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.)

Which grain elevator is this?

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

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

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

The Marine "A"

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

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

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

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

The Wheeler Elevator (aka Agway/GLF)

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

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

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

The H&O Oats Grain Elevator

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

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

The Wollenberg Grain Elevator and Feed Mill

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

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

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

Grain dust (and cobwebs) cover the machinery inside.

Piles of raw grain dumped on the floor.

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

Spouts in the ceiling.

Good news, everybody!

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

The Superior Elevator in Buffalo, New York

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