New! Improved! Updated!

We are thrilled to announce that Colossal Books has published a brand-new edition of William J. Brown's American Colossus: the Grain Elevator 1843-1942. First published in 2009, American Colossus remains the only book-length history of the invention, development and widespread adoption of the mechanized grain elevator in Buffalo, NY, and elsewhere, starting in 1843.

This new edition includes 16 new pictures and updates. It is also shorter and cheaper!

Buy a copy here.

David W. Tarbet's "Grain Dust Dreams"

Shock and dismay!

Another bad book about grain elevators has been published!

Under the heading “Acknowledgements,” David W. Tarbet, the author of Grain Dust Dreams (SUNY Press, 2015), says,

I have depended on others who have written about Buffalo and its elevators. Reyner Banham’s A Concrete Atlantis (1986) is the classic book on the architecture of Buffalo elevators. It has inspired others to think and write about the subject, including William J. Brown in his book American Colossus: The Grain Elevator, 1843 to 1943 (2009) and all of the contributors to Reconsidering Concrete Atlantis: Buffalo Grain Elevators, edited by Lynda H. Schneekloth (2006). Francis Kowsky has written about, and lectured on, the history of grain elevators in Buffalo. I thank “Frank” Kowsky, Lynda Schneekloth, Rick Smith, Jim Watkins, and all of the others who took time to talk to me about the Buffalo elevators. I should also acknowledge Timothy Bohen’s book Against the Grain (2012) for teaching me about ‘scoopers’ and the people of Buffalo’s First Ward.

In case anyone is interested, Mr. Tarbet never contacted either William J. Brown or Colossal Books, the publisher of American Colossus: The Grain Elevator. No matter. One would think from the statements above that the author of Grain Dust Dreams made no use of the contents of that book, which was, it appears, simply one of those “inspired” by Reyner Banham’s book. This impression is confirmed by chapter 8 of Tarbet’s book, which either mentions or contains interviews with prominent authorities in the field: William Clarkson, Reyner Banham, Rick Smith, Jim Watkins and Lynda Schneekloth. William J. Brown is not mentioned.

But when one reads the book itself, one finds that Mr. Tarbet – whose book includes neither footnotes nor a bibliography – has in fact made extensive and completely unacknowledged use of Mr. Brown’s book. For example, American Colossus is certainly the source of Mr. Tarbet’s assertion that “In 1847, grain elevators were built in Toledo, Ohio, and Brooklyn, New York” (compare pp. 9-10 in Grain Dust Dreams and p. 121 in American Colossus). This failure to properly cite Mr. Brown’s work is compounded by the fact that Mr. Tarbet fails to mention that these pioneering grain elevators were in fact “floaters” (boats that had grain elevators installed upon them), nor that floaters were crucial to the functioning and development of the grain trade all through the 19^th century. But in comparison to the deprivation of a scholar of proper credit for his work, the deprivation of one’s readers of the beauty and mystery of the subject at hand – Mr. Tarbet also fails to inform his readers that, after the 1880s, many elevators in Buffalo had “loose legs” (buildings on wheels!) – is a much more serious matter.

A truly impoverished work, riddled with factual errors, misunderstandings, and self-contradictions, and completely uncritical of the ideas relayed to its author by various “official” sources (politicians, academics and businessmen), Grain Dust Dreams, for example, claims that in 1828 “every bushel of bulk grain” was shipped “one barrel at a time” and that the “manual method of unloading grain” was “barrel by barrel,” when the facts are that only flour was shipped in barrels; grain was shipped in sealed burlap sacks; and “bulk grain” wasn’t shipped until after grain elevators had been built in the 1840s, because only they could accommodate – they were in fact built to accommodate – grain shipped in bulk.

Grain Dust Dreams (GDD) also minimizes the role of the engineer, designer and grain-elevator builder Robert Dunbar, whose “engineering talent” was somehow “recognized” by Joseph Dart, the ostensible creator of the pioneering Dart Elevator (p. 8). According to Mr. Tarbet, it was Dart who “engaged” Dunbar in “his [Dart’s] elevator-building project” (ibid). But before entering the grain business, which he left in the 1850s, Joseph Dart was a hat salesman. Before meeting Dart, Robert Dunbar had already built flourmills and elevators in Black Rock, New York (not mentioned by Mr. Tarbet; cf. American Colossus, pp. 109-110), and, afterwards, Dunbar went on to design and built grain elevators (including the miraculous “loose legs” mentioned above) for the rest of his life.

GDD insists on saying like things like “the elevator [built in 1891 by the Canadian Pacific railway] looked very much like Dart’s elevator in Buffalo” (p. 15) and “Dart’s elevator functioned like a terminal elevator but looked like a larger version of a country elevator” (p. 19), when, in point of fact, there are no contemporary images of the Dart Elevator in the 1840s, only “reconstructions” and “artists’ renderings” of what it might have looked like.

GDD insists that a terminal elevator in Thunder Bay “wasn’t built to hold grain, but to send it on” (p. 18), which is such a stupid remark that even its author contradicts it several times: “if you have to store large amounts of grain,” there are “rows of concrete bins” (p. 28); “usually, the stored grain will be held in its bin until the time comes to ship it” (p. 41); and “Whitebox is a commodities futures company that buys and holds grain for future sale when the markets are right” (p. 79). Yes, indeed: this is why the Dart Elevator’s official name was the Dart Transshipping and Storage Warehouse. But “transshipping” is a word that doesn’t appear anywhere in Mr. Tarbet’s book, nor does an explanation of how grain futures work.

GDD insists (way too strenuously) that the Grand Trunk Pacific Elevator built between 1908 and 1910 in Thunder Bay was “the apotheosis of concrete elevator building” (p. 22), “a fully realized model for all elevators in the future” (p. 23) and “the finished form of the modern concrete elevator and the model of all elevators to come” (p. 25). But scholars – real scholars, I mean: people like Robert M. Frame III – have shown that the years between 1906 and 1912 represented a period in which reinforced concrete was mastered, and the years 1912 to 1928 a period in which this building material was widely accepted. While the Grand Trunk Pacific Elevator was indeed a significant elevator, it certainly didn’t end or exhaust the on-going experimentation with reinforced concrete as a building material in elevator construction, nor was it the “model” for “all” the elevators built between 1912 and 1928, because, on the one hand, elevators are not designed and built according to reproducible “models” but very particular needs and circumstances in which “models” are useless and, on the other hand, an elevator built during the period of widespread acceptance (the Marine A in Buffalo, for example, built in 1925) would make a better example of the “apotheosis” of grain elevators built out of concrete.

But Mr. Tarbet isn’t very interested in the Marine A. He tells us that Beth Tauke, “the associate dean of the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of Buffalo and an enthusiast for the preservation of the Buffalo grain elevators,” “knows Marine A well and has brought her students and enthusiasts to the elevator many times,” but relays none of the information presumably relayed by Dean Tauke to her students and fellow enthusiasts. We don’t find out who designed it, who built it, when it was built, why it was built, or how long it operated. Mr. Tarbet states that its “walls were dotted with graffiti images and slogans by urban adventurers who had visited after the elevator had been abandoned” (p. 86), without saying anything specific about those “images and slogans” or without imagining that some of those “images” (for example: the very accurate and colorful chalk drawing of the Standard Elevator, built in 1928 across the creek from the Marine A) might have been created by the people who worked there while the elevator was still in operation.

Tired of this list of embarrassments? I am, too. And so, let me conclude this “review” with something Mr. Tarbet says: “It is easy to do a roll call of elevators that have disappeared from the landscapes of Buffalo and Thunder Bay” (p. 75). Yes, it is easy to find a list of all the elevators ever built in Buffalo (those that have disappeared, as well as those that still stand), but not in Grain Dust Dreams, which contains no such list. But there’s one in American Colossus (pp. 412-416) and nowhere else.

William J. Brown

6 August 2015

P.S. Contacted via Facebook, Mr. Tarbet was sent the following message:

We have been sent a copy of your book Grain Dust Dreams. We note that, though you rather offhandedly mention our title, William J. Brown, American Colossus: the Grain Elevator 1843-1943 (Colossal Books, 2009), your book is full of items that you obviously took from it – they appear nowhere else in the literature. The reference to Wilhelm Worringer, for example. We just can’t understand why you would do such a thing, or why your editors and publishers would allow you to do it, which suggests that you did this research yourself, instead of finding it in a book that you mention but don’t properly credit.

His response was as follows.

William Brown’s book American Colossus is a fine book and I recommend it to serious students of grain elevators. Grain Dust Dreams may seem like elevator-light beside it. It is a trade book without footnotes. Perhaps because it is published by a university press you imagined it was more academic. It isn’t and wasn’t meant to be. Brown’s book is included in my acknowledgments and I hope others will find their way to it from there. I wish the book continued success.

Not satisfied with this, we told him,

These are fine sentiments, and I as the book’s publisher certainly thank you for them, but I don’t believe that they answer the objections being raised. Your book is certainly a work of nonfiction, and it mostly relates historical facts and events. The absence of both footnotes and a bibliography in such a work is a real puzzle, especially in a book from SUNY Press. (Last time I checked, SUNY referred to a university system.). In the absence of these basic features of scholarly research and plausible historical exposition, greater attention is brought to bear on the acknowledgements, which in point of fact only mentions Brown’s book as one of two “inspired” by Reyner Banham but not as one of the works you personally consulted for ideas and facts. The Worringer mention as it turns out is not the best example of you passing Brown’s work off as your own: the best example is your reference to the elevators built in 1847 in Toledo and Brooklyn, which are facts that appear nowhere else in the literature than Brown’s book. Your acknowledgements refer to people “who took time to talk to me about the Buffalo elevators.” But the absence of Brown from this group of people was YOUR doing, not his. You never tried to contact him.

At that point, for some strange reason, Mr. Tarbet stopped responding and, in fact, broke off the connection.

Sales figures to date

American Colossus: the Grain Elevator 1843 to 1943 was published in February 2009. Over the course of the last four years, it has sold a total of 208 copies. That's approximately five copies per month! We are pleased.

Many thanks to all the people who bought a copy.

New cover for the book. Photo by Orrin Bram Pava; design by Susan J. Hull.

(Photo depicts the American Elevator, built in Buffalo, NY, 1906.)

Accident destroys significant marine tower in Buffalo

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

(Photo courtesy WIVB.)

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

(Photo courtesy WIVB.)

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

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

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

Nice mention

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

Sales figures to date

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

Talk at Great Lakes GEAPS annual educational convention

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

Wood Elevator in Cleveland: Follow-Up

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

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

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

Sales to date

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

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

Small Book Fair in Cincinnati

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

Wood grain elevator in Cleveland, Ohio

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

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

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

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

(All photos by Jim Jackson.)

Curious email from Lulu

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

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

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

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

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

One hundred copies sold so far

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

GrainNet publishes a notice about my book

Notice in GrainNet 16 May 2010.

Thanks, Mark Avery! It looks great.

The Standard Elevator

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(All photos 1992 by Orrin Pava.)

The tile bins at the old Washburn-Crosby Elevator

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

The American Elevator

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

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

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

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

The Concrete Central Elevator

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

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

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

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

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

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

Horn Buttons at the Superior Elevator

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

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

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

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

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

Indeed, it is repeated over and over again.

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

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

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