Grain Elevators - As They Were (Part Three)

The Great Northern Elevator on the Busy City Ship Canal Around 1900

BUFFALO'S VAST CANONS OF COMMERCE

A SCENE IN THE GREATEST GRAIN ELEVATOR DISTRICT ON EARTH -

HOW THE GRAIN IS HANDLED - THE WORK OF THE SCOOPER DESCRIBED -

STUNNING FIGURES OF BUFFALO'S STORAGE AND TRANS-SHIPMENT CAPACITY

Buffalo Morning Express May 14, 1899 (continued)

   These new elevators are of steel, and their bins are great steel cylinders. The Great Northern and the Electric Elevators, in Buffalo are of this new type. In the Great Northern the bins stand upon pillars, in the Electric they stand upon the floor.  These bins vary in size, but run up to 80,000 bushels in the Great Northern and 100,000 in the Electric. The ordinary capacity of wooden bins is about 5,000. 

Great Northern Under Construction 1897

   To comprehend the increase in the size of elevators, compare Joseph Darts with it's 55,000 bushels, and the Great Northern with it's 3,000,000 bushels. The Great Northern is 120 feet wide and about 400 feet long, and so covers more than an acre.  The sides are 102 feet high.  From the center of the building rises a cupola 40 feet wide.  The distance from the ground to the bottom of this cupola is 116 feet and to the top of the cupola 164 feet. In this Great Northern Elevator Elevator could be stored the corn or oats from more than 100,000 acres of land, or the wheat from more than 200,000 acres.  In the early days of steam it was believed that 800 bushels of grain was all that could be lifted and correctly measured in one day.  At this rate it would take ten years to fill the Great Northern. Fortunately for the Great Northern the rate is much faster now. Using it's three marine legs the Great Northern can handle about 30,000 bushels an hour under actual working conditions. In the Great Northern Elevator, as in other modern elevators, only one leg is stationary. The other two can be moved to suit the hatchways, so shall all three can be set at work together on the same vessel.  

The Electric Elevator on Childs Street - 1897

  (Editor) 'What the reporter fails to make note of, is the elevator's use of electricity instead of the usual steam power, which is really what took it to a new level as far as modern grain elevators were concerned. The Great Northern and the Electric were the first two electrically powered grain elevators in the world.'

   During the last two weeks the public has heard a great deal about the scoopers. These scoopers refused to go to work for the general contractor for grain handling, declaring in substance that they did not want to work for a middleman for various reasons, but wished to be employed directly by the Lake Carriers Association and the Western Elevating Company. Their refusal to work tied up work on the grain vessels, the river filled with boats waiting to be unloaded, and the discharge of cargoes was very slow. There are those who do not know what the work of the scoopers is and a description will be of interest.

Scoopers Maneuvering The Shovel into Position

  The perfecting of elevator machinery has not been able to do away with the labor of grain shoveling. The elevator leg moves freely up and down and descends into the hold as fast as the level of grain sinks. It cannot be moved sidewise, however, it must remain in the same position in the hatchway, and hence there is a need for shoveling the grain from underneath the decks, to where the leg can reach it. Mechanical ingenuity have perfected steam shovels worked by ropes in the elevator, which pass down the center of the hold, carrying the grain along to the elevator leg. But the grain on the sides cannot be reached by the shovels, so men have to be stationed in the hold to shovel or scoop the grain in front of the steam shovels, and to trim the boat by evening up it's diminishing cargo.

Scoopers Moving the Grain To The Marine Leg
With Power Shovels Rigged into The Marine Tower

    These men who thus scoop the grain out to where the machine shovels can get it, are the "Scoopers". The Rev. Mr. Albertson, a Buffalo pastor, said about them the other day: "These men are enclosed in almost air-tight compartments and they labor hard in a cloud of dust amid intense heat and I am not surprised at the claim they make that no man can stand it many years. The fact is that on land there is no other occupation that more closely resembles the conditions surrounding the stokers on a man-o-war."

Power Shovels At Work

  Buffalo has become an elevator city because it is at the end of lake navigation. The grain coming down by boat from the western shipping points, had to be unloaded here and put on to railroad cars and canalboats. Elevators were the natural product of these conditions. They accomplish mechanically and cheaply the work of transfer.  Most of the big elevators have water on one front and railroad tracks on another, and so form a direct connecting link between water transportation and land transportation. Not all are so provided however; there is the big Watson Elevator, for instance, with it's capacity of 600,000 bushels, without rail connection. Years ago the canal did most of the carrying; but as the railroad rates fell, the railroads got an increasing share of the business. And last year out of 222,000,000 bushels of grain exported, the railroads carried about 180,000,000.

Watson Elevator, On It's Own Island, Could
Transfer Only to Canal Boats

   The report of the Buffalo Merchants Exchange for 1898 shows a total of 40 elevators, six transfer towers, and 8 floating elevators (which are really floating towers, since they have no storage capacity). The capacity of the 40 elevators was put at 20,960,000 bushels with one of the transfer towers credited with a capacity of 40,000 bushels. There are facilities for receiving from lake vessels and railroads and transporting to canalboats and cars daily, 5,500,000 bushels from the 54 elevators, transfers and floaters.
   Buffalo stands first in the world in the application and use of marine elevating machinery. No port can rival it in the quantity of grain elevated from vessels, or in the capacity to handle this vessel grain.  Against our dozens of marine elevators, no city up the lakes has more than two or three. Here is Buffalo's pre-eminence; it is the greatest port in the world for the transfer of grain from boat to shore.

Floating Elevator Transferring Grain From
Small Vessel to Larger One

Editors Note: Buffalo, in short, was the largest grain transfer port in the world and later the largest flour milling center in the world for many decades. In the last part of the 19th century Buffalo was the 4th largest port in the world in terms of tonnage! Not bad for a City whose lake is frozen over 2-3 months out of the year.  The greatest grain flow in the world was down the Great Lakes from Minnesota to Buffalo and then transferring to seaboard for export.  Buffalo's Grain Elevators have literally fed the world! We were very proud of them back then, and we should be equally proud of the roll they played now, from a historical sense, and should take full advantage of that incredible part of our history in planning waterfront attractions today. A number of the elevators along our waterfront are still operating, and milling operations are still going strong at General Mills and the ADM (Pillsbury) plant on Ganson Street. In fact the old Conagra (Lake & Rail) Elevator on Childs Street has reopened for grain storage in the last couple of years.

     Like it or not, this is Buffalo's Heritage, It's History, It's Legacy to the world! We can not let waterfront planning go on without commemorating and showing off this legacy. Some time in the last few months(spring 2012) a marker on the new Commercial Slip Bridge celebrating Joseph Dart and the first Grain Elevator in the world, was removed and replaced with something else! Excuse Me! Joseph Dart(grain elevator) and Samuel Wilkeson, who built our first harbor, should not only have markers celebrating their achievements, there should be statues in their honor! The Dart Elevator should be rebuilt somewhere in Canalside and showcased with a 19th century sail vessel unloading cargo docked next to it, where people could go in and relive that early technology and the life of  the 1840's dockworker. That is the kind of attractions worthy of re-developement. So much money being thrown around in Canalside and so much ignorance of the true significance of that area.

Thank You
Jerry M. Malloy

Dart Street, So Who Was Joseph Dart?

GRAIN SCOOPERS PHOTO PAGE

Grain Elevators - As They Were (Part Two)

From L to R - Lake Erie, City Ship Canal, Peck Slip, Buffalo River - Connecting Terminal Elevator (left)
Lyons Elevator (Center), Wilkeson (right 2 towers) C.J. Wells (far right)  (click photo to enlarge)

Buffalo Morning Express May 14, 1899 (continued)
   The elevators are of two kinds: those which store the grain and those which merely transfer it directly from lake vessels to canal boat or car.  The storage elevators are in principle all alike.  Their vast enclosure is given up to huge bins for the storing of grain; machinery for the weighing and moving of grain; in some cases apparatus for cleaning or drying grain; and steam engines to furnish motive power for the whole. The transfer towers have merely the machinery for transferring the grain; they perform an office like that of moveable cranes.   The elevators as already mentioned, might be compared to huge mosquitos.  

Marine "Leg" at Watson Elevator - Union & Bennett
Elevators in Back L to R

    They plunge a bill-like "leg" (marine leg-Ed.) into the vessels to extract the grain. The old elevators had one leg, the newer ones have two or three.  These legs play within a narrow slit, and can be moved up and down so as to be lowered into the holds of steamers. The leg of an elevator contains an endless belt studded at short intervals by cups or buckets.  The leg is thrust a little distance into the grain in the hold of a boat; the belt begins to turn, and the cups scoop up the grain and carry it into the building. First the grain goes into bins where it is weighed in bulk, then it is carried to other bins for storage. The main purpose of the Buffalo elevators is to take the grain from lake vessels and put it into railroad cars or canalboats for transportation to the seaboard.  Many of the elevators can unload into either cars or canalboats, some into canalboats alone.  The apparatus for emptying the grain from the bin into the canalboat or car is very simple.  The grain runs by its own weight from the bin overhead through a tube or chute into the car or boat below.

City Ship Canal Looking North From the Frontier Elevator - Center of Picture Small "Pointed" Structure
is a Transfer Tower, no Storage Capacity - Connecting Terminal Elevator on Left - Lyon Elevator on
 right - Watson Elevator in background with cupola

Joseph Dart

  In the handling of grain, as in other employments of man, there has been a gradual development of machinery and a corresponding lessoning of the proportion of human labor. All grain was once taken from the holds of vessels by the slow process of shoveling it into barrels, hoisting it by a tackle, weighing it in a hopper and scales swung over the hatchway of the craft, and carrying it into the warehouse on men's shoulders. Joseph Dart was the man who put an end to this slow and vexatious method, and on the wharves of Buffalo he erected the first steam storage and transfer elevator in the world. He built this elevator in 1842-43 on the Banks of the Buffalo River at it's junction with the Evans Ship Canal, where later rose the big Bennett Elevator.  In it he successfully applied the old elevator and conveyor principle which had been in use for half a century in the mills. The Dart Elevator had at first a capacity of but 55,000 bushels, but this was doubled three years afterward. In it's first year it unloaded about 230,000 bushels of grain.
   From this little Dart Elevator have sprung

Model of Dart Elevator

the elevators of today. There have been a gradual growth in size, and an improvement of methods, but the principle remains the same as 50 years ago. (same principle used till 2003-Ed.) The Dart Elevator was burned in 1862 or 1863, and fire has destroyed many of it's descendants, yet some of the most active elevators of today date from the 60's. Most of the elevators have wooden bins, and all, or nearly all, are covered alike with corrugated iron. The newest elevators differ, however, from the old ones, much as the modern steel-frame office buildings differ from the old style office buildings.  The new elevators are of steel, and their bins are great steel cylinders. 

End of Part Two,

PART 3 - The steel elevators and Grain Shovelers (Scoopers) 

GRAIN SCOOPERS PHOTO PAGE

The Historic Buffalo River Tour 2018

Grain Elevators - As They Were (Part One)

Looking North on Buffalo River From Entrance to Clark & Skinner Canal 
Near Michigan Ave.

Buffalo Morning Express May 14, 1899

    Drawing near Buffalo upon the deck of a lake steamer, or looking across the broad bay toward the city from the south shore, you see a low strand, from which spring a great row of gigantic buildings which loom up out of all proportion to the narrow base upon which they stand.  In the evening sunlight which falls upon their faces, they are a reddish brown, the smokey air of Buffalo softens their outlines, and their few small windows twinkle. They look fantastic and unreal! It appears hardly credible that such mighty masses, if substantial fabrics, could be supported upon such a shallow crust of earth.  They seem like monstrous mushroom growths, sprung in a moment from the waters edge, and ready as suddenly again to disappear.

Wilkeson & C.J. Wells Elevators at Foot of 
Washington & Indiana Sts. Elevator on left is the
 Lyons on Peck Slip

   These giant structures are the elevators of Buffalo.  As the boat passes up the Buffalo River on its way to the wharf, you get a closer view of them.  There are few places on earth where you can find a sight to equal it.  Huddling on the sides of the river, and on the slips and canals off to the side, are the elevators.  The banks of the stream are low and alluvial and are protected, strengthened by rows of piling. From these timbers spring abruptly the immense structures, towering up 100 or 150 feet-great, uncouth, brown or grey masses, bordering and over hanging the stream like castles!  Each one stands by itself; if they were built continuously, to pass along them would be like threading a canyon of a Western river.  Their most striking characteristic is their soaring height. Broad as they are upon the earth, it is the length of their perpendicular lines that most impresses the eye.  There is nothing else with which the elevators can be compared, because there is nothing else exactly like them.    

   Here is a mighty aggregation of central body and buttresses. Adjoining it is a single clear cut tower bulging out in middle like a morel. In all or nearly all, an excrescence juts over the water, and from this hangs the great bill or "leg", which the elevator, like a mosquito, plunges into the vessels to suck up their grain.  Most of the elevators bear at their highest peak, a big water tank, for fire is their deadliest enemy.  The river winds this way and that, but the elevators follow it wherever it goes.  Between them, up and down, passes a continual procession of tugs, passenger steamers, propellers, barges and steam launches, and the air resounds day and night, with the chug of the steam engines, the sharp squeal of pilots' signals and the hoarse bellow of propeller whistles.

Unloading at the Eastern Elevator,  Buffalo NY

End of Part One 
  

PART TWO (Click Here)

Part Three

GRAIN SCOOPERS PHOTO PAGE