Site of the Great Eastern Elevator (Buffalo, New York)

 historical layer / disappeared object, grain elevator / grain silos

The original Eastern Elevator was a wooden grain elevator with two marine legs built in 1895 on this location at the tip of Kelly's Island. Sold by its owners to the American Linseed Oil Company in June 1900, the elevator was fully loaded with over $400,000 worth of grain when it suffered a grain dust explosion and fire on the night of July 23rd, 1900. The fire consumed the entire structure and its contents, costing its new owners and their insurers some $750,000, which quickly folded their enterprise.

After the site of the former elevator was cleared of debris, the highly valuable land was quickly purchased by the Great Eastern Elevator Company, who contracted the architecture firm of Harry R. Wait to design a pioneering steel-binned grain elevator. Constructed by the Steel Storage and Elevator Construction Company and the Indiana Bridge Company, the Great Eastern Elevator was completed in 1901 and featured 68 separate steel tanks which could store 2.5 million bushels of grain. The elevator was supplied primarily by lake freighters, and had two marine legs to offload vessels alongside the elevators Buffalo River dock.

The Great Eastern Elevator Co briefly formed a railroad enterprise which sought to utilize available trackage alongside the property to distribute their grain cargo, hoping to build a rail and grain empire in the Northeastern United States. Finding stiff competition in this field, within ten years the Great Eastern Railroad had ceased its operations, choosing to operate its highly profitable elevator instead and supply already-existing rail networks.

Great Eastern operated their elevator successfully for thirty years before the Great Depression put the company in dire financial straits, allowing its purchase by the multi-national grain conglomerate Cargill in 1936. Cargill elected to retain the Great Eastern name on their new facility, and operated it through the Second World War before they idled the facility in 1947. With the Great Eastern elevator in need of major upkeep and repairs, Cargill chose to focus their operations at their Superior and Pool elevators in Buffalo rather than the Great Eastern, and in the winter of 1948 the Great Eastern was demolished.

Today the former site of the Great Eastern Elevator is part of the General Mills facility, and is used for packaging and loading of tractor trailers.

american-colossus.blogspot.com/2009/05/great-eastern.ht...