The Eastern States Elevator

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.