Michael Horowitz's interior photos of Buffalo's grain elevators - including these of the Lake and Rail - are on display through January 25, 2009.

BECHS hosts second part of photo exhibit exploring the grain elevators

Currently on view at the Buffalo Erie County Historical Society (BECHS) is the second half of New York City-based photographer Michael Horowitz’s exhibit Cathedrals of Industry: Grain Elevators of Buffalo.

Horowitz’s images are not the traditional exterior shots. Instead his 19 photographs give us an intimate look inside the waterfront behemoths. These industrial giants once inspired modernists such as Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius, and one can see how the utilitarian function of these buildings came to inspire the spare minimalism of future architects.

Horowitz’s color images capture the vacant grain elevators rusting and covered in dust and graffiti, vandals having left their mark. Inside Concrete Central, paintball splashes cover the walls. Active elevators are lit up and in motion. He conveys the subtleties of decay in closeups of conveyor belts, cogs, pulleys, and other machinery. Unexpected is the almost abstract appearance of some of the structures, row upon row of bins, shafts and buckets.

Until the invention of the grain elevator, grain was brought in by horse and cart or on vessels and had to be quickly shipped out to avoid rot. With the advent of the grain elevator, grain could be measured and safely stored. The enormous tubes are the elevators, by which bushels of grain are hauled upward along a system of conveyor belts to the top. One of Horowitz’s photographs shows a scalping room, where impurities such as rocks and clumps of dirt were removed from the grain. Another photograph shows large chutes, four to five stories tall.

Shovels made of non-sparking metals weighing well over 100 pounds were affixed on a block and tackle, manipulated by grain scoopers, who would convey the grain up to the top of a bin.

A dozen men could run the entire operation of a grain elevator. They circulated on “man-lifts,” vertical conveyor belts in constant motion which had nothing but a handle and a step. Workers grabbed a handle and stepped on or off wherever needed. The mechanism, according to Horowitz, “was like a giant amusement park ride.”

An photograph of a feed floor shows the basement of one of the buildings where the grain had been weighed and was ready to be loaded onto trucks and rail cars.

Invented in 1842 by Joseph Dart, the grain elevators were originally made of wood and powered by steam engines. Because of the clouds of grain dust kicked up, a random spark could cause an explosion and many burnt down.

In 1897, the Great Northern elevator was constructed of steel tubes and brick. As an additional safety measure, it was powered by electricity rather than steam. Attesting to its sturdiness, it still stands today, although no longer in use.

Later, the invention of poured concrete enabled the construction of Concrete Central in 1915.

Inside these buildings, Horowitz says, “The smell of rotting wheat was overpowering, like molasses on steroids.”

Horowitz’s access to the properties varied, but his insatiable curiosity for Buffalo’s industrial architecture wouldn’t be denied. Horowitz was granted permission to enter the Lake and Rail elevators, which are still operational, by owner Rick Smith of Rigidized Metals and the RiverWright ethanol project. Smith attached one admonition: “Don’t get hurt.”

“I used to break in because I hate closed doors,” he says. “Now I do it legitimately.”

Horowitz had already shot the Wollenberg, Buffalo’s last remaining wooden grain elevator, originally constructed of salvaged wood from the Kellogg elevator, and he planned on returning accompanied with a bodyguard because of squatters living in the structure. But it was destroyed by fire in October 2006.

As for the abandoned Concrete Central, he simply wandered in. He was denied access to the Great Northern owned by ADM and the General Mills elevator, both still active.

The exhibit is on view until January 25, 2009, at the Buffalo Erie County Historical Society, 25 Nottingham Court (873-9644/bechs.org).

—lucy yau