Grain Elevator 5
Grain Elevator 5 : History: More farmers meant more prairies turned into farmlands, which in turn meant increased grain production, which of course meant that more grain elevators would have to be built in places like Toledo, Buffalo and Brooklyn (and Cleveland, Chicago and Duluth). It was precisely through this "feedback loop" of productivity set in motion by the invention of the grain elevator that America itself became an agricultural and economic colossus on the world stage: the planet's single largest producer of wheat, corn, oats and rice, a distinction it claims to this day. In the early Twentieth Century, there was concern about monopolistic practices in the grain elevator industry, leading to testimony before the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1906. This led to several grain elevators being burned down in Nebraska, allegedly in protest. Today, grain elevators are a common sight in the grain-growing areas of the world, such as the North American prairies. Larger terminal elevators are found at distribution centers, such as Chicago and Thunder Bay, Ontario, where grain is sent for processing, or loaded aboard trains or ships to go further afield. Buffalo, New York, the world's largest grain port from the 1850s until the first half of the 20th century, once had the nation's largest capacity for the storage of grain in over thirty concrete grain elevators located along the inner and outer harbors. Many of those that remain are presently idle, but a new ethanol plant started in 2007 will use some of the elevators to store corn. In the early 20th century, Buffalo's grain elevators inspired modernist architects such as Le Corbusier, who exclaimed, "The first fruits of the new age!" when he first saw them. Buffalo's grain elevators have been documented for the Historic American Engineering Record and added to the National Register of Historic Places
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