Playing in Peoria, Illinois

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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"

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.

The elevated see further

On page 66, I note that while everyone can see, and project themselves upon, the grain elevator, only a few people get to see the view or project themselves from the grain elevator. As Walter Benjamin asks, "For in those days who besides the engineer [who built it] and the proletarian [who worked there] had climbed the steps that alone made it possible to recognize what was new and decisive about these structures: the feeling of space?" Only a few get to explore the "galleries" of these elevated spaces while they are in operation. The same thing is true, even after their owners have closed up shop and abandoned their towering structures, only the engineers and supervisors have been replaced by security guards and the climbing workers have been replaced by "urban explorers." The similarity to a religious, royal or economic elite is striking: only a few can attain the dignity, the eminence and the loftiness -- in a word, the elevation -- necessary to comprehend, appreciate and give proper praises to the supremely elevated (God, the sublime or immortality). Everyone else is doubly low: beneath God's chosen elite and beneath God Himself. This certainly explains the grandiosity of the videotape I posted about the grain elevator in Stalingrad: the music doesn't celebrate the triumph of the Russians over the Germans, but the ego of the man who has managed to climb such a tall building and can now look down upon his surroundings.

But what goes up, must come down; even the dignified, the eminent and the most lofty must fall on their faces.

OTTAWA – Saskatchewan residents may have been surprised yesterday to hear Prime Minister Stephen Harper muse publicly about what it would take to defeat the province. The Prime Minister appeared to be on a war footing while at a press conference to announce a highway project in Nova Scotia.

"We have to define what victory means in Saskatchewan," said Harper, when he was asked about Canada's role in Afghanistan.

He quickly retreated from the slip of the tongue.

"I don't know why I said that. I have no idea," Harper said.

Everyone at the press conference had a good chuckle, including the Prime Minister. But even so, Saskatchewan residents might well be advised to barricade the grain elevators just in case he wasn't kidding. At least they will have the advantage of seeing the invaders coming for days.

Reported by Richard J. Brennan on 7 March 2009 for The Toronto Star.

Louis Lozowick

On page 54, in a footnote to my discussion of Charles Demuth's My Egypt, I mention Louis Lozowick's Minneapolis, a lithograph dated 1925. In it, Minneapolis has grown at the confluence or crossing of the Mississippi River (see the boats and ships at the lower left) and the railroad (lower right). It has in fact grown to a great height, which is a emphasized by the single, tall and narrow building (a grain elevator, it would seem) that rises from the bottom to the top of the picture. But this tall building is in fact made of three stacks of tall buildings: a group of cylindrical grain tanks at the bottom, a large mill or factory in the middle, and the upper half of a 19th century-style grain elevator, complete with a clerestory-like gallery. Elsewhere in the picture, we see the same "stacking" effect, sometimes going as high as four levels, of factories, smokestacks, silos, towers, and elevated railroad trestles.

The gesture is clear: though it is "merely" a city of commerce and industry -- note the absence of churches, cathedrals, statues, monuments and trees -- Minneapolis in fact requires several different perspectives to be seen for what it really is: a complex and novel production of space.

Grain elevator in Al Basra, Iraq

On pages 44-45, I mention the United States' accidental destruction of the grain elevator in Al Basra, Iraq, which took place in early June 2003. Built in "the American style" in the 1950s, this elevator was so prized (or its destruction was so embarrassing) that the United States not only offered to rebuilt it, and build a brand-new grain elevator in Umm Osar, but also put a picture of the Al Basra Elevator on one of the new dinars that were issued in June 2003.

See Tom Sawyer, et al, "Plans laid for next phase as Iraq rebuild continues," Engineering News-Record, 20 October 2003.

Elevation/erection

On page 63, I refer to the "sexual" symbolism of grain elevators. Among many other things, the word "elevation" brings up associations with "erection": when a man is excited, his penis stiffens and becomes upright, and the head of his penis is elevated; furthermore, during the "heights" of orgasm, his seed rises from within his testicles to the top of his penis. See 1:00 in to this clip to see what I mean.

Though apparently unrelated, grain elevators and Frankenstein's monster have a great deal in common. First, Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory, at least in James Whales' version from 1931, is located in an abandoned windmill (windmills grind grain for flourmills). Second, the very first thing the monster says, at least in The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), is "Bread . . . good" (bread is typically made of wheat). Third, some anti-genetically modified food activists use the neologism "Frankenfood," which denotes foods made from genetically modified products, but especially wheat or corn.

Charles Demuth

Between pages 53 and 54, I briefly touch upon Charles Demuth's painting My Egypt (1927), which depicts a small "country elevator" (made out of reinforced concrete) that was built in Lancaster, Pennsylvania (Demuth's hometown) only a few years previously. In her reading of the painting and its cryptic title, Karal Ann Marling argues that the ultimate reference is to the Great Pyramids of ancient Egypt ("My Eygyt: the Irony of the American Dream," Winterthur Portfolio, Spring 1980).

The problem for Marling’s reading of Demuth’s painting is that there is a mismatch: despite its dead-giveaway title, My Egypt does not resemble or even evoke a huge pyramid. And so, how to interpret the enigma of the title? Marling’s best guess is that Demuth was referring to his own death, his own passing into history, his own funereal monument: “The finality of these cool, pristinely modern shapes dictates that the Pennsylvania [grain] elevator would outlast Demuth.” But what if she’s got it backwards? Instead of memorializing his own death, Demuth might have been saying that the grain elevator in Pennsylvania – even though it was brand-new when he painted it – was already a kind of ruin. There is a possible parallel to America itself: never a young country; always already old and ruined.

Battle of Stalingrad, part 2

The Stalingrad Elevator in 2007. Though the videographer doesn't appear knowledgeable about grain elevators (we see nothing of the elevator's basement or the bottoms of the grain bins), he was kind enough to show us a few shots of the bin floor and the tops of the grain bins, that is, before concentrating on the view from the top of the surrounding areas.

There is a statue at ground level, out in front of the elevator. A banner proclaims: "Victory in the name of the Motherland; victory in the name of the living; victory in the name of those who will come after us. Victory!"

Battle of Stalingrad, part 1

On pages 44 and 319, I refer to the Battle of Stalingrad (July 1942 to February 1943) because "a part of this bloody campaign took place in and around a colossal grain elevator built on the banks of the Voga River." Other pictures from this era show that the building was damaged by mortar attacks and gun-fire, but unlike everything else it hadn't been flattened or knocked down. Indeed, it still stands today.

Because it is located in Volgograd (also known as the birthplace of Joseph Stalin), and because Tsaritsyn (the city's name before 1925) is not listed as one of the cities in which grain elevators were built in the 1910s, I conclude that this particular grain elevator was probably built in the early 1930s and in the context of Stalin's "collectization" of the farms and his transformation of Volgograd into a transshipping center. In any case, it was built in the "American style," that is to say, using freestanding cylindrical tanks made out of reinforced concrete.

Star Trek, part 2

The horror of discovering the grain storage compartments to be full of dead animals is successfully dispelled or off-set by the comic spectacle of Captain Kirk standing underneath one of the storage compartments and slowly being buried up to his armpits in tribbles as they fall down upon him. He has two immediate orders: find the man who brought the creatures aboard, and Close that door! It is possible the grain was stored at K7 in this elevated fashion because the only suitable storage compartments at the space station were the equivalent of current-day "over-head compartments" on air planes. It is also possible that, in the future, all civilized people store their grain in "raised floor buildings." In any event, if it were not for the elevation of the granary, and Kirk's position beneath it -- if the granaries were below floor-level and Kirk was looking down at them -- the scene would be ghastly, not funny.

Star Trek, part 1

On page 37, I write that,

So essential are granaries to human societies that they even figure in works of Science Fiction. Take for example "Star Trek," perhaps the most well-known, popular and influential Sci-Fi story ever told. In the television episode entitled "The Trouble With Tribbles" (episode 44, first aired on 29 December 1967), the Starship Enterprise is called in to protect a shipment of grain being temporarily stored at K7, a deep-space station located near Klingon space.

The action to which I refer takes place about 5:15 in.

It turns out that the quadro-triticale has in fact been poisoned by the Klingons, but Captain Kirk and the others only learn this after a very large number of small, fuzzy, irresistably cute "tribbles" have gotten into the storage compartments, devoured all of the grain, and died.

Dogon granary doors

On page 36, footnote 63, I note that,

In some ancient/primitive cultures, such as that of the Dogon of Mali, granary doors bears elaborate carvings that depict, among other wonders, the Nommo, the Dogon's primordial ancestors, who have now descended from heaven to bring fertility to Earth, and stand with their arms raised, praying for rain, rebirth and regeneration.

On this particular granary door, four Nommo stand with their arms raised, beseeching others of their kind to favor the Dogon with rain and a good harvest. There is a rhythm here that I find appealing: down from sky, up to the heavens. It is played twice: the ancestors come down and stand up; and the rain they request comes down and the crops stand up. This rhythm also plays in sync with the way grain behaves: "When it is stored in a 'raised floor building,' grain will pour down like a liquid if a door at the bottom of the building is opened" (American Colossus, page 36).

Note that the catalogue for the auction of Dogon granary doors held at Sotheby's on 12 May 2005 -- the bidding started at around $5,000 per item -- mentions a different kind of rhythm (open and shut, not down and up): "the granary itself is often associated with the celestial ark of origins and creation among the Dogon. The door itself can be likened to a heartbeat with its opening and closing[,] signaling the vitality of the granary to Dogon life."

Grain power

On page 18, I note that the "Big Five" grain companies -- Cargill, Continental, Louis Dreyfus, Bunge y Born, and Andre -- "have strategic advantages over smaller companies concerning the grain flow through the system, facility locations, processing capabilities and vertical integration."

This map is a good visualization of those strategic advantages, especially the positioning of grain elevators within/along the stream of commerce. It was produced in 1995 and based upon information obtained through a Freedom of Information Act Request. Cargill's grain elevators are represented by green dots and total 243. Continental's elevators are represented by red dots and total 83. All of the other competitors' elevators are represented by blue dots and are not counted. They are clearly very numerous, but this fact is outweighed in importance by their distance from the marketing and distribution centers.

Grain elevators in India

On page 16, I mention India.

But if one were to ask someone today which grain companies are reaping windfall profits from the rising prices of wheat, corn and rice, or helping to formulate American foreign policy concerning agriculture in Cuba, Brazil, the Sudan, Egypt, India, North Korea and China, he or she probably wouldn't know.

Working towards a better understanding of this issue, I note that the first mechanized grain elevator built in India is mentioned in British India, with Notes on Ceylon, Afghanistan, and Tibet, by Henry D. Baker, American Consult at Bombay, Department of Commerce, Special Consular Reports, No 72 (1915), p. 352:

The first grain elevator in India has been completed at Lyallpur, the center of one of the largest irrigation districts of the Punjab Province. This elevator will furnish an experiment of important significance to the grain trade of India, and if successful it will undoubtedly stimulate the building of many other elevators in this country and lead to far-reaching and important changes in present methods for handling, storing and marketing the grain crops of India. The material of the new elevator is reinforced brickwork, and the structure is to comprise storage bins.

No doubt the "far-reaching and important changes" centered upon abandoning the centuries-long practice of storing and transporting grain in sacks and adopting the relatively new American practice of storing and transporting grain in bulk.

It is unclear from this brief notice if the elevator's storage bins if they, too, were constructed of bricks, or if they were constructed of steel, tile or reinforced concrete.

Today, Lyallpur is called Faisalabad and is located in Pakistan, not India. The third-largest city in Pakistan, Faisalabad is no longer a grain market, but a commercial/industrial center.

Grain elevators in Montreal

On page 123, I say that it wasn't until 1887 that a mechanized grain elevator was constructed at Montreal, Quebec. According to Controleman, author of a History of Montreal Grain Elevators (1885-1913), the first elevator in the area was Warehouse "A," located at rue Wellington and the Lachine Canal, and operated by the Canadian Pacific Railway between 1859 and 1872.

Despite the error, my point remains valid: it took quite a while for other port-cities to follow Buffalo's example by building a mechanized grain elevator, and this delay must be accounted for. If grain elevators were so useful (and they were), why weren't they built in places like Montreal, Philadelphia, and St. Louis in the 1840s? What caused the delay, which lasted almost twenty years?

Drowning in the river of grain

On page 49, I say the following about Frank Norris' novel, The Pit: A Story of Chicago (published in 1903),

Though Norris’s novel doesn’t include such a scene, it gives its reader enough material and inspiration to imagine that “justice” would consist in either throwing the unsuccessful speculator into the mighty river whose course he foolishly attempted to divert for his personal benefit, or forcing him to eat the millions of bushels of grain he managed to hoard as part of his attempted corner, and thus driving home the point that grain is food, not a plaything for capitalist speculators. But it was only in the late 20th century that the American river of grain was actually portrayed as smothering and lethal. I can only find one such instance, but it is potent: in The Witness, a film directed by Peter Weir (1985), one of the “bad guys” gets buried by and suffocates to death in the grain stored an Amish country elevator. And yet there is no “poetic justice” in this death by drowning in grain. It just happens.

In point of fact, D.W. Griffith's short film "A Corner in Wheat" -- released in 1909 and based upon a short story by Frank Norris called "A Deal in Wheat" (published in 1913) -- includes a scene in which the man who corners the market in wheat slips and falls into a grain bin while he is inspecting one of his elevators. While he is "drowning" (suffocating), we see scenes at the bread shop, where, due to the corner on wheat, flour has become so expensive that the baker soon runs out, which causes a bread riot.

Note well that such a scene is not included in Frank Norris' original, which only mentions grain elevators in "Part IV: The Belt Line," where they are used to disguise the corner as it is in progress. Griffith not only added the "drowning" scene, but also created a new part of the narrative, which he called "At the Elevators," in which to highlight it.

Typos

page 17, first line: delete "all"

page 18, six lines from the bottom: delete "all"

page 18, seven lines from the bottom: delete "all"

page 35, four lines from the top: change "is" to "was"

page 35, five lines from the top: change "is" to "was"

page 35, four lines from the top: change "is" to "was"

page 49, eleven lines from the top: change "com" to "corn"

page 52, three lines from the top: add "many" between "so" and "people"

page 56, six lines from the bottom: change "had" to "has"

page 58, six lines from the bottom: "anytime" is two words

page 186, end of footnote: "Erie as constructed" should be "Erie was constructed"

page 192, seven lines from the top: "Evans Slip" should be "Blackwell Ship Canal"

page 235, four lines from the top: add "of" between "of the end" and "the 'classic' grain elevator"

page 237, seven lines from the top: "AUSTON" should be "AUSTIN"

page 241, five lines from the top: "aid" should be "said"

page 244, two lines from the top: add "of" between "Trollope's image" and "the re-birth of Ceres"

page 245, center of page: "that an elephant's" should be "than an elephant's"

page 246, fourteen lines from the bottom: add "years" between "just a few" and "later"

page 249, three lines from the bottom: "your years" should be "your ears"

page 251, nine lines from the top: add "that" between "in a manner" and "to an English"

page 252, seven lines from the bottom: delete "bins"

page 278, six lines from the bottom: change "was" to "were"

page 320, six lines from the bottom: delete "of"

page 345, three lines from the top: "invented" should be "put into widespread use"

page 345, five lines from the bottom: "they" should be "she"

page 357, two lines from the top: delete the comma after "book"

page 359, center of the page: "Canada need to have" should be "Canada needed to have"

page 365, nine lines from the bottom: insert closing quotation marks between "cathedrals" and the footnote numbered 13

page 388, seven lines from the top: add "amount" between "a certain" and "of sense"

page 391, seven lines from the bottom: "International Workers Association" should be "Communist Party"

page 396, fifteen lines from the bottom: "Fifth" should be "Fourth"

page 404, three lines from the bottom: add "if" between "especially" and "it was housed"

Figure 3, caption: delete "Evans"

Figure 4, caption: change "Evans" to "City"

The Story So Far. . . .

So far, I have used this blog to entice my readers to buy copies of American Colossus by:

1) reproducing all of the illustrations that are contained in the book; and
2) uploading the book's "Introduction."

(Note that when you follow the links to the www.lulu.com page upon which the book is promoted, you will also see that the book's two epigraphs and its preface [by Marshall Brown, no relation to the author] have also been made available.)

Moving ever onward, I will now proceed to:

1) identify and correct the typographical errors in the book;
2) correct the errors of fact; and
3) provide "new" images and texts that illustrate or otherwise enrich individual ideas in the book.

Because the third job is the most difficult, and may very well take a long time, I will attempt to get through the first two jobs on this list as quickly as possible.

Introduction to the book

Some of my readers may already be familiar with grain elevators because they grew up on or near a farm, at which these simple mechanical devices – buckets attached to revolving, vertically arrayed conveyor belts that can be powered by horses or small engines – are widely used to scoop up piles of loose grain and bring them to the top of the structure to which the elevator is attached. Once at the top, the grain can, using the force of gravity, be sent down into a scale and weighed, and then sent into a waiting railcar, truck or barge, or, if need be, into a grain bin for temporary storage. (Gravity will once again be used to conduct the grain down through the bin’s bottom and into a pit, from which the grain will be elevated once more, weighed once more, and then sent by chutes or spouts into a railcar, truck or barge). Such readers may wonder why grain elevators, or any other ubiquitous and apparently ordinary invention, for that matter, would merit an entire book.[1]

But to most of my readers, the subject of grain elevators will be an unfamiliar one. Indeed, some readers may even find the very phrase “grain elevator” – not to mention the machine/building hybrid to which it refers – to be obscure, even strange. “Why would grain need to be elevated?” they might ask. “Isn’t grain shipped horizontally, along the surface of the earth, not raised above it?” Such readers might also wonder why they hadn’t heard about grain elevators before.[2]

And so, precisely because the grain elevator remains “the most important yet least acknowledged invention in the history of American agriculture,”[3] and because agriculture has been so important to America’s growth and world-wide power,[4] I am aware of the need to write this history of the American grain elevator from 1843 to 1943 with two groups of readers in mind. I would like to educate and inspire the first (the neophytes, if you will), but without frustrating or boring the second (the already-initiated). Conversely, I would like to delight and provoke the second group, but without confusing or “losing” the first.

Writing the same book for two groups of readers isn’t easy. It is possible, even likely, that being an expert in one of the many highly specialized “fields” upon which grain elevators are built and operate – agricultural production and storage, transportation and exports, prices and markets, mathematics and mechanical engineering, architecture and fireproofing, urbanism and modern life, symbolism and myths, et. al – doesn’t necessarily give someone the ability to write a good book. Indeed, despite or perhaps precisely because of his or her specialization, an expert might not be able to adequately cover those fields that weren’t his or her specialty and would thus fail to capture a glimpse of “the big picture,” which is precisely what one seeks in an instance such as this. Only an enthusiastic generalist such as myself, skilled in research and writing, could undertake a history of the grain elevator in which all of the specialized fields are called upon, but only when a detail in “the big picture” needs to be filled in and explained.

Depending on the source, there are at least two and as many as six different types of grain elevators. To one writer, “Elevators, as they are now constructed, belong to two classes: those which are simply for transferring and weighing grain (‘elevating’), and may be fixed upon land or are more often floating, and elevators which store as well as transfer grain.”[5] There would seem to be three classes here: floating elevators; land-based transfer towers; and land-based elevators that store as well as transfer grain. But, of course, this writer also neglected to mention “country elevators,” which are storage-and-transfer elevators that are built in-land along railroad tracks,[6] and “receiving elevators,” which store grain that will eventually be processed by an adjoining flourmill, feed mill, distillery, oil-extraction plant or malt-house.[7] Another source asserts that grain elevators “can be classified as either ‘country’ or ‘terminal’ elevators, with terminal elevators further categorized as inland or export types” and that both country and terminal elevators can be subdivided into “two basic types of design: traditional and modern.”[8] This perspective is echoed by a third source, but with a twist: “Grain elevators can be divided into two major functional types, ‘country’ elevator (in Canada, a ‘primary’ elevator) and terminal elevator, and three more specialized types: receiving elevator, transfer elevator and cleaning elevator.”[9] A fourth source lists four major types: “primary elevators” (aka country elevators), “transfer elevators” (transfer towers and floating elevators), “terminal elevators” (transfer and storage elevators) and “processing elevators” (aka receiving elevators).[10] A fifth source lists five types of elevators: terminal, transfer, country, “private” (aka receiving elevators), and “hospital” (designed to rehabilitate inferior or damaged grain).[11] If we put these sources together, we come up with ten distinct types: traditional country elevators (crib or balloon construction); modern country elevators; transfer towers; floating elevators; traditional in-land terminals; modern in-land terminals; traditional export terminals; modern export terminals; receiving elevators; and hospitals.

Further complications arise when one takes into account the building material(s) out of which grain elevators are constructed. Traditional country elevators are built out of wood, and modern country elevators are built out of steel or reinforced concrete. When they were still used (before 1920), both stand-alone transfer towers and floating elevators were made out of wood. Ever since the late 1890s and early 1900s, grain terminals and receiving elevators have been built out of tile, steel and/or reinforced concrete.[12] Though there are exceptions, grain elevators built out of wood tend to be small (storage capacities between 40,000 and one million bushels), while those built out of reinforced concrete tend to be immense (storage capacities between one and twenty million bushels).

Let us arrange these elevators according to their position in or along the “grain stream.” Furthest “upstream” are the country elevators and hospitals, whose owners receive grain directly from the farmers in the surrounding regions. These primary elevators then ship this grain by railroad to local receiving elevators, where the stream ends, or to “mid-stream” inland terminals, where the grain is either stored for eventual shipment to regional receiving elevators or transferred from rail to barge for transportation to ocean-port terminals, transfer towers and floaters. At these “downstream” ports, the grain is either sent to large-scale receiving elevators, where the stream ends, or to terminals and receiving elevators in other countries, where it continues on.

Except for the floaters – which transship grain from one kind of water-borne vessel to another (for example, from a lake steamer to a canal boat, or from a barge to an ocean-going tanker) – grain elevators all along the stream can receive grain from ground-based forms of transportation. The wagons, trucks and railcars simply drive up to the elevator’s receiving shed and dump their respective cargoes into pits, from which bucket-bearing conveyor belts elevate the grain to the top of the building. With the exceptions of the receiving elevators, which stand at “the end of the line,” and the floaters, grain elevators all along the stream can load grain into ground-based vehicles (especially railcars) for further transportation “downstream.” Some grain elevators – the inland and export terminals and the transfer towers – can load grain into water-borne vessels as well as into ground-based vehicles. But only the grain terminals, transfer towers, floaters and some of the receiving elevators can unload grain from ships, barges and boats. Such vessels cannot simply dock and dump their cargoes into receiving pits. Their cargo-bays or “holds” are below sea level, and so require assistance from the grain elevator. They receive it in the form of a “marine leg,” which is a bucket-bearing conveyor belt that has been attached to an apparatus that can be lowered down into a ship’s hold from the heights of a specially constructed “marine tower” and then retracted back into that tower when the “leg” is not in use.

For a variety of reasons that will be explored at great length in this book, the “marine leg” – far from being an exception or late development, as its position in/on the stream might indicate – was in fact the first type of grain elevator to be invented. To be precise, the very first mechanized (steam-powered) grain transfer and storage warehouse was built in Buffalo, New York, in 1843, by the engineer Robert Dunbar, then employed by the entrepreneur Joseph Dart. By the 1850s, the example of “the Dart Elevator” had been followed in port cities all over the Great Lakes. But it wasn’t until after the Civil War, when standardized and uninterrupted railroad service was finally established, that the first country elevators were built. And so here we have a contradiction or “wrinkle” that takes time to examine and smooth out: the first grain elevator wasn’t built “upstream,” on a farm, but “downstream,” in a port city. In other words, the history of the grain elevator takes us from the city to the farm, while the grain stream that the grain elevator helped to create moves in the opposite direction, that is, from the farm to the city.

As a result, this book has been organized in such a way that the reader is always reminded of the importance of geography, space and spatial practices. Though chronological exposition has been relied upon in most of the chapters that follow, this book isn’t so much a linear presentation of the history of the American grain elevator from 1843 to 1943, but a spatial presentation. It describes the way grain elevators “take up” or consume space and produce new space(s), and it also dramatizes or mimics these very spatial practices. Like grain bins, each chapter of this book can serve as an autonomous unit and as a part of the “larger” array. My readers can explore them in any order that they fancy.

What will these readers find, once inside these chapter-bins? Not heaps of fragments, as one finds inside each of the many chapters that compose and subdivide Walter Benjamin’s massive Arcades Project (from which I have quoted several passages), nor uninterrupted flows of narrative exposition, which is typical of most scholarly works. Instead they will find well-ordered assortments of “kernels” and interruptions. My model here is a pile of wheat: not only does it contain several different varieties of this particular grain, but also “foreign” objects (organic materials) that have been swept up and included in the course of the harvest, such as clumps of soil, dead insects, bits of other plants and so forth.[13]

To help guide the reader, I offer the following slightly enlarged iteration of the Table of Contents: Chapter 1, “Grain Power,” identifies the role of grain elevators in the international grain trade; Chapter 2, “The Metaphor of Elevation,” widens the discussion to include the symbolic dimensions of grain elevators; Chapter 3, “The Rise and Fall of the Port of Buffalo,” tells the story of the invention of the world’s first grain elevator, and the effects it had on the city (and the nation)[14] in which this first grain elevator was located; Chapter 4, “Fireproofing the Tinderbox,” describes the work that went into designing and building grain elevators that resisted fires and explosions; Chapter 5, “American Colossus,” tries to explain why the grain elevators of the 19th century were thought to be ugly, even evil; Chapter 6, “The European Modernists,” details the many mistakes that the European modernists, despite their strong interest in American grain elevators, made when they used pictures of them in their manifestoes; Chapter 7, “Reyner Banham,” appreciates and critiques Banham’s pioneering book A Concrete Atlantis; Chapter 8, “Town and Country,” describes and critiques the post-Banham tendency to focus exclusively on country elevators; and Chapter 9, “On Dwelling,” touches upon the adaptive reuse of abandoned grain elevators.

I would also like draw the reader’s attention to back of this volume, which includes an appendix that lists every grain elevator ever built in Buffalo, a bibliography of sources, a comprehensive index, and a total of seven black and white illustrations.

[1] To date, with the exception of about a dozen books of photographs of grain elevators, no comprehensive work has ever been devoted to their invention and development.

[2] Lewis Mumford, for example, doesn’t mention “grain elevator” in his long list of key technical inventions created between 1041 and 1933 C.E., and only mentions “the application of machines to sowing, reaping, threshing, instituted on a large scale with the multitude of new reapers invented at the beginning of the [twentieth] century” in the context of factors that “hastened the pace” of migration from the countryside to the cities. Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1934), pp. 192, 437-446.

[3] William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (W.W. Norton, 1992), p. 111.

[4] “The three decades following 1860 witnessed the rapid transformation of American agriculture from a primitive, pioneer, largely self-sufficient type of industry into a modern business organized on a scientific, capitalistic, commercial basis. The most significant result of this transformation was the rise of the United States to the leading place among the nations of the world in the production of grain and live stock […] Grain was the most important American product and the leading item entering into the nation’s domestic and foreign commerce. Its production and distribution therefore constitutes a subject of fundamental interest and significance in the study of American economic development.” Louis Bernard Schmidt, “The Internal Grain Trade of the United States, 1860-1890,” Iowa Journal of History and Politics (State Historical Society of Iowa, 1922), pp. 196-197.

[5] Cf. “Report on the Cereal Production of the United States,” The Tenth Census of the United States, 1880, Volume III, quoted in Louis Bernard Schmidt, “The Grain Trade of the United States, 1860-1890,” Iowa Journal of History and Politics (State Historical Society of Iowa, 1922), p. 435.

[6] According to Barbara Krupp Selyem, “The Legacy of Country Grain Elevators,” Kansas History, the Kansas State Historical Society (Spring/Summer, 2000), p. 44, country elevators can be subdivided into those that are “cribbed, a technique whereby wood was stacked horizontally, with broad sides together, interlocking at the corners log-cabin style,” and those that “were built using stud or frame, sometimes called, balloon, construction,” in which “horizontal wood bands placed every four feet vertically secured the perimeter.”

[7] Note well that in the pages and chapters that follow, the word “house” will have many different meanings and resonances. First and foremost, it will be a place in which a commercial or industrial function is executed: and so one speaks of malt-houses, warehouses, storehouses, etc. Second, it will be a structure that encloses a machine: and so I will say, for example, that the elevating mechanism is housed in a long narrow box or that the box is the housing for the elevator. Third, “house” will be a place in which people live. Fourth and last, “house” will be a metaphor or figure for the human body, a ruler’s kingdom, even human existence itself.

[8] Air Pollutants 42, Fifth Edition, Volume I, Chapter 9.9.1-1: Grain Elevators and Processes, issued by the Clearing house for Inventories & Emissions Factors, Environmental Protection Agency, February 1980. “Traditional grain elevators are typically designed so that the majority of the grain handling equipment […] are located inside a building or structure, normally referred to as a headhouse.” Built after 1980, “modern elevators […] eliminated the enclosed headhouse and gallery (bin decks)” and “employ a more open structural design, which includes locating some equipment […] outside of an enclosed structure.” But “modernity” didn’t arrive in 1980, in the form of developments that primarily concerned country elevators. One might more plausibly maintain that “modernity” arrived in the late 1890s and early 1900s, when materials other than wood (tile, steel and reinforced concrete) were first used in the construction of “fireproof” terminal and receiving elevators.

[9] Robert M. Frame III and Jeffrey A. Hess, “Saint Anthony Elevator No. 3,” Historic American Engineering Record, HAER No. MN-57, November 1992, p. 9.

[10] “Grain Elevators in Canada,” Table 9, Canadian Grain Commission, 2007.

[11] “Concrete Elevators,” Barney I. Weller, Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Convention, held at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, December 10-14, 1912, Vol. IX (National Association of Cement Users, 1917), p. 339.

[12] One of the striking things about Barbara and Bruce Selyem’s “The Legacy of Country Elevators: A Photo Essay,” Kansas History, Spring/Summer 2000, is that it includes so many pictures that show traditional country elevators built out of wood standing next to modern country elevators built of reinforced concrete. The latter are often twice the height of the former and distinctly “urban” in character.

[13] In the analogy thus created, Franco-German Marxism, utopianism and modern poetry correspond to the “foreign” objects that have gotten mixed in somehow.

horizontal conveyor-belts, continued

Caption for Figure 6: “Detail of concrete bin bottom and conveyor.”

The Standard Elevator, Buffalo, New York. Located in the building’s basement, the hopper conducts grain from the bin above it onto a horizontal conveyor-belt. Note the long corridor-like crawl-space at the lower right.

Photographed by Jet Low, 1990.
Courtesy the Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Historic American Engineering Record.

Built in 1928 and extended in 1942, the Standard Elevator can store a total of five million bushels in a structure that is completely made out of reinforced-concrete. The elevator remained in operation until just a few years ago. It would transship grain from lake vessels to rail cars destined for a nearby flourmill that was owned by Pillsbury and later by Archer-Midland Daniels.

horizontal conveyor-belts

Caption for Figure 5: "Close-up view of tripper."

At the Standard Elevator, Buffalo, New York. Located on the bin floor, the tripper (sometimes called a trimmer) sweeps grain from the horizontal conveyor-belt into the top of a grain bin through a chute. Note the great length of that conveyor-belt. Each of those small circles along the left-hand side is the capped opening to a towering grain silo made of reinforced concrete.

Photographed by Jet Low, 1990.
Courtesy the Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division,
Historic American Engineering Record.

From pages 198-199 of American Colossus:

Prior to 1868, when the pioneering Niagara Elevator was built, some grain elevators in Buffalo had horizontal conveyor-belts installed in their “basements,” that is, below their grain bins. Such conveyors brought grain dumped down on them to a boot, from which a lofting leg elevated the grain to the top of structure. It wasn’t strictly necessary to have such a conveyor – the spouts and chutes could simply send their grain directly from the bottoms of the bins to the boot – but this might involve a great tangle of spouts and chutes, if not the need for a second (or third!) lofting leg to accommodate them all.

At the Niagara Elevator, which was designed by George H. Johnston, horizontal conveyor-belts were installed both above and below the grain bins. The walls and foundations of the building were able to accommodate all that weight – the combined weight of the grain bins themselves, their contents, and two floors’ worth of machines – because they were laid down upon newly driven piles, more than a thousand of them, which secured a solid place for the Niagara on the otherwise weak, marshy banks of the Buffalo River. Like the Bennett Elevator before it, the Niagara had a solid masonry foundation and ironclad wooden walls and grain cribs. But unlike the Bennett, it could store 800,000 bushels, not 600,000.

The key feature of the steam-powered conveyor belt that ran alongside the tops of the grain bins was the “trimmer” or “tripper,” a device that deflected the flow of grain off the belt, and down and into a particular grain bin. (See figure 5.) The ingenuity, that is, the usefulness, of the trimmer lay in the fact that it could be unlocked, moved up or down the line, and then locked into position above a different grain bin. This meant that the number of big turn-heads and spouts previously needed to conduct the grain down from the garner and scales in the marine tower to the tops of the bins could now be drastically reduced; the whole procedure could be simplified. Same thing for the basement of the elevator, even though the trimmer didn’t play a part down there: thanks to the steam-powered conveyor belt, the number of spouts and chutes leading down from the bins to the boot of the lofting leg could be reduced. The cramped space of such basements could now be “freed up.” But “freed up” spaces came with a cost: conveyor belts exposed more grain to the air, and thus created more fugitive grain dust than did the spouts, unwieldy though they were.

As a result of the lateral “reach” of the new conveyor-belts, elevator operators and designers began to re-conceptualize the way that grain bins might be organized. Instead of locating the bins close to or even around the spouts that came down from the marine tower – which was a spatial practice that tended to make and keep the elevators’ main houses tall and boxy (sometimes even round) – the designers began to array the bins in long straight rows that led away from the marine tower. This meant that large-scale elevators no longer needed to be centralized like the Watson or oriented along conflicting lines, as in the case of the Bennett Elevator (one line ran from the marine tower at the Evans Slip side of the elevator to the other end of the building, i.e., along the Buffalo River, while another line ran from the boiler room and the primary marine tower to the Buffalo River). New elevators could now be built in a long, narrow and tall row, perpendicularly to the river, which not only “freed up” space along the wharf, but also created space for the railroads to lay down little feeders that led to their trunk lines. These new elevators could not only transship grain from lake to canal, but from lake to rail, as well.