Wollenberg Grain and Seed Elevator - Table of
Contents
Significance - Wollenberg Grain and Seed Elevator
133 Goodyear Avenue, Buffalo, NY
Status: National Register of
Historic Places
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Wollenberg Grain and Seed Elevator |
Wollenberg Grain and Seed Elevator |
Kellogg A and B |
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Kellogg Concrete Elevator |
The Wollenberg Grain and Seed Elevator is architecturally and historically significant as the sole surviving example of a wooden or so-called country style elevator in Buffalo.
It is part of the Buffalo Grain Elevator Multiple Property nomination about the important role of Buffalo in the history of the American grain trade industry and as the place where the grain elevator was invented.
Historical anomaly
Although dating from the early twentieth century, the Wollenberg Elevator was constructed on the framing system of the earliest grain elevators built along the Buffalo waterfront beginning in the 1840s. Later in the nineteenth century, tile and steel replaced wood as the material from whichever larger elevators were erected along the shores of the Buffalo harbor. By the time the Wollenberg was actually put up in 1912, the grain storage elevator had reached its distinctive form of multiple cylindrical silos built of reinforced concrete. The fact that the Wollenberg actually incorporates wood salvaged from a dismantled wooden waterfront elevator adds to its historical interest and significance.
Original owners
Louis and John Wollenberg, merchants in coal and wood, built the Wollenberg Elevator in 1912 for their new grain and seed business.
"Country style" Design
The design and construction of the Wollenberg Elevator descends from the first grain elevator that Joseph Dart erected in Buffalo in 1842 and is representative of the wooden "country style" elevator as described by historian Lisa Mahar-Keplinger in her book Grain Elevators. Both in form and in size, the Buffalo structure resembles the wooden elevators with rectangular or square bins that were built along numerous rail lines in the Midwest in the early twentieth century. Like the Wollenberg, these local grain storage facilities were accessed by rail and by truck rather than by water, as were most of Buffalo's mammoth concrete terminal elevators. With a storage capacity of only 25,000 bushels, the Wollenberg was never in the league of its contemporaries on the Buffalo waterfront.
Mahar-Keplinger describes two types of wooden elevators built in the rural United States:
- those erected with a balloon frame or
- those built according to crib-form construction.
The latter (used by Dart) is more structurally secure than the former and is the method which the C.H.A. Wannenwetsch engineers who built the Wollenberg employed. In this system, overlapping 2" x 6" timbers are spiked laterally and form continuous runs into adjacent bins.
Fire Potential
But like all wooden elevators, the Wollenberg was at risk from fire. The Wollenberg was built with electrically operated equipment to eliminate the use of steam engines, sparks from which were notorious for starting fatal elevator conflagrations. In addition, the exterior was covered with corrugated sheet iron to protect the structure from sparks and hot cinders thrown from passing steam locomotives.
Source of wood for Wollenberg
One of the last-to-be-built wooden elevators to be built on the Buffalo waterfront, Kellogg A Elevator, provided a significant portion of the timber used in building the Wollenberg Elevator. Together with Kellogg B, Kellogg A straddled either side of the Coatsworth Slip. Both of these elevators had been built in the 1890s. Kellogg B, which started life as the Coatsworth Elevator, had a storage capacity of 650,000 bushels; Kellogg A could handle 600,000 bushels.
In 1910, Kellogg B was demolished and replaced by a concrete elevator (which is still in use) and Kellogg B came down to accommodate the expansion of the Spencer Kellogg linseed and oil facility. The wood from Kellogg A was then recycled two years later in the Wollenberg Elevator. Although by 1912 concrete had become the accepted material for large grain elevators, the availability of a vast amount of second-hand timber and the lower cost of wooden construction would have offset, for such a modest structure, the higher insurance rates levied on fire-prone timber elevators.
Commercial Use
The elevator and attached mill and store served together as a storage and processing facility for the Wollenberg brothers for forty years. During this time, various grain products were mixed and bagged and sold at the site. In 1952, one Fred Babin bought the facility and used it to mix and process birdseed and pet food which were sold on both the wholesale and retail markets. The Wollenberg Elevator was used in this way until 1987 when the proliferation of commercially packaged birdseed eliminated the local demand for the product and the business closed.
Present Owner
The Wollenberg facility was abandoned after closing and eventually became the property of the City of Buffalo. In recent years, the abandoned structure has lost part of its roof and is now accessible to anyone seeking entry. In spite of this situation, the interior remains in remarkably good condition.
Unique Significance
While grain elevators in Buffalo were not typically built in this fashion during the early part of the twentieth century, the rectangular wooden crib bins of the Wollenberg Elevator are representative of the storage bins in use in nineteenth-century wooden waterfront elevators. Its traditional building techniques predate the development of the tile, steel, and concrete used in the other elevators listed in the Buffalo Grain Elevator Multiple Property Nomination. Although Buffalo's early wooden elevators were of much greater size than the Wollenberg, their method of construction was the same as employed by the Wollenberg's builders. And the nineteenth-century wooden members from an earlier elevator in the Wollenberg Elevator may be the sole existing tangible remains of the great wooden elevators that once crowded the shores of the Buffalo River and the City Ship Canal.
-- Source of text: 2003 National Register of Historic Places Nomination
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