into the international "grain stream."

OK, so I'm "unusual" for a city boy: I know all about grain elevators; in fact I wrote "the book" about them! Humorous though it might be, this little pleasantry isn't the real punch-line of my story. My real punch-line is the fact that the grain elevator itself was invented in a major city (in Buffalo, New York, as a matter of fact), and not in a rural town. Despite our expectations, the grain elevator was invented more than 160 years ago in an urban transshipping hub and in the middle of the grain stream, and not at the beginning or the "well-spring" of that stream. How and why did this happen?

Technically speaking, the first grain elevators -- that is to say, the first steam-powered bucketed conveyor-belts -- were used by Oliver Evans, an inventor and businessman in Maryland who started using them in his flour mills in the mid-1780s. The idea was both simple and brilliant. Evans could have used the new invention (the wood-burning steam engine) to move grain to and from the millstones on horizontal belts, which would have required his flour mills to be big and wide enough to encompass all that machinery. Instead, Evans used his conveyor belts to "elevate" the grain vertically, to the top of the mill, from which the force of gravity alone was needed to conduct the grain down to the millstones and then down from the millstones to the barrels in which the flour was sealed. Not only did Evans' top-down flour mills function much more rapidly and efficiently than "traditional" mills (which were powered by water currents, the wind, or teams of horses), but they also didn't take up as much space as their predecessors. They were tall buildings, not wide ones, and thus well-suited for locations near water (rivers, lakes or oceans), where the demand for space is always much higher than elsewhere.

In 1865, looking back on the history of the invention that he claimed was his, and his alone, the Buffalo-based merchant Joseph Dart, Jr. was paradoxically explicit in his debt to Oliver Evans. In his address to the Buffalo and Erie Historical Society (BECHS), Dart stated: "Indeed, the building I then erected [in 1843] may perhaps be called the parent, not only of the Bennett Elevator [built in 1863 on the site previously occupied by the Dart Elevator], but of all others; for I believe it was the first steam transfer and storage Elevator in the world. It was the first Elevator in the world. It was the first successful application of the valuable invention of Oliver Evans to the commercial purpose for which it is now extensively employed."

For Dart, who had been out of the grain business for years before the historic elevator that bore his name burned down, this acknowledgment of Oliver Evans had two purposes. Dart not only wanted to help historians trace the history of the invention that, by 1865, had transformed Buffalo into the biggest grain port in the world. He also wanted to lobby in favor of granting a patent for the device called "the grain elevator" to one Joseph Dart, Jr., of Buffalo, New York. Oliver Evans had been awarded a patent, and so should Joseph Dart, Jr., too, because "an inventor's merit consists not merely in conceiving an idea of a machine, but also in overcoming the practical difficulties of its successful operation [...] It is worthy of remark that some of the most useful inventions have not been discoveries of new principles or methods of mechanical action, but new applications of methods and principles already known."

But Dart was never granted a patent for the "grain transfer and storage elevator." One can easily see why. Despite his claim to personally "overcoming the practical difficulties of [the elevator's] successful operation," Dart's address to the BECHS contains nothing about the construction, mechanics or day-to-day functioning of "his" grain elevator. The people who really knew about these subjects were Robert Dunbar, the mechanical engineer who both designed and built the Dart Elevator, the Bennett Elevator, and many others in Buffalo and elsewhere in the USA, and William Wells, the superintendent of the Dart Elevator and several others in Buffalo.

Far from being without interest, Dart's self-serving address to the BECHS is full of information about the rapid increase in the grain trade through Buffalo between 1831, when the first grain-bearing brig arrived from Chicago, and 1845, when the Dart Elevator was doubled in size and capacity to accommodate the ever-rising demand for "transfer and storage" services in that city. Why was Buffalo so important? Because of its unique geographical location: at the eastern end of Lake Erie, and thus reachable from anywhere on the Great Lakes, which is the single biggest system of lakes in the world; and at the western end of the Erie Canal, and thus reachable from Albany (and points east, such as Boston), the Hudson River and New York's Harbor. Completed in 1825, the Erie Canal was, at first, an east-to-west route for immigrants, pioneers and settlers who were heading out to Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Soon afterwards, and thanks to the great productivity of the farms in the new "West," the Erie Canal became a two-way conduit: people and manufactured goods traveling from East to West; but also grain (flour in barrels, and wheat in sealed sacks) being shipped from West to East, that is to say, from farm to market.

An in-land port city, Buffalo also had a problem. The vessels that navigated the Great Lakes were too large to sail through the Erie Canal, and the boats that traveled the Erie Canal were too small to sail on the Great Lakes. And so, the grain that came into Buffalo had to be transshipped, that is, unpacked from the lakers, temporarily stored on the docks, and then packed up into the canal boats. As late as 1842, this transshipping was accomplished by the oldest and most labor-intensive of technologies: a block-and-tackle, and teams of stevedores, who would do most of the carrying of the barrels and sacks on their very backs. It was a very slow process, and often times required as much as a week to transship a single shipment of grain (approximately 3,000 bushels). But by 1842, when Buffalo began to receive a million bushels of grain from in-coming lakers, it was clear that this method had become obsolete. The answer, certainly, lay in mechanizing the transshipping process, just as agriculture had been mechanized by such inventions as Cyrus McCormick's steam-powered reaper (1831), the Pitt Brothers' steam-powered thresher (1834) and John Deer's steel-tipped plow (1837).

Here Joseph Dart, Jr. had no choice but to turn to Robert Dunbar, who had been working on the problem in nearby Black Rock, New York. A trained mechanical engineer, Dunbar had tried water mills to power his elevators. (A miller from Black Rock named Mahlon Kingman had tried teams of horses.) But these were only experiments. Over the winter of 1842-1843, Dunbar -- working under the auspices of Joseph Dart, Jr. but using his own designs, his own iron foundry and his own hands -- constructed what came to be known as the world's first "marine tower." Called marine because it faced the water (Buffalo Creek), this tower was a tall, thin box made of heavy wood timbers. Inside of it, the conveyor-belt was stored horizontally, just as the elevators at Evans' flour mills were. Powered by a wood-burning steam engine and enclosed in its own wooden tube, the elevating device was called a leg because, when lowered out of the marine tower, the apparatus appeared to "step" out, down and into the hull of the grain ship that was docked in front of it. The buckets that were attached to the conveyor belt (later called "Buffalo buckets") could each store a quart of grain. Dunbar did some experimenting before he finally got the number and spacing of the buckets right. When the leg was lowered into a ship's hull, these buckets bit into the piles of grain in bulk stored therein, and elevated it to the top of the marine tower, where the grain was expelled from the "leg" and collected separately. Because it had been elevated in this fashion, the grain could then be sent -- using nothing but the force of gravity -- to a canal boat, which was docked underneath the structure, or to the top of the "mainhouse" of the elevator, where the grain was stored temporarily in tall, rectangular bins. When it was needed, the stored grain was conducted by gravity down from the bottom of the bin into a "boot," from which the grain was then elevated by another steam-powered leg (called a "lofting leg" or simply a "lofter" to distinguish it from the marine leg) to the top of the tower. From the tower, the grain was then conveyed by gravity down into a canal boat or horse-driven wagon, depending on who the ultimate purchaser was. (Later, with the coming of the railroads, the marine tower could also dispatch grain into a shed and the cars of the trains that had pulled into it.)

On 12 June 1843, the Dart Elevator serviced its first vessel, the schooner Philadelphia, which brought 4,515 bushels of grain in bulk from Chicago. A cheap but remarkably indirect route, which took as long as a month to complete: all the way up Lake Michigan, all the way down Lake Huron, and then all the way across Lake Erie! The grain from Chicago was transshipped from the Philadelphia to canal boat in a single day, which was almost seven times faster than a "traditional" grain warehouse could manage. Over the course of the 1843 shipping season, the Dart successfully unloaded a total of 229,260 bushels of grain from more than 70 different vessels. Indeed, the Dart was so successful that, just two years after its opening, its storage capacity was doubled (a total of 110,000 bushels) and a second marine tower was added. It was clear: Buffalo's transshipping problems could be solved if another half-dozen of these elevators were built there. Together, they could easily accommodate the millions of bushels that the Port of Buffalo was receiving every year. By 1852, Buffalo's harbor was indeed filled with such elevators, as well as floaters (grain elevators placed on small ships) and transfer towers (elevators without storage bins accompanying them).

But the grain elevator was not an invention that was adopted immediately and universally. Indeed, it wasn't until 1846 that other grain elevators were built in Buffalo, and it wasn't until 1847 that "Buffalo-style" grain elevators were built outside of that city. What accounts for the delay? It seems there were a great many factors, including the costs of construction, the difficulty of obtaining credit, the absence of plans or designs for constructing a good grain elevator, the limited demand for grain in bulk, the different ideas of what a "bushel" meant, the resistance in the local community to "time-saving devices" that put people out of work, the absence of a local flour-milling industry, and the uncertainty and chaotic nature of the grain trade itself (no telegraph lines, no "to arrive" contracts, no futures markets, no standardized grain-grades, etc). In fact, it was only in the 1850s that the basic conditions for the widespread adoption of the transcontinental grain elevator system were finally met. The key development was the universal adoption of the switch-over from shipping grain in sealed, burlap sacks to shipping grain in bulk. Once this switch-over was accomplished, grain elevators weren't merely helpful in dealing with exceptions (shipments that weren't in sacks or shipments of grain other than wheat); they were necessary for conducting business on an everyday basis.

The beginnings of the interlinked grain elevator system of today can be seen in the locations of the world's second and third steam-powered grain elevators, which were constructed by Robert Dunbar in 1847 in Toledo, Ohio, and Brooklyn, New York. The line that stretched from Toledo to Buffalo to Brooklyn moved grain along an all-water route from the interior of the country to one of its primary coastal marketplaces. Along this line, the grain had to be transshipped three times: from horse-driven wagon or canal boat to lake vessel at Toledo; from laker to canal boat at Buffalo; and from canal boat to wagon, rail car or ocean-going vessel at Brooklyn. In time, this line would be extended west to Chicago, Illinois, where a steam-powered elevator was built in 1848, and east to Oswego, New York, where one was built in 1851.

Thanks to this interlinked system of grain elevators, America was able to develop its enormous agricultural potential. Grain that was grown for profit could now be transported more easily, more cheaply and much further than ever before. These advances in transportation meant greater profits for both grain growers and grain dealers. Greater profits in turn meant that more land could purchased and turned into farmland, and more and bigger markets for grain products could be constructed. Both enterprises required human labor, which meant that more people would be able to move "out west" and find jobs . . . as grain-growers, grain-transporters or grain-dealers. As a result, more grain was grown and . . . the cycle began anew. And so let us say, in word: America had grain, but it was the grain elevator that turned that grain into power: grain power.

It was through the British that American grain elevators came to dominate the transshipping practices of the world. Because it had long nourished itself on bread made from wheat, and because it was becoming increasingly dependent on American wheat after the abolition of its Corn Laws in 1846, England was one of the first countries to start switching-over from grain shipped in sealed sacks to grain shipped in bulk. It appears that the first American-style grain elevators to be used in England were floaters: one of them was in fact towed clear across the Atlantic Ocean in the 1880s. Once in England, this elevator was studied and copied by British engineers, who began building their own floaters. Thereafter, the "American Elevator," as it was known, was sold off to the Belgians, who successfully used it in their harbors. Around 1905, floating elevators were first introduced in Holland. But it wasn't until the 1910s, when reinforced concrete became the primary material out of which grain bins were made, that huge land-based elevators were built in Western Europe, Russia and India. At first, their bins were shaped like rectangles, not cylinders. Eventually, or rather, after ravages of World War II, truly American-style elevators (cylindrical silos and all) were built in Europe and elsewhere in the world.

Between 1843 and, say, 1943, grain elevators in America underwent several significant changes. With the change-over from wood to coal as the source of fuel, the steam engines inside these elevators became more powerful and the machines they powered became even faster and more efficient. Storage capacities grew from around 100,000 bushels to nearly a million bushels per elevator. Another major change-over came at the end of the 1890s, when the availability of electrification brought about the obsolescence of the steam engine. To answer the challenge of this new, "cleaner" and more-modern form of energy, and to take advantage of the lowered insurance rates that were offered to operators of electrified grain elevators, designers and builders experimented with a number of building materials other than wood and iron: tile, steel, and reinforced concrete. As a result of all this experimentation, grain elevators -- or, rather, the buildings that enclosed them, as well as the buildings that stored the grain -- began to look very different from the Dart Elevator and the ones that were built in the 19th century. The chief difference was the visual appearance of the grain bins: they were no longer stored within a larger structure (the "mainhouse"), but instead stood alone, on their own.

During and after World War II, the construction and technology of grain elevators changed once again. At some grain elevators, the storage bins were no longer compartments, as they had been since the time of the Dart Elevator, but single rooms capable of storing a million bushels each. At other grain elevators, the machines were no longer housed in buildings of their own, but were -- like the grain tanks they serviced -- freestanding structures, fully visible to the eyes of passers-by. At still other elevators, external conveyor-belts were no longer necessary, because some sailing vessels had machines aboard that did the unloading themselves. Indeed, some "grain elevators" were no longer grain elevators, but grain blowers (or grain suckers, if you prefer): machines that transship piles of grain in bulk by vacuum cleaners and pneumatic tubes, not buckets and belts.

Generally speaking, the old American classics of the 1843 to 1943 era have been destroyed, either to make room for newer facilities or to simply remove a troublesome eyesore or "attractive nuisance," as the lawyers say. In some places, especially in small rural communities with a strong sense of municipal pride, the old classics (the "country elevators") have been turned into museums. In other places, the old classics of the reinforced-concrete variety have been transformed into climbing gyms, planetaria, hotels, and condominiums. Paradoxically, it is only in poor communities -- places like Chicago, Cincinnati and Buffalo -- that classic elevators still stand, but only because they haven't been demolished yet, not because they have been "saved" from demolition.

Quite obviously, we can learn from a great deal from the past. In the course of my research, I have compiled this list of "lessons" that might be useful for the future.

1). In America, the order of development has not the same as it was in Europe, where the rural village existed long before before the big city. In America, the small town and the big city were built at the same time. A "big city" could spout up anywhere, even in the middle of the wilderness. Likewise, big cities collapse and end up looking like wildernesses again.

2). Unlike the production of grain, the grain trade doesn't necessary originate with or even follow the contours of the land. Generally speaking, the grain trade follows the opportunities offered by current business conditions. And so, the grain trade can embrace or abandon a place -- even the very same place -- with equal rapidity and coldness once an opportunity arises.

3). Though the "givens" of the natural environment play a large role in determining the success or failure of a local enterprise, one shouldn't forget that the natural environment can be modified, sometimes quite substantially. And so the question isn't, "Who has access to the best resources?" but "Who can imagine how those resources could be put to use?"

4). There is no such thing as a "pure" invention. All inventions are built upon the work of others. There is certainly something "original" in an invention, but it lies in its imaginative use of something else, something that pre-exists it. This suggests that there are no solitary inventors, no "isolated geniuses," and that inventions are always the work of a team of individuals (at least two of them).

5). The beginnings of modern industry, globalization and other apparently contemporary phenomena are much earlier than we might believe. They all seem to start in the 1840s, not later (the 1880s, the 1920s, or the 1940s). This might help us today, when it global capitalism is undergoing its worst crisis since the 1930s.

6). Despite the widespread notion that most industries strive to produce just enough "quality" or "excellence" to survive, but never strive to produce real excellence for its own sake, many of the grain elevators of the classic period were truly excellent architecture. They were very well-built, and they were very striking to look at, even if the viewer couldn't decide if they were spectacularly beautiful or spectacularly ugly.

Presentation in Wichita, Kansas, 22 February 2010

2010-01-01T17:28:00.005-05:00

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

2009-12-20T10:04:00.001-05:00

“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

2009-11-05T18:06:00.001-05:00

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

2009-10-26T18:16:00.001-04:00

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

2009-09-02T12:11:00.002-04:00

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

Diet Soap interview

2009-08-26T13:09:00.005-04:00

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

2009-08-21T19:52:00.019-04:00

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.

Where to buy a copy

2009-08-15T01:47:00.009-04:00

American Colossus still isn't available on Amazon, but I'm sure it will be by October of this year. In the meantime, you can still buy it through Lulu. The price will be the same ($29.99) in either case.

To date, 34 copies of the book have been sold. Two-thirds of them (22 copies) were purchased by Colossal Books (which re-sold 15 of them and gave 7 of them away to potential reviewers); and one-third (12 copies) were purchased by others through Lulu. To all those people who have bought a copy of American Colossus: thank you very much!

Adaptive Reuse: A Practical Proposal

2009-05-21T11:03:00.025-04:00

On pages 401-404 of American Colossus, I discuss the various ways in which grain elevators that have recently been abandoned by their owners can be "adaptively reused," that is, not used as grain elevators or grain-storage warehouses, but as something else. As I've noted before, the most common way to adaptively reuse a grain elevator is to transform it into a home, a house or a hotel. Old grain elevators have also been transformed into in-door rock-climbing facilities, planetariums and museums about grain elevators.

But what about grain elevators that have been abandoned and become derelict, even dilapidated? These are buildings that can't be reused without first spending massive amounts of money to clean them out, fix whatever damage has occurred, re-wire them for electricity, etc. On the other hand, these are, generally speaking, large buildings made of reinforced concrete, which means they are expensive to demolish. But be demolished they must, that is, if the land upon which they stand is to be sold to a buyer who doesn't want to adaptively reuse an old building, but build a new one.

Such is the "stand-off" or state of paralysis one sees in Buffalo, New York. The waterfront area is full of long-abandoned elevators made out of reinforced concrete. As time goes by, they continue to rot, get vandalized, etc. Though there are many individuals, groups and institutions in Buffalo who are involved in the documentation, appreciation and lamentation of the passing of the city's grain elevators, few of them are able to come up with truly practical solutions to the problem of adaptively reusing ruined buildings.

(Not all of the elevators in Buffalo are in the dilapidated state that renders the Superior, the Concrete Central, the Great Northern and the Connecting Terminal difficult, if not impossible, to reclaim. But those that remain in or near operable condition are more likely to be sold to ethanol-producers than reused as houses or museums, for which there is much less market demand.)

When the city has proposed or agreed that one of Buffalo's abandoned and derelict elevators be destroyed -- in the hope or with the contractual provision that the buyer of the "cleaned" property builds something valuable to the community on it -- the "preservationists" have found themselves in an untenable position. They had have no workable proposals for what to do with the Eastern States, Meyer Malting, Kreiner Malting, and, last but not least, the H & O Oats, all of which have been demolished since 2000, but without being replaced with a "new" building of any kind. The worst of both worlds: no elevator, no new building, just a vacant lot no one wants.

The demolition the H & O Oats is the most recent and most painful example. Between 2005 and 2007, there were those who wanted to demolish this abandoned and derelict grain elevator in the name of building something that would hopefully provide jobs and attract tourists/money to the area (a casino); and there were those -- the "preservationists" -- who wanted to save the elevator because Buffalo is the city in which the grain elevator was invented and developed. Both sides had strong cases: title to the land, in the case of the former (the Seneca Nation of Indians), and a pattern of indifference and neglect on the part of the city in the protection of these buildings, in the case of the preservationists. And yet both sides also had weak cases: respectively speaking, the casino could be built in such a location on the property that the H & O Oats need not be demolished, and there was in fact little else to do with the elevator (or, rather, what remained of it in the aftermath of a devastating fire in 1987) other than demolish it. In the end, the elevator was demolished and the casino was not built due to lack of capital funds.

And so, here is my proposal: commission internationally-known artists to paint gigantic murals upon these abandoned elevators, make a movie of the process, and then hold an exhibition, perhaps in tandem with a July 4th fireworks display and a projection of the aforementioned movie upon an elevator that had been painted all-white for the occasion. The effect would be truly spectacular!

Of course, the murals chosen for -- temporary? permanent? -- display would have to be much better than the one in Midland, Ontario (see below).

Gary Friesen wrote a piece about this, "North America's largest outdoor mural," in the 14 April 2001 edition of The Globe and Mail.

Painted on the side of a century-old grain elevator, the mural depicts a Jesuit missionary and a Huron-Ouendat native overlooking Sainte-Marie among the Hurons, the Jesuit mission and the first permanent European community in Canada west of the Ottawa River. Built in 1639, Sainte-Marie was the headquarters of the Jesuits sent to preach among the Huron-Ouendat natives. In 1649, after years of deadly attacks by the invading Iroquois to the south, the remaining Jesuits and Huron-Ouendats burnt Sainte-Marie to the ground and eventually returned to New France (Quebec).

Visitors can easily see the mural from anywhere along the waterfront, although the pier to the far right offers the best face-on view. Binoculars and a lawn chair would allow the viewer to experience and really appreciate the extremely detailed workmanship by artist Fred Lenz. The weather dictates when work begins as the concrete walls must be totally dry for the special mural paints to properly adhere and maintain their vibrant colours. Visitors and residents delight in watching the progress through the warmer and drier months. The mural is scheduled to be completed in time for the dedication ceremonies during Midland's annual Waterfest Weekend in early August.

The gigantic waterfront mural is the crowning achievement of artist Fred Lenz's career and the highlight of Midland's outdoor historical mural project. Over 30 huge murals splash colour and local history throughout the downtown commercial core. Sponsored by the Midland Business Improvement Association, the mural project plays a major role in an overall downtown revitalization program. With a descriptive brochure and guide map, visitors can easily stroll through almost 400 years of local history. These brochures are available throughout the community. The exquisite craftsmanship will impress you as will your appreciation of Midland's rich and unique heritage.

This outdoor historical mural project is a great idea, and could easily be brought to a place like Buffalo, but this particular mural is just awful. "Extremely detailed workmanship"?! The left arm of the Huron-Ouendat, presumably gesturing to the settlement and not extending his hand in friendship to the missionary (whose hands are hidden), is clearly deformed. This is especially poignant, given that -- in 1930, almost 25 years before the preserved remains of two of the missionaries were discovered at the site -- the eight "Canadian Martyrs" of Sainte-Marie were canonized by the Pope. Inevitably, the canonization of these missionaries meant the demonization of their killers, who weren't simply Iroquois, but members of the Seneca Nation. I hope that I'm wrong, but I sincerely doubt that any of the murals sponsored by the Midland Business Improvement Association document the displacement and devastation of both the Hurons and the Senecas.

A really strong pro-Seneca mural would be perfect for Buffalo. Some old wounds have still not healed there. To recall the last few lines of an article published in The Buffalo News on 6 December 2005, in the midst of the battle over the H & O Oats elevator:

Several critics of the project said the Senecas were showing insensitivity by not including the public in its decisions.

John Laping, chairman of the Buffalo Preservation Board, regretted there has been none of the scrutiny or public input required in Buffalo. "It's too bad the Seneca Nation does not feel the same kind of civic responsibility," said Laping.

Richard Lippes, the attorney filing the lawsuit against the purchase of the DL&W site on the grounds that it violates state and federal law, agreed. He hopes the Senecas will reconsider its decision to destroy the H-O Oats complex.

"The Senecas, perhaps more than most, should understand the importance of our history and our environment, and respect these historic structures," Lippes said.

To state the obvious: the "insensitivity" here is among those who do not know or simply refuse to admit that hundreds of years before this "historic" elevator was built -- indeed, hundreds of years before the founding of Buffalo itself -- the Senecas lived on these precise tracts of land, and that thereupon they had their own "history" and "environment." They want some of that land back? They have every right to it: not you, not me. Put that on your mural.

(Note added 23 December 2011: see the Stored Potential Project in Omaha, Nebraska, which used abandoned grain elevators to display silo-length scrolls of art on a temporary basis.)

When to stay away

2009-05-17T20:16:00.024-04:00

One of the major themes in my book is "the problem of properly positioning yourself with respect to a colossal building [...] Kant notes that 'We must keep from going very near the Pyramids just as much as we keep from going too far from them, in order to get the full emotional effect from their size.' [...] In Derrida's words, 'So one has to find a middle place, a correct distance for uniting the maximum of comprehension [aesthetic pleasure] with the maximum of apprehension [mathematical understanding]" (American Colossus,pages 335-336). To show that this positioning of oneself in the middle isn't simply a mental or psychological process -- more than a way of enjoying that which is disturbingly large -- but also a physical one, I quote the photographer Frank Gohlke (p. 337). As I have noted before, Gohlke claims:

For me, the essential grain elevator view is obtained through the windshield of a car or truck while traveling on a highway in Kansas or Oklahoma or the Texas Panhandle. It is not a static view, but one that begins just as the elevator becomes visible above the center line, above five miles out of town, and continues until it disappears in the vibration in the rearview mirror. In the minutes that pass as the speck grows to colossal size and then shrinks to rejoin the horizon, many contradictory messages are created: we are powerful, we build for centuries, our monuments rival those of other heroic ages; we are insignificant, our hold on this landscape is tenuous, nature and time erode our greatest creations as if they were dust. What lingers is the memory, though, is the image of a solitary, upright form in the middle distance of an endless plain.

I have had a hard time reconciling all this with the example/rhetoric of Reyner Banham, the author of A Concrete Atlantis: U.S. Industrial Building and European Architectural Modernism, 1900-1925 (MIT Press, 1986). In this pioneering work on the "Daylight" factories and grain elevators that were built out of reinforced concrete in Buffalo and elsewhere, Banham insists on the importance of moving in closer, getting out of the car and exploring such buildings oneself. "Although it is still possible, at some risk to life and limb, by climbing across railroad bridges and the like, to see Concrete Central from the other side [...] Closer views are not normally to be had, unless one goes up river to it or is prepared to undertake an adventurous and circuitous safari on foot [...] That journey is worth it, however" (Banham, pages 165-166).

Banham made sure his readers knew that, worth it or not, the "journey" would or could not be undertaken by anyone. Only the tough or courageous could or should do so. "My foot crashed through a rotten plywood cover that had been laid over an open culvert [...] Had I sustained an incapacitating injury, rather than mere scratches, in that fall, even those who knew approximately where I was would have no idea how to reach me, after they had finally decided that they had waited too long for my return" (Banham, p. 351).

My friend Orrin and I fancied ourselves to be just as tough and/or courageous as Reyner Banham was, and so, between 1989 and 1992, we not only asked for and were granted "official," guided tours of the Eastern States, the Perot, the Standard, and the Great Northern; we also took it upon ourselves to explore and even climb to the top of the Concrete-Central, the Superior, the Marine "A," and the GLF (all of which were abandoned and derelict). Those journeys were certainly "worth it."

But on page 405 of American Colossus, I humbly insist that "the most accurate description of our urban explorations in Buffalo would not be 'we risked life and limb,' but 'we knew when to stay away.'" I provide two examples, which I reproduce and illustrate below. In both cases, "staying away" meant "saying goodbye."

The picture above shows Meyer Malting, which was a small grain elevator built out of reinforced concrete by Monarch Engineering in 1914. Originally built to unload barley from vessels on the Erie Canal, which it faced, Meyer Malting was modified in the 1950s, when the canal was paved over and turned into railroad tracks and highways. By continuing to receive grain by truck, the malt house stayed in business until the late 1980s, when it was abandoned. Orrin and I got inside of it once. We only stayed a few minutes: the air was full of trapped car exhaust.

One day, we returned to Meyer Malting to take notes and photographs of what we'd seen the first time, but heard a noise from inside. If there had in fact been someone living inside it, or even simply visiting it, our presence might have been (mis)interpreted as invasive, hostile or unwanted. We knew from experience how difficult it was to get in and out of the building, and decided that it simply wasn't worth the risk. We left, never to return. In 2005, Meyer Malting was demolished by the City of Buffalo.

The picture above shows what remained after the fire of 1987, which destroyed most of the vast H & O Oats Milling complex in Buffalo, New York. Founded in 1893, H & O Oats built its first cereal mill on the site in 1914; it was designed by the A.E. Baxter Company. In 1931, the company added a set of grain tanks, which were made of reinforced concrete. The complex was closed in 1983 and temporarily used for the storage of tires. The fire of 1987 apparently destroyed grain tanks of all kinds: wood, steel and reinforced concrete.

When we visited the reamains of the H & O Oats in 1992, the basement looked to be permanently flooded. Someone had used a series of wooden planks to create a dry route to a staircase that presumably led to the upper levels. One of us remembered seeing a local TV news story about the rescue of a stray dog that had managed to get to the top of the 70-foot-tall structure, but couldn't get back down. We decided to stay away, and never returned. In 2006, the remains of the H & O Oats were demolished by the City of Buffalo to make way for a casino that was to be operated by the Seneca Nation. It hasn't been built.

Safe as houses: the Fallout Shelter in Kansas

2009-05-17T12:52:00.008-04:00

It is most unfortunate that I didn't know this when I was writing American Colossus, because it fits so well into my extended discussion of dwelling in/on grain elevators.

In the 1960s, a certain grain elevator in Hutchinson, Kansas -- then known as the Far-Mar-Co Grain Elevator and today recognized as the biggest grain elevator in the world -- was equipped by the U.S. Army to serve as a fallout shelter, indeed, the biggest fallout shelter in the country, capable of housing an incredible 8,720 people (an entire town!). The photos above were taken by the US Army and placed on-line by the Civil Defense Museum.

Safe as houses: Hamburg, Germany, during the War

2009-05-17T12:32:00.006-04:00

On page 403 of American Colossus, I mention my visit to the grain elevators (die Getreidespeichern) in Hamburg, Germany, in early 1994. I expected to see what I'd previously seen at the EuroSilo in Ghent, Belgium, and throughout the French countryside: grain elevators built after World War II and in the classic American style of elevator design (rows of gleaming-white cylindrical tanks made out of reinforced concrete). Instead, I saw a long line of elevators that had been built in a variety of styles and using a variety of building materials. There were big windowless brick buildings with flat roofs; big brick buildings with windows and pitched roofs; big windowless towers painted white; some unpainted reinforced-concrete silos; and several buildings that looked like enormous houses. Curious, I asked someone who worked at the Getreideterminal Hamburg (GTH) and was told that the some of the elevators that looked like houses were deliberately disguised to look that way, during the war, so that they wouldn't be bombed. Evidently the ruse had worked.

Safe as houses: adaptive reuse in Baltimore, Maryland

2009-05-17T12:00:00.008-04:00

"The finest of these Florentine palaces are, I imagine, the tallest habitations in Europe that are frankly and amply habitations--not mere shafts for machinery of the American grain-elevator pattern." -- Henry James, Italian Hours (1909).

On pages 401-404 of American Colossus, I note that the most common way to adaptively reuse an abandoned grain elevator -- that is, one that has been "reclaimed" soon after it has been abandoned and hasn't experienced any significant damage in the interim -- is to convert it into a house or a hotel. This has been done, and quite successfully, in Akron, Ohio, where a Quaker Oats Elevator & Mill was transformed into a hotel in 1980; in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where the Cereal Grading Company's elevator and warehouse was made into a condominium complex called Calhoun-Isles in 1982; and in Baltimore, Maryland, where the Baltimore & Ohio Grain Terminal -- note the horizontal gantries, which were typical of elevators that loaded ocean-going grain tankers (see picture above) -- was turned into SiloPoint in 2007 (see picture below).

Similar projects have recently been undertaken in Philadelphia (condominiums called "the Granary"), Minneapolis (low-income housing at "Van Cleve Court Apartments East") and Harburg, Germany.

The Eastern States Elevator

2009-05-16T22:06:00.014-04:00

On pages 395-396 of American Colossus, I evoke the fear I experienced when I first visited the Eastern States Farmers' Exchange Feed Mill & Grain Elevator on Military Road in Tonawanda, New York. (Tonawanda is just north of Buffalo.) Located "out in the suburbs" and alongside a set of railroads tracks -- not next to a canal, river or lake -- the Eastern States was designed and built by the A.E Baxter Engineering Company in 1934. During the mid-1940s, a second set of grain bins was added and a new flour mill was built; both structures were designed by A.E. Baxter and/or Henry Baxter, A.E.'s son. In the aftermath of changes made in the preferential railroad rates allowed by the federal government, the Eastern States -- like so many other grain elevators in Buffalo -- closed down in the late 1960s or early 1970s. Left abandoned and derelict, the Eastern States became the scene of accidental injuries, deaths and "animal sacrifices." It wasn't until the late 1980s that it was locked and sealed.

The pictures reproduced above were originally taken by the Historic American Engineering Record in the early 1990s. They capture the Eastern States from its southern side, which is the side of the elevator I first saw. Quite obviously, I was immediately struck by the great height of the elevating tower, which is almost twice the size of the bins adjacent to it. No elevator in Buffalo had a tower so tall. But what I found truly daunting about the idea of exploring this colossus was the large flour mill next to it (on the right in both pictures). Not only was this building full of broken windows, empty spaces, echoing sounds, birds, foul/fowl smells and cold, dank air, but it was also positioned such that it completely blocked the grain elevator -- and whatever was taking place in or around it -- from being seen from Military Road. I got the fear and left.

When I returned, several months later and in the company of a local councilman, a photographer and Henry Baxter himself, I got to see inside the elevator's basement. One of the first things I saw was a graffito that proclaimed: FRANKENSTEIN LIVES HERE. Though there was something silly about this proclamation, it resonated with my own fears and other people's associations of grain elevators with monsters. And so, in the summer of 2001, when the Eastern States was demolished, but not replaced by anything, I found myself wondering: "Where is Frankenstein living now?"

Grain elevators in Brooklyn, New York

2009-05-16T20:47:00.019-04:00

Though the elevator in Gowanus still stands, the vast majority of the grain elevators built in Brooklyn, New York, over the years were not built on or near the Gowanus Canal, which was dug at the end of the 1860s. Instead, as the map reproduced above shows (circa 1880), most of the stationary elevators and grain warehouses in Brooklyn were built close to Manhattan: either in Brooklyn Heights, which is on the East River facing Manhattan's Lower East Side, or in the Atlantic Basin, which is along Buttermilk Channel. When necessary, grain facilities were also built in the Erie Basin (at the tip of or within the huge J-shaped breakwater).

By contrast, the Gowanus Elevator is far from Manhattan. Located in Upper New York Bay, it can't be seen in the map above. If it did appear, it would be in the upper-right-hand corner. To get a sense of the distances involved here, but without getting lost, see the map below. The green arrow is pointing towards the location of the Gowanus Elevator.

To complete our panorama, below is a picture of the Gowanus Elevator, as seen from the Red Hook Playground and photographed by the Historic American Engineering Record in 1985.

The Grain Elevator in Gowanus, Brooklyn

2009-05-16T19:12:00.017-04:00

On pages 380-384 of American Colossus, I mention that, in an attempt to stimulate grain shipments on the recently completed New York State Barge Canal System, the Port Authority of New York built two large grain elevators: a lake-to-barge transshipping elevator in Oswego, New York (a port city on Lake Ontario), and a barge-to-tanker transshipper in Gowanus, Brooklyn. For a variety of reasons, the elevator in Brooklyn was designed and built by State of New York engineers and was completed first, in 1922, while the one in Oswego was designed by the James Stewart Engineering Company and finished in 1925. Both elevators were abandoned and left derelict in 1965. Though it was partly demolished in 1987, the elevator in Gowanus still stands, while the one in Oswego was completely demolished in 1999.

Above is a photograph of the Gowanus Elevator that was published in the Supplement to the Annual Report of the State Engineer and Surveyor for the Year Ended June 30, 1921. It shows a facility that looks like it was inspired by elevator design in Montreal, Portland or Baltimore, where there must be sufficient room (and machinery) for ocean-going vessels to be loaded with grain. At the Gowanus Elevator, two elevated horizontal gantries and a transfer tower combined to bring grain a total of 1,221 feet away from the main house, which faced away from Gowanus Bay and towards a short slip in which the barges were unloaded of their cargoes.

The photograph above shows the Gowanus Elevator as it appears today. Note that all three of its marine towers are made of solid reinforced-concrete. At the grain elevator in Oswego, by contrast, both of the marine towers were made of steel and iron, and were "loose legs," that is, capable of being moved.

In 1990, the Chicago Tribune reported that:

The Urban Land Institute (ULI) in its monthly magazine reports that The Eggers Group in New York, after completing an inventory for state officials of the 7,500 jail cells in the state, advanced the idea of transforming a 1.8-million-cubic-foot grain elevator in Brooklyn into a 1,000-cell jail.

The concept would create small blocks of semicircular cells within the elevator, cells that could be monitored from central control points. The architectural firm points out that the silos, made of 6-inch thick concrete, are exceptionally secure.

``It`s a pity that so many of these monumental buildings, often built with the solid construction techniques of the 1920s and 1930s, should be unused, particularly when they have such excellent potential to help relieve prisons that are bursting at the seams,`` Eggers` partner, Robert Kleid, told ULI.

Kleid noted that cities such as Minneapolis, Buffalo, Albany, N.Y., Philadelphia, St. Louis, New Orleans, Duluth, Toledo and Houston, have vacant grain elevators ranging from 500,000 to 4 million cubic feet.

Fortunately this plan was never realized.

Margaret Bourke-White

2009-05-16T18:15:00.009-04:00

On pages 367-368 of American Colossus, I discuss Say, Is This the USA, a collaboration between the photographer Margaret Bourke-White and the writer Erskine Caldwell. I call upon this remarkable book, which was first published in 1941, to show that grain elevators aren't simply symbols of wealth and abundance, but also symbols of misery, poverty and hunger amidst and despite abundance. "This America is a jungle of men living in the extremes of good and bad, heat and cold, wealth and poverty. . . . All these people, all this abundance, all these things, is this America we live in; but none of us knows what to do about it."

"In the midst of grain elevators bulging with food, man dies of hunger; and supplied with whirring looms, he goes without adequate covering against the icy blasts of winter; and surrounded by the products of the best minds of three thousand years, he is so poorly educated that he cannot explain the simplest natural phenomena." (The Salaried Man: The Story, in Two Episodes, of an Every-Day Person, Rand School of Social Science, 1920).

Unfortunately for admirers of Ms. Bourke-White's photographs, one of them (see above) has been mistitled "Smoke Stacks, Great Lakes region, Michigan, 1930." This famous photograph might well have been taken in the "Great Lakes region" in 1930, but it certainly shows grain silos, not smokestacks. Except for Detroit, no port-city in Michigan has ever been known for its grain elevators. It is far more likely that this photograph was taken in Minnesota or another state on the Great Plains.

The Dart Elevator, continued

2009-05-16T13:40:00.010-04:00

On page 354 of American Colossus, I mention the plaque that was erected by the Industrial Heritage Committee and the Buffalo & Erie County Historical Society in 1990 to commemorate the building of the Dart Elevator, the world's first mechanized (steam-powered) grain elevator. An entry on Waymarking displays this plaque's precise location, which is indeed on the very spot upon which the Dart and, later, the Bennett elevators stood. Note well that, in the intervening years (between 1842 and 1900), the Evans Slip was filled in, paved and called Erie Street.

Welcomed though it is, this plaque is open to nitpicking. It is true that work on the Dart began in the autumn of 1842; but the elevator wasn't ready to unload its first ship until June 1843. Furthermore, while it is true that the basic principles of the Dart "are still used in elevators along Buffalo's waterfront," these basic principles are also still used in elevators all over the world.

The Frontier Elevator, continued

2009-05-16T11:18:00.013-04:00

On pages 305-307 of American Colossus, I discuss the second marine tower that the James Stewart Engineering Company designed and built for Washburn-Crosby, the flour milling company that owned and operated the Frontier Elevator. Made out of reinforced concrete in 1912, the new Frontier Elevator was photographed (see above) by the German modernist architect Erich Mendelsohn during a trip to Buffalo in 1924. This second marine tower was accompanied by a new set of grain bins made of reinforced concrete; yet another set would be added in 1925.

In stark contrast to the first marine tower (on the right), the second one (on the left) is shaped like a silo, not like a marine tower, that is to say, it is cylindrically, not rectangularly shaped. The statement is clear; it is a statement of mastery. With the advent of the new building material (reinforced concrete), grain-elevator designers need not be constrained by (certain) past practices, and can create new ones. In this particular case, a marine tower doesn't have to "look like" a marine tower, but can look like a grain tank. In general, form can -- but need not always -- "follow" function. Form and function can also pursue (slightly) different paths.

And yet none of this was apparent to Erich Mendelsohn, who claimed that his photograph caught "Childhood forms, clumsy, full of primeval power, dedicated to purely practical needs" (Amerika). What could Mendelsohn have said if someone told him that the cylindrical marine tower of the Frontier Elevator was in fact an instance of form following aesthetics, not "function" or "purely practical needs"? How could he, as an artist, admit that he had failed to recognize a work of art (a deliberate, sophisticated and witty attempt to make a pun on visual resemblances)?

Above: David Plowden captures the Frontier Elevator (aka known as "the General Mills Elevator") in action in 1985.

The Frontier Elevator

2009-05-15T21:59:00.021-04:00

On pages 294-295 and 305 of American Colossus, I allude to but do not directly discuss the Frontier, a large wood-binned elevator that was built in Buffalo (on the south side of Kelley Island) in 1886. As we can see from the postcard reproduced above, the Frontier (on our right) stood next to the steel-binned the Dakota Elevator (on the left) and utilized a single stationary marine tower. In the picture reproduced below, we can see that this marine tower was attached to a very long and tall warehouse that was also made out of wood.

It seems from this second photograph that the Frontier Elevator (on the left) communicated with other structures in the area through a long, horizontal conveyor-belt system. (Behind this conveyor, in the very middle of the photo, we see the Marine Elevator.) On the right, we can see the nine bins made of hollowed-out tile that the Barnett-Record Company built for the Washburn-Crosby Company in 1903.

By 1909, this area looked entirely different. The Frontier had been demolished. Its wooden marine tower was replaced by one made out of steel and corrugated iron; and its wooden-bins had been replaced by bins made out of reinforced concrete.

Tile-binned grain elevators, 1901-1910

2009-05-08T13:16:00.008-04:00

On pages 219-220 of American Colossus, I mention the fact that grain-elevator designers, in an attempt to make their buildings "fireproof," experimented with using hollow tile (as well as steel and reinforced concrete) as the material out of which the grain bins were constructed. Above: the Red Tile Elevator in Minneapolis; photo by the Historic America Engineering Record.

Here is a list of pioneering tile-binned elevators built between 1901 and 1910:

-- the Great Eastern, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1901

-- name unknown, designed by Barnett-Record for the Canadian Pacific Railway, Port Arthur, Canada, 1902

-- the Saint Anthony #3, designed by Barnett-Record for the Washburn-Crosby Company, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1901-1903

-- the Frontier, aka the Washburn-Crosby, designed by Barnett-Record for the Washburn-Crosby Company, Buffalo, New York, 1903

-- name unknown, designed by G. Luther (Braunschweig, Germany), Bunge y Born Company, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1904

-- the Peavey, designed by Barnett-Record for Frank Peavey, Duluth, Minnesota, 1907

-- the Pillsbury "A" (also known as the Red Tile Elevator), designed by Barnett-Record for the Pillsbury Company, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1909-1910

Where not to buy a copy

2009-05-08T12:56:00.007-04:00

Edwin Mellen Press claims that, come 31 July 2009, it will publish a book by William J. Brown entitled History of the Grain Elevators of Buffalo, New York. This claim that has led ecampus.com and a distributor in Taiwan to believe that it will carry the title -- though it is "not yet printed" -- "as soon as it arrives."

Please be informed that this title will never be published by Edwin Mellen Press, nor will it be distributed by ecampus.com or books.com.tw. Anyone who has placed an advance order for this book through any of these companies should demand a refund of their one-hundred-plus dollars (!) immediately.

The Grand Trunk

2009-05-06T14:50:00.003-04:00

On page 216 of American Colossus, I mention that a pioneering, steel-binned grain elevator was built in Portland, Maine, by the Grand Trunk Railroad in 1902. Above, we see two views of Elevator #2, which was a very large building (175 feet high, 300 feet long, and 200 feet wide) intended to supplement Elevator #1, which was slightly smaller and built out of wood in 1896. Elevator #1 was demolished in 1943, while Elevator #2 was taken down in 1974.

The Electric Steel

2009-05-06T14:06:00.007-04:00

On page 217 of American Colossus, I mention the Electric Steel, a pioneering steel-binned grain elevator built in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was designed by Lewis S. Gillette and built in two stages by the American Bridge Company (1901) and the Minneapolis Steel & Machine Construction Company (1903). As the photographs above show, the Electric Steel utilized a workhouse that stood apart from the 12 grain tanks, which were lined up in a two rows leading straight back from it, so that if a fire or explosion took place, it would not travel easily through the entire complex.

In later years, the Electric Steel Elevator would become part of the Russell Miller Flour Mill, to which it was connected by horizontal gantries that traveled high above ground (see picture above). Today, the elevator still stands and is in use.

The Pioneer Steel

2009-05-06T13:51:00.007-04:00

On pages 216-217 of American Colossus, I mention the Pioneer Steel, a pioneering steel-binned grain elevator built in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Designed by the Gillette-Herzog Company and constructed by the Barnett-Record Company in 1901, the Pioneer Steel was owned by the local grain merchant George Frank Piper. In the photograph above, which was taken in 1995 by Jet Lowe of the Historic American Engineering Record, see can see that the elevator possessed a total of 22 freestanding, unenclosed tanks, arrayed in two rows. A conveyor-belt installed in a narrow horizontal gantry was laid on top of the main row of bins. The Pioneer Steel was demolished in 1995.

The Dakota

2009-05-05T21:21:00.017-04:00

On page 215 of American Colossus and in the caption for Figure 2, I mention the Dakota, a steel-binned grain elevator built in Buffalo in 1901. As we can see from the pictures above, the Dakota was erected next to the Great Eastern Elevator (to the left), another steel-binned elevator built in 1901, and the Frontier Elevator (on the right), an elevator with bins made of reinforced concrete, built in the 1920s. Directly in front of the Dakota stands the land upon which the historic Watson Elevator used to stand.

Designed by Ballou & Shirley and built by the Eagle Iron Works, the Dakota was clearly an experiment, half-bold and half-tentative. It could only store 1.25 million bushels, utilized rectangular grain tanks, and enclosed these bins in a tall and narrow rectangular warehouse made of steel. The gallery above the tanks was itself two stories high and surmounted by a large clerestory, which gave the entire structure a distinctive "hammer-head" silhouette. Both of the Dakota's marine towers were automotive ("loose"). The entire complex was razed in the mid-1960s, during the construction of an elevated highway.

In the same way that the Great Eastern was built upon a foundation made of reinforced concrete and intended to replace a wood-binned elevator that had been destroyed by a grain-dust explosion, the Dakota was built (by the Lehigh Railroad) to replace a wood-binned elevator of the same name (see below) that was built in 1887, could store 1 millions bushels and was brought down by a grain-dust explosion in 1901.

The Great Eastern

2009-05-05T11:02:00.016-04:00

On page 213 of American Colossus, I mention the pioneering steel-binned Great Eastern Elevator, built in Buffalo in 1901. Designed by Harry R. Wait and built by the Steel Storage and Elevator Construction Company, with assistance by the Indiana Bridge Company, which was based in Muncie, Indiana, the Great Eastern could store 2.5 million bushels in its sixty-eight different steel tanks, which were freestanding, unenclosed and built in a variety of sizes upon a rhomboidal plot that was situated on the side south of the Buffalo River. The elevator was demolished in 1948.

In the picture above, which was taken in the 1920s or 1930s, we can see (moving from right to left) the some of the Great Eastern's many steel tanks; the Great Eastern's marine towers (both of which were "loose" and connected to the grain tanks behind them through a series of horizontal belts installed high above ground-level); the wood-binned and soon-to-be-demolished version of the Marine Elevator; and the reinforced-concrete grain tanks of the Kellogg Elevator, built in 1912.

The Great Eastern was built upon a raised foundation made of reinforced concrete, which was strong enough to support the combined weight of the steel-tanks themselves and the grain stored within them (see picture above). It was originally built to replace the Eastern Elevator (see picture below), which was built in 1895 with two marine towers (one of which was "loose") and the site of a terrible grain-dust explosion in 1899.

Note that, at roughly the same time that the Great Eastern was built in Buffalo, a Great Eastern Elevator was built in Minneapolis, Minnesota (see picture below). No doubt the large amount of space left between the workhouse in the center and the grain tanks -- made out of tile -- was intended to minimize the possibilities of fires or explosions traveling between them. It appears that the horizontal conveyor-belt that serviced these tanks was installed through the tops of these tanks, not cleanly above or on top of them.

The Electric Elevator

2009-05-05T10:32:00.009-04:00

On pages 209-213 of American Colossus, I discuss the Electric Elevator, a pioneering steel-binned grain elevator built in Buffalo, New York, in 1897 (the same year that the steel-binned Great Northern Elevator in Buffalo was built). Designed for the grain trader Edward W. Eames by W.S. Winn and built by his Steel Storage and Elevator Construction Company (based in Cornersfield, Indiana), the Electric was a truly revolutionary creation. Not only were its bins were made of steel, but they were also free-standing and unenclosed (unlike at the Great Northern, where the bins were enclosed in a brick house).

In the picture above, we see the Electric as it was between 1897 and 1912, when it was only equipped with seven grain-tanks made of steel and set down upon a foundation of reinforced concrete. Note well the rather self-conscious pun on visual resemblances between the elevator's two marine towers, one of which (the one on our right) is "stiff" or fixed in position, while the other (the one on our left) is "loose" and capable of movement along a short set of rail-tracks.

In the picture below, we see the Electric as it was after 1912, when another 12 tanks made of steel were constructed.

Except for the Electric's Annex, which was built out of reinforced concrete in 1942, the entire facility was demolished in 1984.

Grain elevators as colossal monsters

2009-05-04T14:59:00.013-04:00

Grain elevators, unlike colossal figures, are not complete. Though they have metaphorical legs, boots, and heads, grain elevators also lack key parts, such as feet, hands, torsos, and hips. They are true mixtures or hybrids, occupying the point half-way between machine/buildings and human effigies. As a result, grain elevators both inspire awe in us and frighten us. They aren't, properly speaking, colossal figures; they are colossal monsters.

Perhaps the best example of this fantasy is an untitled engraving that the American illustrator Joseph Pennell made of a grain elevator in Hamburg, Germany, in 1914 (reproduced above; discussed on page 257 of American Colossus). Note well that Pennell's style, generally speaking, was more documentary that expressionistic. But here, the grain elevator -- perhaps a floater-- is a towering bottle-shaped block of darkness, equipped with four or five long arm-like appendages (canal spouts?) and several other, thinner stalks that extend above its head. The entire thing is surrounded by smoke, clouds and darkness. At its feet, there is a tiny craft, battered by dark waves. The overall effect is clearly intended to be frightening.

Grain elevators as colossal figures

2009-05-04T13:44:00.023-04:00

I find I am not alone in referring to the American grain elevator as an American Colossus. According to Drake Hokanson, who mounted an exhibit of his grain-elevator photographs in Perry, Iowa, in February 2007, grain elevators are "American colossi -- giant human figures on the landscape like the huge Egyptian statues in the Nile Valley."

Note: the image above does not depict an Egyptian colossus, such as the Colossus of Memnon, but the Colossus of Rhodes. But it is the general idea that matters here, not the particulars. I might just as well have posted the painting called The Colossus (1808-1812), commonly but incorrectly attributed to Francisco de Goya (see below).

As I point out on pages 258-262 of American Colossus, the word "colossus" doesn't necessarily refer to something that is very big, but to something (an effigy) that stands upright. Colossi and other effigies, though sometimes crudely rendered, are always complete figures: they never lack limbs, torsos or heads. This is why representations of them --no matter how big they are -- are always comforting, not disturbing. They reflect back to us images of our own complete forms.

It is quite true that grain elevators stand upright, not only with respect to the flatness of the areas that surround them, but also upon "legs" (elevating mechanisms) and "boots" (the pits into which the "legs" reach). The anthropomorphism of grain-elevator jargon goes even further: one speaks of "loose" legs and "stiff" legs, "head houses" and even the shoulders of grain elevators. . . .

Brobdingnagian-sized words

2009-05-02T13:04:00.010-04:00

On page 237, in the context of my discussion of Charles Magnus' "Bird's Eye View of the City of Buffalo, N.Y", I note that the illustrator has taken great pains to show that each elevator has the last name of its owner and the word "elevator" printed upon it "in Brobdingagian-sized words." My reference was not only to Jonathan Swift's satire Gulliver's Travels (1726), in which Gulliver visits the island of Brobdingag, which is populated by gigantic people who are 72 feet tall, but also to Frank Norris's novel The Pit (1903), in which the narrator proclaims that, "on all sides, blocking the horizon, red in color and designated by Brobdingagian letters, towered the hump-shouldered grain elevators [of Chicago]."

Norris' novel has come up once before, and it will (or, rather, should have) come up again, on page 258 of American Colossus, in which I mention several writers who anthropomorphicized grain elevators: Rudyard Kipling, who spoke of the "high-shouldered" elevators in Buffalo; Carl Sandburg, who referred to the "hunched shoulders" of grain elevators in the Midwest; and the anonymous author of "Ugly but Profitable: The Grain Elevators of Buffalo: Examples of Hideousness in Architecture" (1891), who claimed that Buffalo's elevators "rear their ungainly heads" above the skyline.

Bird's Eye View of the City of Buffalo, N.Y.

2009-05-01T11:07:00.016-04:00

I mention Charles Magnus' illustration, "Bird's Eye View of the City of Buffalo, N.Y.," several times in American Colossus. The most important references occur on pages 235-236, in the context of a discussion of the (in)visibility of Buffalo's grain elevators to the city's residents, partisans, and boosters. Prior to 1860, in similar illustrations by J.W. Hill (1853) and J.H. Cohen (1859), grain elevators -- despite their number, great size, and unusual appearance -- were strangely absent from representations of the city in which they were invented, back in 1843.

Things began to change in the early 1860s, during the Civil War, when Buffalo's elevators became "newsworthy" as the result of being targeted by arsonists (commandos from the Confederacy, torches hired by the Western Elevating Association, or anti-American rebels from Canada). By 1863, when Magnus' "Bird's Eye View of the City of Buffalo, N.Y." was published, the elevators were "suddenly" as visible as they should have been, that is to say, as they were all along.

If we "zoom" into certain sections of this remarkable image/map, which was originally photographed and placed on-line by Chuck LaChiusa, we can see many significant grain elevators.

In the detail provided below, we can see the Erie Basin (built in 1854) and the Exchange (1863) elevators.

Below, the Cutter & Austin (date unknown), the C.W. Evans (original 1847, rebuilt 1863) and the Reed (original 1847, rebuilt 1862). Note: a part of the Bennett (built 1863) appears at the middle left.

Below, the Watson (1863) and an unnamed transfer tower, possibly the Excelsior (1862).

Below, the Watson, the Excelsior(?), the Corn Dock (date unknown), and the Main St. (1848).

Below, the Sturges (1863) and the Marine (1848).

Below, in the foreground (south side of the Buffalo River): the Marine and two unnamed elevators, probably the Richmond (1863) and the Hazard (date unknown). In the middle (north side of the Buffalo River), moving from left to right: the Seymour & Wells (1855), the Wadsworth (1846), and the Sternberg "A" and "B" elevators (original 1847, rebuilt 1862).

Below, in the foreground (south side of the Buffalo River): the Evans (date unknown). In the middle (north side of the Buffalo River), moving from left to right: the Sternberg "A" and "B," and the City (original 1859, rebuilt 1863).

John S. Metcalf, continued

2009-04-30T11:14:00.008-04:00

On page 224 of American Colossus, I mention the grain elevator that John S. Metcalf designed and built for the Sante Fe Railway in Chicago, Illinois. Completed in 1906, the Sante Fe was one of the first elevators in North America with bins that were built out of reinforced concrete.

Above, we see two photographs of the Sante Fe, both taken by Jet Lowe of the Historic Engineering Record at the same time (circa 1985). In the upper photo, we see the side of the elevator that faced the Chicago River. Note the simplicity of the ironworks: a single marine leg, with barely any covering; three canal spouts; the zig-zagging staircase that climbs the outside of the all-reinforced concrete workhouse; a single spout that sends grain down into a small feed or seed mill next door.

In the lower photo, we see the "other" side of the Sante Fe: the "annex" of cylindrical grain tanks, made out of reinforced concrete, that receives grain from the main house through two horizontal conveyor-belts that appear in the upper right-hand corner. (It is likely that, below ground-level, one or two horizontal conveyor-belts were installed in trenches to carry grain from the annex back to the main house.) The two houses were kept separate from each other so that, in case of fire or explosion, the damage would be limited to one, and would not affect both.

Below is a photograph of the complex as it is today.

The Story So Far. . . .

2009-04-30T10:52:00.003-04:00

With a single exception, all of the tasks announced last month have been accomplished. With the posting of yesterday's entry, the last remaining task -- providing "new" images and texts that illustrate or otherwise enrich individual ideas in the book -- is at the half-way-done mark. In the next few weeks, I will attempt to complete this "final" project, and then move on to others.

Reinforced-concrete grain bins

2009-04-29T10:56:00.047-04:00

On pages 224-225 of American Colossus, I note that the industrial archaeologist Robert M. Frame III has offered the following useful guidelines for historians of the use of reinforced concrete in the construction of the bins in grain elevators in North America:

1) a period of experimentation (1899-1906);

2) a period of development and eventual mastery (1906-1912); and

3) a period in which the building-material received widespread, if not universal acceptance (1912-1928).

Adopting and slightly altering these guidelines, I have discerned:

1) a period of experimentation (1899-1908);

2) a period of development and mastery (1909-1919);

3) a period of widespread acceptance (1920-1928); and

4) a fourth period, one that lasted between 1929 and 1943, and marked the end of the line begun in 1843 with the Dart Elevator, the world's first mechanized grain elevator.

--------------------

For a good text about the "third" period -- universal acceptance (1920-1928) -- see The Literary Digest, August 20, 1921, page 21:

An almost complete change in the methods of constructing country grain elevators, with the employment of concrete in place of wood, has recently taken place, we are told by A.T.R. Curtis, writing in "Concrete" (Detroit). Seldom, he says, has one material of construction replaced another is so short a time. Only a few years ago, the concrete country elevator was a rare xception; to-day in many parts of the country scarcely a wooden elevator less than five years old can be found.

For a photograph that captures the first two-and-a-half periods, see the one below, which shows the grain elevator district in Buffalo, New York, as it was in 1925.

Upper left: the Superior (three stages: 1915, 1923, and 1924). Upper right: the Dellwood (1914-1917). Dead center: the Marine "A" (under construction). Left to right in front row: the Perot (1908), the American (1907), the malthouse associated with the American (1922), and the Electric (1897, steel bins).

For a photograph that captures all four periods, see the one below, which shows Buffalo's grain elevator district as it was in the 1950s.

Virtually all of the elevators visible here were made out of reinforced concrete. Lower left: the Standard (built in two stages: 1928 and 1942). Extreme lower right: Portland Cement (not a grain elevator). Lower right: the Annex to the Electric (built 1942) and towards the middle the Electric itself (steel, not reinforced concrete). Between the Electric and the Lake & Rail: the American (built 1906) and the Perot (1907). Middle left: the Lake & Rail (stages between 1927 and 1930). Middle right: the Marine "A" (built 1925). Upper middle: the Concrete-Central (stages between 1915 and 1917).

--------------------

At the center of or, let us say, the driving force behind the fourth period (1943 to the present) was Cargill, the large, ever-growing and now dominant grain-trading company based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Between 1929 and 1933, Cargill stopped leasing or buying grain elevators built by other companies, and started designing and building its own, according to its own lights, not "tradition." At first there were three of these elevators, and they were built in a "line" that traced out the long trip from farm to market: from Omaha, Nebraska (by rail) to Chicago, Illinois, and then from Chicago (by lake vessel) to Albany, New York, where the grain was transshipped to barges for transport down the Hudson River to New York City. Though it might have been more direct to ship grain (by rail) directly from Omaha to New York City, it was cheaper to ship and transship it in this roundabout fashion. Note well: the "flow" of grain is not a natural one; it does not necessarily follow the geographical terrain; it strictly follows the route that is the least expensive, and thus the most profitable, for the shipper (in this case, Cargill).

Cut out of this "line" or "flow" was Buffalo, New York, which Cargill -- believing the place to have fallen "outside" the primary flows of grain from farm to market -- had abandoned at the end of 1920s. During World War II, when international demand for American grain was at an all-time high, and there was money to be made in storing exportable surpluses, Cargill returned to Buffalo, where in 1942 it built an annex to the Electric Elevator, a classic steel-binned elevator that Cargill had purchased in the interim.

In each case, the four new elevators that Cargill built weren't especially large, at least in comparison to other elevators built out of reinforced concrete in the 1910s and 1920s, some of which could store as many as 10 million bushels of grain. The elevator that Cargill built in Chicago in 1932 could only store 1.3 million bushels; the elevator built in Buffalo could store 6 million. Only the Omaha and the Albany elevators (built in 1931 and 1933, respectively) were truly colossal.

What made these four elevators (but especially the elevator in Buffalo) different from their predecessors wasn't their large or small size, but the fact that they didn't use or shifted the emphasis away from large groups of "bins" or "compartments." Instead, they contained huge undivided rooms in which large piles of grain in bulk were dumped and then moved around by front-loading gasoline-powered vehicles with rubber wheels, not by electrically powered horizontal conveyor-belts and lofting legs (as in previous elevators).

There was a single such "room" at Cargill's Chicago elevator; four of them at both the Omaha and Albany elevators; and six at the elevator in Buffalo. In each case, these grain rooms could store a staggering one million bushels. Previously, grain bins had never been designed to store more than 80,000 bushels each!

The elevator that Cargill built in Chicago (see photo above) had short and flat, box-like walls that intersected at right angles, and a pitched roof. Some have said that it resembled a tabernacle. It certainly didn't "look like" a modern grain elevator. If anything, it resembled an old-style "flathouse" (a cavernous barn in which sacks of grain and barrels of flour were stored).

Below is a picture of the elevator Cargill built in Albany. Counting the "traditional" looking cylindrical grain tanks that are arrayed in three parallel rows across it, the facility could store a total of 12 million bushels of grain, making it one of the biggest in the world.

But the Annex to the Electric Elevator seemed to be a deliberate throw-back to the elevators of the 1910s and 1920s (see picture at the top of this entry). From the outside, the six-million-bushel annex appeared to be a collection of cylindrically shaped, self-contained silos (grain bins) surrounded, when feasible, by interstitial "fillers" such as quarter-bins and half-bins, which were also curved like cylinders. But it was not.

As we can see from the picture above, which shows the machine room inside the Electric Annex, the cylindrical shape of the walls was not necessary: the walls could easily have been "flat." The walls or, rather, the reinforced concrete forms that composed them, were in the shape of a series of cylinders for purely aesthetic reasons, not for reasons that concerned physics, efficiency or profitability. The complete breaking of the connection between form and function was intended to be a way of saying, "Here at Cargill, we are doing everything differently, and this even includes the way of our retaining walls are built." Cargill had changed all the rules back in the early 1930s, and the Electric Annex -- built in the very place in which the grain elevator was invented, almost exactly a hundred years previously -- was in part built as an ironic, self-congratulatory testament to those changes and the end of an era.

What happened after 1943? Grain elevators changed so fundamentally that one must start a completely new history, i.e., the history of self-unloading grain ships, sealed storage containers, pneumatic grain-transfer systems, grain storage rooms, et al.

John S. Metcalf, continued

2009-04-28T12:52:00.010-04:00

The Missouri Pacific Railway Elevator, located in Kansas City, Missouri, was designed and built by John S. Metcalf in 1904. Note there are two sets of bins: on the left, bins made out of tile, and, on the right, bins made out of reinforced concrete. This suggests that the facility was built in two separate stages. (The photograph above was taken in the early 1940s.)

In the center foreground, there appears to be a freestanding pneumatic dust collector. Its tubes are positioned to "suck" the dust out of the basements (the areas under the grain bins) of each of the silo-buildings. The top of the elevator's workhouse (apparently made of reinforced concrete, not steel and iron) can be seen above and directly behind the dust collector.

John S. Metcalf, continued

2009-04-26T21:59:00.006-04:00

To paraphrase the Canadian researcher and author Scott Garrett, the Tiffin Grain Elevator, commonly known as Tiffin No.2, was constructed in 1907-08 by John S. Metcalf Company for what was then the Grand Trunk Railway. A smaller grain elevator, the Aberdeen Elevator, was located about a half-mile away, operated by the Aberdeen Elevator Company and served by the Grand Trunk Railway. The Tiffin was initially constructed with a capacity of two million bushels. An annex, added in 1923-24, pushed the capacity to some 4.6 million bushels. Grain arriving by ship was transshipped to railcars for transportation to Halifax. Like Metcalf's elevator at Port McNicoll (aka Victoria Harbour), the Tiffin had three automotive ("loose") marine towers, each about 120 feet high. Once again like the elevator in Port McNicoll, the Tiffin was closed in 1990; demolition began in 1997. Housing and park areas now dot the area where Tiffin and Aberdeen elevators stood.

Above: the Tiffin Elevator, photographed on 24 August 1982 by Viktor Kaczkowski.

Grain bins made of reinforced concrete, 1899-1908

2009-04-25T17:36:00.010-04:00

On pages 220-235 of American Colossus, I discuss the grain elevators that had bins and mainhouses made out of reinforced concrete. Underneath this picture of the first grain bin, and the first cylindrically shaped grain bin, to be made out of reinforced concrete in North America (Peavey's Folly, designed by Charles Haglin and built outside of Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1899), I offer a list of reinforced-concrete grain elevators built between that historic year and 1908.

-- the Peavey, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1899;
-- unnamed elevator, Birkenhead, England, 1899;
-- the Peavey, Duluth, Minnesota, 1900 (rebuilt twice between 1900 and 1904);
-- the George T. Evans Milling Company, Indianopolis, Indiana, 1900-1901;
-- unnamed elevator, Dunston-on-Tyne, England, 1901;
-- unnamed elevator built by Haglin, Fort William, Ontario, 1901;
-- unnamed elevator built by Hennibrique, Genoa, Italy, 1901;
-- unnamed elevator built by Haglin, Duluth, Minnesota, 1902;
-- the Concrete Elevator, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1902;
-- the Canadian Railroad, Port Arthur, Ontario, 1903;
-- the Missouri Pacific Railroad, Kansas City, Missouri, 1904;
-- the Canadian Pacific Railway, Port Arthur, Ontario, 1904;
-- unnamed elevator, Victoria Docks, England, 1904;
-- unnamed elevator, Newcastle-on-Tyne, England, 1905;
-- the Sante Fe, Chicago, Illinois, 1906;
-- the Washburn-Crosby, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1906;
-- the American, Buffalo, New York, 1906;
-- unnamed elevators built by Haglin in North Dakota and Minnesota, 1907;
-- the Ralston Purina, Buffalo, New York, 1907;
-- Riverside Malting, Black Rock, New York, 1907;
-- J. H. Tromanhauser, Goderich, Ontario, 1907;
-- the Mt Clare Elevator (Baltimore & Ohio Railroad), Baltimore, Maryland, 1908;
-- the Pennsylvania Railroad, Baltimore, Maryland, 1908.

The Great Northern Elevator(s)

2009-04-24T14:23:00.032-04:00

On pages 204-209 of American Colossus, I discuss the two steel-binned grain elevators that the Great Northern Railway built in Buffalo, New York, and West Superior, Wisconsin, between 1897 and 1901. Poor Reyner Banham, author of A Concrete Atlantis (MIT Press, 1986), believes that the Great Northern Railway built three such elevators:

all were designed by Max Toltz, the bridge builder and presiding engineering genius of the Golden Age of the Great Northern Railway, which served Minnesota and the western Great Lakes area. One of them was in Duluth, Minnesota; one in West Superior, Wisconsin; and the third was at the other end of the lake-shipping trade, at Buffalo, New York. All were enormous, with capacities of better than two million bushels, and were housed in brick shells of handsome architectural aspect.

.

But there were only two of these elevators (one in West Superior and one in Buffalo), and Banham himself provides the proof, in the form of a quotation from Engineering News for August 1, 1901:

Perhaps one of the best, and certainly one of the latest examples of elevator construction which deserve mention, is the 3,00,000 bushel terminal elevator put in operation at West Superior, Wis., in February of this year. This elevator was built by the Great Northern Railway and is designed to eclipse in every way the mammoth steel elevator built by the same company at Buffalo, New York, in 1897-98.

Banham's mistake no doubt derived from thinking that Duluth and West Superior are two different places, when in fact they are one (twin port-cities on the St. Louis Bay).

Of course the Great Northern Railway built a great many grain elevators prior to and long after 1896. (In 1958, the railway still serviced more than 900 "country" elevators, that is, small houses that collect grain and then ship it out by rail to much larger elevators further down the "grain stream.") But by building and operating "terminal" grain elevators in key port-cities on the Great Lakes, the Great Northern Railway could dominate two major flows of grain in bulk: not only the one that came from Western Minnesota, the Dakotas and Montana to flour millers in Minneapolis/St. Paul, but also the flow that came to Duluth/West Superior and then traveled by lake vessels to Buffalo, New York, where it was transshipped to either railcars or barges for (semi-final) transportation to New York City.

The Great Northern Elevator in Buffalo was built two or three years before the Great Northern "S" in Duluth/West Superior (pictured above). Furthermore, the elevator in Buffalo has received a great deal of attention since it was closed down in 1981 (precisely because of plans to demolish it), while the Great Northern "S" has received little or no attention (perhaps because it remains in use). And yet, Duluth/West Superior (not Buffalo) is the place to begin this story.

It was in the St. Louis Bay, around 1895 or 1896, that the Great Northern Railway first started building and operating terminal elevators: the Great Northern "A" and the Great Northern "X" (see picture above), both of which were capable of storing 1.5 million bushels of grain in their respective bins, which were made of wood and rectangularly shaped.

The Great Northern Elevator in Buffalo (see picture above) was a revolutionary elevator for a number of reasons:

1) it was equipped with three electrically powered automotive ("loose") marine towers. Previous elevators had both fewer towers and towers powered by coal-burning steam-engines, not electricity off the grid;

2) its grain bins were made of steel, cylindrically shaped and capable of storing 2.5 million bushels of grain. Previous elevators (except for those designed and built by George H. Johnson) utilized rectangular bins made out of wood, not steel. Bins made out of steel -- especially in storage warehouses that were four times larger than those built by Johnson in the 1850s and 1860s -- were too heavy to support without recourse to a system of arches and columns, which took up space that would normally be occupied by grain-handling machines (hoppers, spouts and horizontal conveyor-belts);

3) its steel frame was so strong and well-designed that it supported the entire structure (the headhouse as well as the grain bins, which of course included both interstitial and main bins), which meant that the brick walls that surrounded the building could be "curtain" walls, that is, "decorative" walls that do not bear any loads.

But the Buffalo Great Northern was also a grain elevator with a couple of serious problems (remember: it was an experiment, not the continuation of a well-established tradition).

1) its "loose" marine towers were top heavy, and one or several of them were toppled during a storm in 1922; they had to be replaced with two brand-new towers;

2) despite its fantastic steel chassis, raised high above the ground, the elevator still required a basement in which to place its "boots" (grain pits), from which grain was scooped up by eight internal lofting "legs" that raised it to the top of the structure. In this case, the boots had to be placed below water level, which meant that they became flooded during storms;

3) it stopped being used as a transshipping elevator (transferring grain from lake-to-rail or rail-to-lake) in the 1920s, when a large flourmill was built next to it. Transformed into a receiving elevator for this flour mill, the Great Northern soon became dependent upon it. In 1981, when its then-owner, Pillsbury, decided to close the elevator because it no longer needed such a large amount of storage space, the Great Northern could not be used as anything else. Furthermore, once it was closed down and allowed to deteriorate, it could no longer be re-opened as a grain storage warehouse.

As for the Great Northern "S," which was "designed to eclipse in every way the mammoth steel elevator built by the same company at Buffalo, New York, in 1897-98." Did it in fact eclipse the elevator in Buffalo? In hindsight, the Great Northern "S" wasn't nearly as experimental as its predecessor.

1. Because it was designed to collect grain from railcars and transship it to lake vessels, the Great Northern "S" no marine towers at all. All it needed was a conventional system of spouts that could conduct grain down into the holds of such vessels.

2. Its grain bins (though made of steel) were shaped like grain bins that were made out of wood: rectangularly, not cylindrically. This meant that the "modern" problem of interstitial space wasn't even posed. After the widespread acceptance of reinforced concrete in the 1910s and 1920s, grain bins (no matter what the material used to construct them) have been built in cylindrical shapes.

3. Its walls were built in the conventional fashion: they were load-bearing walls, made of iron and steel, resting upon a solid foundation of masonry.

4. Because there was no basement into which to burrow or, rather, a strong desire not to have any basement become flooded, the elevator's nine lofting legs had to rise that much higher above ground level. This is why they "stick out" above the roof of the mainhouse itself. The result, at least to my eyes, is not "handsome," but strikingly ugly.

What made the Great Northern "S" a better elevator than the Great Northern Elevator in Buffalo is that the former encountered so few problems. Indeed, the Great Northern "S" was so well-designed and well-built that it could remain viable, even after 1909, when two large grain elevators made out of reinforced concrete were constructed right next to it (see below).

It should not go without mention that the Great Northern Railway erected grain elevators in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which was where the company's headquarters were located. Below is a picture of one such elevator, which was built before 1899, could store 1.5 million bushels and was apparently made out of wood and wrapped in corrugated iron.

Note well, at ground-level, the two open doors, through which railcars could be driven; and, right next to those doors, the two vertically arrayed, rectangularly shaped boxes in which the elevator's lofting legs were installed.

John S. Metcalf, continued

2009-04-23T19:10:00.005-04:00

In 1903, John S. Metcalf designed and built Elevators "A" and "B" for the Canadian Northern Railroad in Port Arthur, Canada. As this undated photograph shows, sometime after 1903 (the following year, in fact) these two elevators (evidently steel bins surrounded by iron-clad walls) were connected by two sets of cylindrically shaped grain tanks that were constructed out of hollow tile by the Barnett & Record Company.

The Concrete-Central, continued

2009-04-23T18:23:00.007-04:00

Here an unknown photographer has done for the "backside" of the Concrete-Central Elevator in Buffalo, New York (1915-1917) what the Buffalo-based photographer named Hare did for its "front": position herself so that she could capture the entire quarter-mile-long structure in a single frame.

Note well the system of spouts that conducted grain down into the train shed that was erected next to the Concrete-Central. This train shed also contained a series of pits into which railcars could unload their cargoes.

The Society of the Spectacle: How Things Are Remembered

2009-04-23T17:51:00.009-04:00

In a prior posting, I mentioned that this image was published by A. T. Andreas (Chicago) in 1884 and that it depicts an event from 1830 (the first shipment of grain in bulk from the Port of Chicago, undertaken by the "Osceola" of Buffalo, New York). Note its insistence that no one was there to witness this historic event, that Chicago's docks were virtually empty (spectacular) at the time.

To prove the obvious, i.e., that these docks were in fact teeming with workers, supervisors, grain merchants, farmers, et al, and would remain so until the 1850s, I show you following.

Entitled "The first grain elevator in Chicago, 1838," it was -- in the words of the text at the bottom of the image -- "one of the sixteen historical paintings by Lawrence C. Earle in the Banking Room of the Central Trust Company of Illinois, 15 Monroe St, Chicago." It was painted in 1902. In the fact-challenged words of the caption, which was provided by wellswooster.com:

In 1839, the firm of Newberry and Dole began shipping wheat from Chicago's first grain elevator, which was located at the north end of the Rush Street bridge. The wheat was brought from farmers' wagons, and hoisted to an upper story by old-style pulley blocks and rope, by hand power.

It is more likely that this elevator was active at the start of the 1830s, and that it was powered by a team of horses, not by human hands. Note well: in both pictures, the elevator dispatches out-going grain through a trough that is lowered into or near the hull of the ship that will be transporting it. This trough proves that grain in bulk was being handled by this pioneering elevator, not grain in sacks.

Steel-binned grain elevators 1897 to 1906

2009-04-23T16:22:00.031-04:00

On pages 204-219 of American Colossus, I discuss some of the grain elevators that were built with steel bins between 1897 and 1906. Here, I present a near-complete chronological listing of them. Note: some of the following elevators were built with rectangularly shaped bins, not cylindrically shaped ones, so as to dispense with the problem of using the "interstitial" spaces between them.

The Great Northern, Buffalo, New York, 1897
The Electric, Buffalo, New York, 1897
The Raymond, Black Rock, New York, 1897-1898
Elevator D, Fort William, Canada, 1898
Name unknown, Louisville, Kentucky, 1898
The Great Northern, Superior, Wisconsin, 1900
The Dakota, Buffalo, New York, 1901
The Pioneer, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1901
The Great Eastern, Buffalo, New York, 1901
The Electric Steel, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1901-1903
The Grand Trunk, Portland, Maine, 1902
The Iron Elevator, Buffalo, New York, 1902
Windmill Point, Montreal, Quebec, 1903
Elevators "A" and "B," Port Arthur, Ontario, 1903
The South Pacific, Galveston, Texas, 1903
The West Shore, Weehawken, New Jersey, 1904
The Stuyvesant, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1904
The Monarch, Buffalo, New York, 1905
Elevator #1, Montreal, Quebec, 1905
Elevator B, Montreal, Quebec, 1906

pre-1907 (mentioned in Milo S. Ketchum, The Design of Walls, Bins and Grain Elevators [New York: Engineering News, 1907])

Manhattan Malting, Manhattan, Montana
The Lake Shore, Buffalo, New York
C.H. & D, Elevator B, Toledo, Ohio
Winona Malting, Winona, Montana
The Independent Elevator, Omaha, Nebraska

Grain elevators in Montreal: a summary

2009-04-23T13:51:00.008-04:00

Between 1900 and 1930, a total of five grain elevators were built in Montreal, Quebec, which was a location at which grain elevators had been built since 1859.

1. The Windmill Point Elevator, designed and built in 1903 by John S. Metcalf;

2. Elevator #1, designed and built in 1905 by Harry Wait and the Steel Storage Elevator Construction Company;

3. Elevator "B," designed and built in 1906 by John S. Metcalf;

4. Elevator #2, designed and built in 1912 by John S. Metcalf;

5. Elevator #5 (aka Silo #5), which is in the foreground of the picture above. Like Elevator #2, Elevator #5 was built out of reinforced concrete and utilized cylindrical grain bins. To the left of Elevator #5, we can see the tops of Elevator B's cupola-towers. We can also see that neither Elevator #5 nor Elevator "B" are equipped with marine towers, and that all of the unloading and loading of grain is done by the huge steel marine towers and horizontal gantries that stand between these elevators and the St. Lawrence River.

John S. Metcalf, continued

2009-04-23T13:22:00.011-04:00

Elevator "B" (short for "Bickerdike") was designed and constructed in Montreal, Quebec, by John S. Metcalf between 1903 and 1906. Like Metcalf's Windmill Point Elevator, Elevator "B" was not so much as grain-storage warehouse (it too could only store one million bushels of grain), but a versatile transshipping elevator, capable of transferring large amounts of grain to ocean-going vessels from both railcars and lakers. Note (once again) the incredible system of horizontal conveyors that bring grain from the warehouse to ocean tankers. Note as well the five cupola-towers atop the mainhouse, which indicate the presence of (at least) five internal lofting legs.

In 1912, after Elevator B's horizontal-conveyor system had been removed, John S. Metcalf designed and built Elevator #2 right next to it. (It can be seen in the above picture to our left of Elevator "B.") Constructed out of reinforced concrete, capable of storing 2.5 million bushels of grain in its cylindrical tanks, and equipped with two marine towers (not visible in this picture), Elevator #2 was truly a modern facility.

John S. Metcalf, continued

2009-04-23T12:55:00.005-04:00

The Grand Trunk Elevator (aka the Montreal Warehousing Company), Windmill Point, Montreal, designed and constructed by John S. Metcalf, between 1900 and 1903. Made out of steel and, no doubt, utilizing rectangularly shaped bins, this elevator could store one million bushels of grain. Small by comparison with other elevators made out of steel during the same period, the Windmill Point Elevator was clearly intended, not to store large amounts of grain in bulk (two or three million bushels), but to unload and transfer large amounts of grain from one form of vehicle to another.

Note in this regard 1) the stationary marine tower, designed to unload grain-bearing ships; 2) the line of rail cars extending into and no doubt being unloaded by the mainhouse; and 3), most important of all, the incredible system of horizontal conveyors that bring grain from the base of the marine tower -- as well as from the "backside" of the building, it seems -- to an area (beyond the edge of the picture) in which ocean-going vessels have room to dock and be loaded.

John S. Metcalf, continued

2009-04-23T11:36:00.010-04:00

Pictured here are at least three generations of grain elevators in Goderich, Ontario. I say "three" because this facility possesses three marine towers (all of them stationary), which are easily identifiable by the vertical "slats" out of which their respective elevating legs can be lowered. Moving from right to left, we see:

1) a marine tower that is integrated into the mid-section of a brick or iron-clad warehouse (a common design-feature in the 1870s and '80s);

2) a tower that stands at the far-end of another brick or iron-clad warehouse, over which a horizontal gallery or "cupola" has been built (common in the '80s and '90s); and

3) a tower that is integrated into an all-steel mainhouse (common in the 1900s).

Note that, at the far left of the picture, we see a grain-storage warehouse that is made out of reinforced concrete (note the cylinders, the only ones utilized at this facility). It is my educated guess that this facility was constructed in four stages between 1875 and 1915, and that the 500,000-bushel elevator built by John S. Metcalf in 1907, using steel to construct the rectangularly shaped grain tanks, is #3 (above).

John S. Metcalf, continued

2009-04-22T19:14:00.011-04:00

Here are two pictures of the two-million-bushel grain elevator that John S. Metcalf designed and constructed in Victoria Harbour (now called Port McNicoll) for the Canadian Pacific Railroad in 1910: first we see the structure as it was in 1940; then we see it in the mid-1990s, after the marine towers (all three of which were mobile or "loose"), the gallery and the powerhouse were demolished. There were additions to the elevator's storage capacity in 1912 and 1927, which brought its total up to 6.5 million bushels. Closed down in 1990 and partially demolished in the mid-1990s, the elevator is now in the final stages of demolition.

(Thanks to Scott Garrett for his invaluable assistance in fact-checking this entry.)

John S. Metcalf

2009-04-21T20:58:00.037-04:00

On pages 223-224, I mention John S. Metcalf, a specialist in the design and construction of grain elevators.

Born in Sherbrook, Quebec, in 1847, Metcalf moved to Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1870. While in Indianapolis, he not only designed and built Elevator "A," he also served as this elevator's superintendent until 1881. In 1882, he moved to Chicago, where he partnered with T.K. Webster and James MacDonald. By 1894, he was well-enough known to start his own company, of which there were be offices in Chicago, Illinois, Montreal, Quebec, and Sydney, Australia. He died in 1912.

To Mr. Metcalf may be credited the following grain elevators, some of which were built out of steel (most were built with steel-reinforced concrete):

-- name unknown, Manchester Ship Canal, England, built 1898 (bins made out of wood, not steel, brick, tile or concrete; apparently the first American-style grain elevator to be built on dry land in England; there had been American-style floaters in use there as early as the 1880s);

-- the Grand Trunk (aka Montreal Warehousing Company), Windmill Point, Montreal, built 1900-1903 out of steel;

-- the George T. Evans, Indianapolis, Indiana, built 1901 (made of reinforced concrete, this was a grain storage warehouse, not a functioning elevator);

-- the Canadian Northern Pacific, Port Arthur, Ontario, built 1903;

-- the Southern Pacific, Galveston, Texas; built 1903 out of steel;

-- the Grand Trunk (aka Elevator "B"), Montreal, Quebec, built 1903-1906 out of steel;

-- the Missouri Pacific, Kansas City, Missouri, built 1904 out of reinforced concrete;

-- the Sante Fe, Chicago, Illinois, built 1906 out of reinforced concrete;

-- unnamed elevator, Goderich, Ontario, built 1907 out of steel;

-- the Grand Trunk, Tiffin, Ontario, built 1909 out of reinforced concrete;

-- the Canadian Pacific, Victoria Harbour, Ontario; built 1910 out of reinforced concrete ;

-- Elevator #2, Montreal, Quebec, completed 1912, reinforced concrete;

-- the Burlington, St. Louis, Missouri, date unknown;

-- the Chicago, Burlington & Quincey, East St. Louis, Missouri; date unknown;

-- the Grand Trunk, Portland, Maine; date unknown;

-- the Chesapeake & Ohio, Newport News, Virginia; date unknown.

Grain elevator in Weehawken, New Jersey

2009-04-20T20:57:00.009-04:00

On page 216, I mention that a pioneering grain elevator with steel bins was built by the New York, West Shore and Buffalo Railroad in Weehawken, New Jersey, in 1901. Though the deed was issued in 1901, the elevator itself wasn't built until 1904-1905. Designed by George M. Moulton & Company (Chicago, Illinois), the West Shore Elevator was a steel-framed structure with brick curtain walls. It was nearly 200 feet tall and was capable of storing 2 million bushels of grain in its rectangularly shaped steel bins. It stood until 1968, when it was demolished.

Above: a nice picture of it. Note the marine tower (for unloading ships) and the ten marine spouts (for loading grain into ships) on the side of the structure that is visible to us.

Here's another nice picture, but from a different angle.

George H. Johnson

2009-04-20T19:56:00.008-04:00

On pages 192-197 of American Colossus, I discuss three pioneering fireproofed grain elevators designed and built by George H. Johnson:

1) the Washington Avenue Elevator, an elevator with iron bins built in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania between 1859 and 1866. A picture of it appears here.

2) the Brooklyn Iron Elevator, an iron-binned elevator built in Brooklyn, New York around 1865 as a rail-to-ocean transshipping and storage elevator. Demolished in 1902, it was equipped with 60 to 90 cylindrically shaped bins, supported by a system of iron girders and columns, and surrounded by walls made of brick. A photograph of the Brooklyn Iron Elevator appears in Daniel Badger's book, Illustrations of Iron Architecture (New York, 1865-1867);

3) the Plimpton Elevator, a brick-binned elevator built in Buffalo, New York in 1868. Demolished in 1905 to make way for a new railroad station, the Plimpton was equipped with bins that were 80-feet-deep and 15 feet in diameter. In February and March 1869, Johnson obtained patents for this elevator's grain distributor, grain spouts, elevator legs and grain-discharge system. An illustration based on a photograph of it appears above, taken from "Conserving our grain supply," by F.W. Fitzpatrick, The World To-Day, volume XIX, No. 2, August 1910 (page 837).

Johnson was also the inventor of the interstitial bin, that is, the small, cylindrical bin that can be constructed in the interstices between larger cylindrical bins, which he patented on December 9, 1862 for himself and W.S. Sampson (a grain dealer in Chicago). Prior to 1862, these interstitial spaces were filled with grain (but not grain bins). As a result, when these spaces were emptied, they sometimes caused the grain tanks next to them to bend or break open. In Johnson's patent, interstitial bins can be made out of either iron or iron, provided that, in either instance, they are produced in cylindrical shapes.

Born in Manchester, England, in 1830, George H. Johnson moved to New York City in 1852. For the next ten years, he managed the Architectural Iron Works. Thereafter, he traveled to and designed buildings in Chicago (1860), Richmond, Virginia (1865), Baltimore, Maryland (1867), Buffalo, New York (1868-1869), Chicago, again (1871), New York City, again (1874), and Chicago, one last time (1877). He died in 1879. His son, Ernest V. Johnson, continued his father's work with the Barnett & Johnson Company, which eventually became the Barnett & Record Company of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Grain elevator/ethanol plant in Peoria, Illinois

2009-04-18T21:28:00.012-04:00

In a prior posting, I mentioned the existence of a large grain elevator/ethanol refinery in Peoria, Illinois. It has been owned and operated by Archer-Daniels Midland since 1980. Had I had the time to do so, I would have directed people's attention to it during the Inland Visual Studies Symposium, at which I gave a brief talk on 16 April 2009. The photograph above was taken by someone who calls himself "Astro Punk" and posts his/her photos to Flickr, which is where I found this one.

Let's begin in the middle, with the barge, which we might imagine to be full of corn in bulk. Upon the shore, perpendicular and right next to the barge, there appears to be a marine tower, that is to say, a tower that contains an elevating leg. Such a leg -- unenclosed in a tower or container of any kind -- certainly stands right behind it. Perhaps they form part of a single grain-unloading system.

To the left (our right) stand four sets of grain tanks that are made out of steel, climb to different heights, and no doubt store different amounts of grain. Perhaps they were built over the course of several years, circa 1900-1915.

Behind and, indeed, rising up between these groups of steel tanks, there is a very tall, unenclosed elevating leg. Right next to this leg, there is the top of a tall workhouse made out of reinforced concrete and the top of a smokestack, which suggests the location of the complex's boiler/engine room. Note well that, beneath and on the other side of this workhouse, there is a silo-building made out of reinforced concrete (not captured by this photo). Judging by its size, this silo-building can probably store as many as one million bushels of grain. It might have been built around 1925.

There is some kind of horizontal gantry or conveyor-belt that -- moving from right to left, across the photo -- connects either the workhouse or the silo-building to another building. From the looks of it, this building could be another, older grain elevator, probably built out of brick and iron, and now used for auxiliary storage. Note that this "second elevator" has its own smokestack and thus its own boiler/engine room. It might have been built anywhere between 1885 and 1915.

Let's return to the barge at the center of the photo: to its right (our left), there is a building with four vertical pipes or tubes on the side that faces the river. Dust collection units? To the right (our left) of this building, there appears to be an old marine tower. Perhaps it unloaded grain from ships and then sent it back to what I have imagined to be the older of the grain storage warehouses on the premises. In any case, behind this structure there can be seen the tops of the steel tanks that are part of the ethanol refinery, which is better seen from the other side of the complex, that is to say, from the side that borders the railroad tracks. The refinery was probably built between 1965 and 1980.

As for the building(s) that stand(s) on the left side of this photo, I am uncertain. An old flourmill? Something built at the same time as the old grain elevator? Yet another grain elevator?

Playing in Peoria, Illinois, continued

2009-04-18T19:55:00.003-04:00

My talk in Peoria on 16 April 2009 is mentioned in Lydia's blog. She reports that,

Artists, curators, and students of art were on campus Thursday for the first Inland Visual Studies Center Symposium. The Center focuses on the history and current state of visual studies in the Midwest. Bill Brown, author of American Colossus: The Grain Elevator, 1843–1943, spoke about the sublime impact of something as huge as a grain elevator rising from our flat midwestern prairies.

This uncredited photo shows me in front of a computerized projection of a photograph by Frank Gohlke.

Playing in Peoria, Illinois

2009-04-17T13:23:00.023-04:00

As previously announced, on Thursday 16 April 2009, I gave a brief presentation at a symposium organized by the Inland Visual Studies Center at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. Because my presentation was very brief (allotted 10 minutes of speaking time, I spoke for 10 minutes, during which I managed to read aloud pages 335-337 of American Colossus, which concern the "sublimity" of colossal objects), and because I did not have the opportunity to answer a single question at the end of the 90-minute-long panel, I will keep my commentary here brief as well.

1. I saw a great many grain elevators during the five-hour-long drive from Cincinnati to Peoria, and this was quite a treat, even though I saw them from a car traveling 65 miles an hour and I never exited the highway, not to mention got out of the car to take a closer (and better) look. Most of these elevators were small "country" elevators that stored their grain in a few very large cylindrical steel tanks, many of them either brand-new, recently painted or coated with a substance that preserves or protects their "original" shine. The elevating legs at these structures (also made of steel) were "naked," that is, not enclosed in buildings of their own, but exposed to sight and the elements just as they are. It was only when we approached and then crossed into Illinois from Indiana that the grain elevators were larger and employed grain bins (and workhouses) made out of reinforced concrete.

2. On the way into downtown Peoria - indeed, standing right behind the Prairie Arts Center, which was where the reception and inaugural lecture for the Inland Visual Studies Center's symposium were held - I "delighted" in the sight of a large grain elevator located on the banks of the Illinois River, built out of reinforced concrete and currently operated by Archer-Daniels Midland. "Delighted" has to be in quotes, because it was clear from the machine/buildings that had been added to the original structure, which was evidently a lake-to-rail/rail-to-lake transshipping elevator built sometime around 1930, that the complex was now an ethanol plant. As I mention on page 30 of American Colossus, ethanol is a perfect example of the illogical "rationality" of the profit-driven market: it is "surplus grain" (corn, in fact) that is plentiful for some -- but not for all -- precisely because petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides were used to grow it, and that gets processed into "food for cars" because petrochemical fuel is reputedly too expensive.

3. Not surprisingly, several of the farmlands along the route from Cincinnati to Peoria bore signs that proclaimed that these farmlands or, more precisely, the corn and soybeans grown on them, were to America what oil fields are to Saudi Arabia: sources of pride, profit and power. But there is another illogical "rationality" at the basis of such boosterism: it aims to reduce America's dependence on petrochemical fuels that come from foreign countries, but ignores or rather reinforces America's dependence on petrochemical fuels as such. (Note: gas stations in the Indiana/Illinois area inform their patrons that up to 10% of the "gasoline" available at their pumps is ethanol, but this doesn't mean that the "gasoline" for sale is 10% cheaper, or a source of 10% less air pollution.)

4. It was certainly gratifying that two participants in the symposium -- Bruce Lindsey, an architect/professor at Washington University in St. Louis who gave the inaugural lecture mentioned above, and Bennet Johnson, a professional architect from Chicago who participated in one of the two panels that preceded the one I attended -- gave PowerPoint presentations that included pictures of grain elevators, one of which (the Sante Fe Elevator in Chicago) I recognized right away. But it was regrettable that neither gentleman was free to attend the other panels at the symposium, or at the very least "my" panel, which began just minutes after the conclusion of the box-lunch meal at which we were introduced to each other. Also regrettable was the subsequent absence of two other people who either said intelligent things during their respective presentations and/or lunch: Michael Mercil (Ohio State University) and Greg Samata (a computer programmer/video artist from Dundee, Illinois). Their presence was sorely missed during "my" panel, at which one heard that wheat was growing and waving in the wind when the frontiersmen and "settlers" of the 19th century arrived in the Midwest (Bill Conger, a curator/professor at Illinois State University); that "people" in New York City -- which was consistently denounced during the two morning panels -- are alienated or separated from nature, while people in the Midwest -- which was consistently praised for its difference from the "coastal" regions of the country -- are closer to or "in touch" with nature (Paul Krainak, Bradley University); and that the Midwest -- far from being connected to both the Great Lakes and the eastern seaboard through a vast system of rivers and canals -- is actually "landlocked" (Bob Esmer, a sculptor from Chicago).

5. To the aforementioned gentlemen: the Midwest (aka "the Prairies") is not a natural environment, far from it; its entire indigenous ecosystem -- which included Native American peoples, prairie grasses and herds of buffalo -- was in fact destroyed and then replaced with a new one, which was half-imported from the Europe of the 18th and 19th centuries and half-created by the dictates of the global market of the 19th and 20th centuries. In a word, it is as "natural" as New York City's Central Park.

Elevator made out of iron, Philadelphia

2009-04-12T14:41:00.005-04:00

On pages 192-193, I mention that a largely unknown engineer named George H. Johnson designed at least three pioneering, fireproofed grain elevators in the 1850s and 1860s. Two of them were made out of iron (Bessemer steel), and one was made of brick. The iron elevators were located in Brooklyn and Philadelphia, while the brick-binned elevator was located in Buffalo.

A picture of the iron elevator in Brooklyn appears in a book published by Johnson's employer, Daniel Badger, entitled Illustrations of Iron Architecture (New York: Baker & Godwin, 1865-1867). Here we seem to have a photograph of the iron elevator in Philadelphia. Though the main houses of the two structures are similar - massive, six-story buildings with brick facades that are divided into regular grids by cast-iron columns and arches - the Philadelphia elevator has two, very tall elevating towers, while the Brooklyn elevator (if memory serves) had a single cupola at one end of it.

The Bennett Elevator

2009-04-12T13:06:00.010-04:00

On page 192, I mention that an excellent photograph of the Bennett Elevator (built in 1863) was published in Frank Severance's A Picture Book of Earlier Buffalo (published in 1913) and reprinted in Reyner Banham's A Concrete Atlantis: U.S. Industrial Building and European Modern Architecture 1900-1925 (published in 1986). Adjacent to the Evans Slip and facing Buffalo Creek, the Bennett was designed and built by Robert Dunbar on the very spot upon which the pioneering Dart Elevator stood from 1843 until it burned down on 8 September 1862 (cf. "Fire in Buffalo," New York Times, September 9, 1862).

Note well that in this story the Times refers to the old Dart Elevator as "D.S. Bennett's Elevator," not Joseph Dart's Elevator. According to J.N. Larned, author of A History of Buffalo, Delineating the Evolution of the City, Volume I (published 1911),

the Dart elevator, purchased after some years by Mr David S. Bennett, was burned in 1863 and rebuilt by Mr Bennett on a greatly enlarged scale, having a storage capacity of 600,000 bushels. For many years this Bennett elevator was representative of the highest development of elevator construction.

But no one seems to know exactly when Joseph Dart sold his elevator to David Bennett. Likely times would have been around 1846, when "his" elevator was doubled in size and speed, and during or after the Panic of 1857.

As for the Bennett Elevator being "representative of the highest development of elevator construction," J.N. Larned was obviously referring to the period between 1860 and 1900, that is, before steel was used in the construction of both grain bins and the structures that contained them. Incredibly capacious though they may have been, the grain bins inside the Bennett Elevator were still made of wood and, though clad in iron, the main house was also (still) made of wood. And yet the Bennett was so well-designed that it remained standing until 1912, when it was finally taken down.

Note well that the engine/boiler room was located within the main house and very close to the marine tower. (Note the proximity of the smokestack to the "super tower" that clearly contains the top part of the elevating leg.) Typical of elevator-design in the 19th century, this arrangement was used because it minimized the distance that the elevator's various ropes and belts would need to travel to get power from the engine/boiler room to the elevator's primary machines. But it also increased the risk that sparks created by the mechanical apparatus would ignite the clouds of grain dust that inevitably collected in the marine tower and the main house itself.

And so, the surpassing of the "highest development of elevator construction" represented by the Bennett Elevator was not only driven by the switch from wood to steel, which was made to minimize the likelihood of and/or damages caused by grain-dust explosions. It was also driven by the idea that, in order to further minimize explosions, the elevator's functions should be distributed among three, spatially distinct buildings (the powerhouse, the marine tower, and the mainhouse). Should an explosion occur in one building, it would not spread to the others.

Typos corrected!

2009-04-11T01:58:00.003-04:00

To get the book ready for distribution via Amazon, etc, Lulu has asked me to make a couple of minor changes. I have taken this temporary set-back as an opportunity to correct all the typos that are listed here. From now on, copies of the book will be virtually typo-free.

Port Prescott, Ontario

2009-04-10T11:43:00.004-04:00

On page 177, once again in the context of developments that led to Buffalo's decrease in importance as a grain port, I mention the construction of a colossal lake-to-ocean transshipping elevator near Port Prescott, just across the St. Lawrence River from Ogdensburg, New York. Built in the 1930s, this massive terminal bested its predecessors by having a larger storage capacity and a total of four loose legs. The elevator still stands, and has been photographed by amateur photographers who have posted their shots on-line.

Port Colborne, Ontario

2009-04-10T11:12:00.006-04:00

On pages 174-175, in the course of a discussion of the many developments that led to Buffalo's decrease in importance as a grain port, I mention that a small but nevertheless significant event took place in 1911, when the huge Canadian flour company Maple Leaf opened a flour mill in Port Colborne. Located on the Lake Erie side of the Welland Canal, which connects Lake Erie with Lake Ontario, Port Colborne had long competed with Buffalo for grain that was headed to Rochester and Oswego, both of which were entrances to the New York State Barge Canal and flour-milling centers in their own right. The opening of a flourmill at this rival transshipment point both increased the pressure on Buffalo and extended it to Rochester and Oswego.

Above: the Maple Leaf grain elevator in 1920. Note the marine tower, apparently in operation.

Book review by Richard Palmer, Canal Times

2009-04-09T23:02:00.005-04:00

Written in the form of emails sent to my publisher, Colossal Books, between 22 March and 9 April 2009, this review of American Colossus is the book's first!

If you wish to send us a review copy we will write it up. I went on a tour of the abandoned grain elevators in Buffalo last fall - one or two are back in use but the others are just rotting hulks. In some places around the country and in Canada they have been reused as condos, but there's no market for them in Buffalo. I received the book okay but I didn't expect such a "collossal" book. It would take me a year to wade through it. Do you have more of a lengthy news release and a photo I could use? I toured Buffalo waterfront last fall and you have to see it to believe it - rows of abandoned and derelict/useless grain elevators no one knows what do to with except implode them. If you'd like something about the book on the Canal Times website you will have to send me a writeup. I certainly do not have the time or interest to review a 450-page book about grain elevators. Not exactly bedside reading even on a cold winter night.

Richard Palmer, Editor, Canal Times.

Grain elevators in Montreal, continued

2009-04-09T14:00:00.022-04:00

In a prior posting concerning page 123 of American Colossus, I mentioned that the first grain elevator in Montreal, Quebec, was built in 1859. On pages 173-174 , I discuss the elevators built in Montreal between 1905 and 1930. In the course of this discussion, I offer excerpts from my translation of an article entitled "Les Mysteres d'un Elevateur a Grains," originally published in the Album Universel on 21 October 1905, and put online by Controleman in 2007. It concerns Elevator #1, which was designed and built by the Steel Storage & Elevator Construction Company between 1902 and 1905. Should my readers desire it, I will translate the entire article into English. In the meantime, I provide translations of the captions to the many pictures that accompany it.

Page 784, upper left: "The elevator unloads a steamer come from the Great Lakes." Note: the unloading is being done by the extended leg of a mobile marine tower.

Page 784, lower left: "The elevator and its three mobile towers." Note: two of these "mobile towers" (the boxes atop riggings) are for loading grain, not unloading.

Page 784, upper right: "The electrician at his post, as if by magic, puts its motion the machines of the immense edifice." Note: he's not an electrician, of course, but a superintendent.

Page 784, middle right: "Grain tanks above the automatic scales." Note: these tanks only "store" the grain they contain for a few minutes before being emptied and then re-filled.

Page 784, lower right: "In a high part of the elevator, enormous tubes distribute the grain at will into the tanks." This would be a place grain dust accumulated.

Page 785, upper left: "Northern part of the basement of the elevator." Note the railroads tracks.

Page 785, middle left: "The enormous scales that can weigh 1,500 bushels of grain at a time." Note: the tank in view is made out of steel, not reinforced concrete.

Page 785, lower left: "The grain, once weighed, runs along large horizontal belts, and falls into the immense cylinder-tanks." We should not take the cylindrical shape of these grain tanks for granted: elevators built out of steel sometimes utilized rectangularly shaped grain bins.

Page 785, upper right: "To unload the ships, a metallic and mobile chute is used." As noted before, we are in fact seeing three "metallic and mobile" devices, but one of them is used to unload the ships (the mobile marine tower, in the center of the picture), while the other two are used to load smaller craft (the mobile loaders on both sides of the marine tower).

Page 785, lower right: "The elevator chute descends as far as the depths of the hold." Yes, provided we understand the "chute" to be the elevating leg, contained in the mobile marine tower.

Page 786, upper right: "Diagram showing a horizontal section of the cylinders of the elevator." Note well that the language used to indicate how much of what grain is stored in which particular bin is English, not French. The text of the article itself mentions that the superintendent of the elevator is an American named M.J. Nehin. From this diagram, we learn that this elevator had 36 main bins, 22 outer bins and 20 interstitials, and used four internal "lofting" legs.

Page 786, middle left: "Grain elevator of the 'Harbor Depot.'" This is clearly a different grain elevator from Elevator #1 and it is not Elevator B, also known as Elevator #5, which was built by the Grand Trunk Railroad between 1904 and 1906. It must be from another Canadian port in which the Dominion government built grain elevators (Port Arthur or Fort William, later known as "Thunder Bay").

Page 786, lower right: "An elevator of wood, such as they are built in the west." A classic wood-cribbed grain elevator of the Canadian West and the American Midwest, circa 1880.

Below is a picture of this same grain elevator, taken from a different source.

Floating grain elevators, continued

2009-04-08T11:18:00.011-04:00

On page 146, I mention that it appears that the first "American-style" grain elevators built in England were floaters. An engraving published in the 1880 issue of The Graphic: An Illustrated Weekly Newspaper shows "The American grain elevator on Thames off North Woolwich." An engraving from an 1883 issue of the same newspaper shows what appears to be the reverse side of the very same grain elevator. The caption reads, "The new grain elevator, 'International', being towed across the North Sea to Antwerp."

It is possible that, after being designed by an American engineer - perhaps Robert Dunbar, who was still active in the early 1880s - this "American" elevator was put to work on a trial basis in London, which was beginning to receive ever-larger quantities of American wheat from ports such as Boston. Shipped in bulk, not in sacks (which would remain the custom on the European continent as late as the 1920s), this wheat could only be unloaded by a mechanized house, not by teams of stevedores. After it proved to be a success, this same floating elevator was loaned or sold to grain merchants in Belgium, thus making its work-history and influence truly "international."

Floating grain elevators

2009-04-07T17:38:00.016-04:00

On pages 145-146, I mention floating grain elevators -- grain-elevating towers built upon small boats -- which, according to Scientific American (Vol. 2, No. 25, March 13, 1847), were "invented and patented by Mr. A.S. Bemia of Buffalo for dicharging and weighing grain from [lake] vessels into canal boats and warehouses. It is constructed after the style and model of dredging machine and floats in the harbor. One is to be built and launched ready for Spring service." To accomplish such transshipments of grain, floaters required at least one elevating leg, a system by which to garner and weigh grain, and spouts to send that grain down into a canal boat or back to a warehouse. Floaters never intended to store more than 40,000 bushels at a time, and so were "pure" elevators.

According to Thomas Flagg, author of "Floating Grain Elevators," published in Transfer No. 40, January-May 2004 and reproduced in part on-line, the first floater was built upon an old sailing-hull in Brooklyn in 1848 and followed "Pagan's patent" (p. 4). Reproduced above is the cover of Transfer No. 40, which shows the Ceres in operation in 1914 and, below that, a battery of floaters in Jersey City, New Jersey (date unknown).

Other illustrations to Flagg's article (not reproduced here) include diagrams of how elevating legs work, illustrations of grain elevators in the 19th century, and photographs of floaters in Jersey City and Weehauken, another port city in New Jersey. According to Flagg, a Brooklynite named Phillip Gill developed the world's first two-legged floater - a floater with two elevating legs, not just one - sometime in the mid-19th century (Flagg doesn't specify). "Gill's invention," Flagg says, "gave the craft an even more powerful visual effect: now they seemed to stand in the harbor with legs spread, like some colossus."

Allow me to add that:

1. grain elevators were in operation in Brooklyn as early as 1846 or 1847, when "Col. [Daniel] Richards erected upon the North Pier [of Brooklyn] the first steam grain elevator in the port of New York, and at this day nearly all of the grain business of the metropolis is done at Brooklyn, there being no stationary steam elevators on the New York side" (Henry R. Stiles, A History of the City of Brooklyn, Vol III, 1870, p. 580); and

2. the first grain elevators used in New York's harbor (the Lower East Side of Manhattan) were floaters. Indeed, it wasn't until 1870 that a "stationary" grain elevator was built in Manhattan. Same thing for New Orleans: floaters were all they used for a very long time.

Boston, Massachusetts

2009-04-04T16:09:00.006-04:00

On page 132, I note that Boston was one of the first American cities to get a telegraph line, which was installed in 1844 and connected Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington, DC. Because Boston was the ocean port closest to Liverpool and London, it was often the best place on the East Coast to get fresh information about grain prices in Europe. On page 133, I note that, "later when trans-Atlantic travel became more frequent and highly specialized, ships from England would dock at Boston, while ships from continental Europe would dock at New York. This meant that grain traders in Buffalo needed to receive information from both cities, not just the latter."

Unlike New York, which thrived in the 19th century due to its all-water-routes back to Albany and Buffalo, Boston thrived due to its railroads. The map on the bottom (railroads leading into and out of Boston) dates from 1846, just two years after the first telegraph lines were laid down. The map at the top (the Grand Trunk Railroad's grain routes) dates from 1891. Here Boston numbers among a handful of ocean ports the handle Canadian grain: the others are Montreal, Portland (Maine), and New York. In 1913, Boston was the location of (at least) three grain elevators, all apparently owned by either the Boston & Main Railroad or the Boston & Albany. The former had two elevators totally 1.5 million bushels in Charleston, while the other had a single, 1 million-bushel elevator in East Boston. (Report of the Directors of the Port of Boston, Year Ending November 30, 1912, Wright & Potters, Boston 1913, p. 68). As late as 1922, Boston ranked among the top 23 most important grain ports in America.

Bradley University, Illinois

2009-04-04T15:37:00.006-04:00

At 2 pm on Thursday 16 April 2009, I will be speaking at the Inland Visual Studies Center symposium at Bradley University, in Peoria, Illinois. The theme will be "Flatlands: Middle America and The Pastoral Sublime." The event will be free, open to the general public and will require no advance registration.

The purpose of the Symposium as a whole is to discuss new theories of Midwest visual culture including relationships between fine art traditions, popular culture, and new design models which respond to the influences of progressive modernist architecture movements defined in Illinois over the last century.

All events will take place in The Horowitz Auditorium, at the Caterpillar Global Communications Center on the Bradley University campus.
1501 W. Bradley Avenue • Peoria, Illinois 61625

Thursday, April 16
9:00 - 10:30 am Panel Discussion, “Manifest Liminality: Midwest As Gateway”
11 am - 12:30 pm Panel Discussion, “Mapping”
2:00 - 3:30 pm Panel Discussion, “Flatlands: Middle America and The Pastoral Sublime”
5:00 - 6:00 pm Reception in the Heuser Art Center lobby
6:30 - 7:30 pm Lecture by Michael Mercil, Horowitz Auditorium, CGCC

Friday, April 17
10:30 – Noon Panel Discussion, “Inland Identities and the "real"
America”, Horowitz Auditorium, CGCC

For more information, see this news item at BU's website.

Grain shovelers

2009-04-02T22:15:00.007-04:00

On pages 125-126, I discuss the grain shovelers (also known as grain scoopers), who were workers hired to shovel, scoop and sweep piles of "loose" grain (grain in bulk) so that they were within the reach of the buckets attached to the elevating leg after it had been lowered into the grain-bearing vessel and turned on. Because the elevating leg was "stiff," and couldn't move in any direction other than down or up (in or out of the hull), many such workers were needed, and they were forced to work as fast as possible. The constant presence of grain dust was also a health-hazard if breathed in and a potential explosive if ignited.

Before the invention of the grain elevator, a great many workers were also required, and were required to work hard and fast, but they were tasked with lifting, carrying and storing sacks of grain, not shoveling or sweeping up grain in bulk. No grain dust was involved then. In addition to introducing grain dust into the workplace, the grain elevator required fewer workers than a "traditional" grain-storage warehouse. As the number of grain elevators grew, so did the numbers of unemployed stevedores and dockworkers.

In 1862, the grain shovelers of New York went out on strike to protest against the recent adoption of mechanized grain elevators in that city's harbor. The first grain elevators in New York -- but not in Brooklyn, where stationary elevators had been built since 1847 -- were in fact floating elevators. According to John Foord, author of The Life and Public Services of Simon Sterne (MacMillan, 1903), there were six such elevators in use in New York when the 2,000 shovelers went out on strike. According to Foord, a non-mechanized grain dock required a dozen men, one horse and five days to unload a grain-bearing vessel, while a steam-powered grain elevator only required nine men and two days to do the same job. Simon Sterne had apparently counseled the grain workers of 1862 not to go out on strike, but to use the time that remained until their jobs were completely phased out by staying at their jobs and saving money, so that when their jobs were gone they could purchase a grain elevator of their own. They ignored his advice and went out on strike (Simon Sterne, pp. 45-47).

The pressure upon grain shovelers became even greater in 1865, when engineers working for the Watson Elevator in Buffalo came up with the "power shovel." Powered by the elevating leg itself, the power-shovel used a series of ropes to pull shovels full of grain towards the leg's buckets, thus speeding up the process even more. Fewer shovelers were needed, but those who remained had to work harder and the work was more dangerous: those ropes could easily coil around and snap off a man's leg.

As this video shows, "power shovels" were still in use at Buffalo, New York, as recently as the 1990s.

First grain elevator in Portland, Maine

2009-04-02T21:49:00.006-04:00

On page 123, I mention that it wasn't until 1866 (more than 20 years after the construction of the Dart Elevator) that Portland, Maine got its first one. Perhaps I should have said grain elevators were active in Portland as early as 1866: a large elevator can be seen, sitting alongside the water, in the center-right part of this photograph, which was taken after the Great Fire of 1866. How long had it been standing there? I don't know.

First grain elevator in Philadelphia

2009-04-02T21:35:00.007-04:00

On page 121, I mention that it wasn't until the late 1850s (fifteen years after the construction of the Dart Elevator) that Philadelphia, Pennsylvania got its first one. John Mayer's Workshop of the World - Philadelphia, which was published as a book by Oliver Evans Press in 1990, confirms that the first grain elevator in Philadelphia was constructed in 1859 by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and that, beginning in 1862, floating elevators were also deployed. I will return to the subject of other grain elevators in Philadelphia (the Iron Elevator, built in the 1860s, and the Girard Point Elevator, built in the 1910s) in subsequent blog posts.

The Dart Elevator

2009-04-02T19:25:00.012-04:00

As I note on page 116, there are virtually no images of the Dart Elevator, which was the world's first mechanized grain elevating and storage warehouse. Built by Robert Dunbar and his team between November 1842 and May 1843, and powered by a wood-burning steam engine, the Dart Elevator was named after Joseph Dart, an entrepreneur who either had the capital or the bank credit to finance the operation. Incorrectly thought to be the inventor of the grain elevator, Joseph Dart showed little awareness of how "his" elevator worked in 1865, when -- three years after the Dart exploded and was replaced by the Bennett -- he appeared before the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society (BECHS) to argue that he, and he alone, deserved to be granted a patent for "his" invention.

It is likely that the person(s) who made this model of the Dart Elevator, which was displayed at the BECHS and photographed by Chuck LaChiusa in 1992, knew more about the workings of the Dart Elevator than Joseph Dart himself did. Depicted here is the Dart Elevator after 1845, when it was doubled in storage capacity (from 55,000 to 110,000 bushels) and received a second elevating leg. It appears that the structure on the right (underneath the little cupola) was the second or "new" leg: it certainly looks like an add-on, while the leg in the middle, encased in a very sturdy-looking marine tower, looks well thought-out and planned.

A curious feature is the complete absence of canal spouts. Unlike nearly all of the elevators that followed it, the Dart required canal boats to dock underneath it, not alongside it, and to receive out-going grain through spouts that couldn't be seen. This arrangement was utilized in order to "economize" on available waterfront space. The only subsequent elevator in Buffalo to adopt this spatial practice was the Watson Elevator, built in 1863.

Grain elevators in Demmin, Germany

2009-04-02T18:48:00.004-04:00

On pages 110-111, I mention the Speicherensemble (the group of storage containers) at the Peenehafen (Peene Harbor) in Demmin, Germany. A caption to this picture, which appears on the website of the City of Demmin, explains that, moving from right to left, we see the Luebecker Speicher, built around 1820, the Berliner Speicher, built in 1900, and an unnamed pair of Speichern, built in 1925. Note the ever-growing height of such buildings.

Grain elevators in Gdansk, Poland

2009-04-02T18:16:00.012-04:00

On page 110, I speak of Gdansk's Speicherinsel (Storage Container Island), which was destroyed in World War II. Prior to that, Gdansk/Danzig had been a major grain port for hundreds of years. One incredible photograph from this website shows a row of seven-story-tall, wood-timbered granaries, two of which have had modern elevating mechanisms attached to them. In each case, these granaries have been outfitted with an elevating leg and a canal spout, which suggests these buildings were both transshipping and storage warehouses. The elevating leg in both cases is not housed in any structure or "marine tower," as would be common in other modern transshipping and storage warehouses, but stands exposed. Evidently it could be extended out over and down into an incoming-ship.

Note the elevator at the far left: it too has both an exposed elevating leg and a canal spout, but its mainhouse appears to be built out of brick, not wood, and it would seem to have been built much later than the other buildings along the dock. It is possible that the other, older granaries received their new equipment when this brick grain elevator was built. Perhaps in the 1910s?

Erie Canal song/"Low Bridge"

2009-04-02T17:02:00.009-04:00

On pages 88-91, I discuss Thomas Allen's famous song, "Low Bridge" (also known as "Fifteen Years on the Erie Canal"). The Erie Canal was the single biggest factor that led to the invention of the first mechanized grain elevator by Robert Dunbar and Joseph Dart in 1843: the grain elevator was originally built to transship large quantities of grain in bulk coming from lake vessels to boats small enough to navigate through the canal. In fact, if you can tolerate the excruciating sincerity of the version of the song in this particular video, you will see -- at precisely 1:04 in, behind the caption that reads "The Importance of Waterways" -- an illustration that depicts the Erie Basin Elevator, built in Buffalo, New York, in 1854. Clearly based upon a photograph, the illustration shows the elevator's marine tower, from which the marine leg has been extended into the hull of a lake steamer. Canal boats stand ready in the foreground.

The echoes that the song stirs, indeed, the song's very popularity, in all of its many versions, indicates the centrality of the Erie Canal to American history. But, despite appearances -- or, if you will, despite Bruce Springsteen, who like so many people mistake the tone of the song to be "authentic" and sincere -- the song wasn't written in 1840, as one might expect ("fifteen years on the Erie Canal" could be 15 years after the Canal opened in 1825). In fact, the song was written in 1905, two years after the Erie Canal was scrapped and work on its replacement, the New York State Barge Canal, had begun. It's tone is not nostalgic or sentimental: it is dry and ironic.