The fight to save the Great Northern grain elevator has gone on for over 40 years. Despite sporadic alarm over the obvious deterioration of the building, little has been done to preserve it or to find a viable reuse for it. Its preservation would have cost upward of $100 million for a use which has yet to be found.

The building itself is huge, but not exciting. It is just a place to store grain. Not many persons would visit a hard-to-find, remote building where nothing happens. The significance of the grain trade to Buffalo’s economic growth is indisputable yet little has been done to capitalize on it. Preserving the Great Northern would not have done much to change that.

Yet, hiding in the shadow (literally) of that building is something that does matter. Two “marine legs,” on rails, separate the building from the water’s edge. These tall towers are the true symbol of Buffalo’s grain trade. Invented by Joseph Dart, the first of these was erected at the northern edge of Canalside, a few feet from today’s Naval Park. Over time, untold numbers lined the banks of the city’s many waterways.

The towers helped transform the unloading of western grain from days of backbreaking manual labor to a process of speedy conveyor belts taking grain from the bowels of grain ships to the tops of storage bins such as those in the Great Northern. The towers themselves are mechanical marvels, complex yet efficient, monumental in their height yet compact. Many can still be seen today, largely unused, supplanted by still more efficient self-unloading lake ships.

Relocation and reuse of the two marine legs alongside the Great Northern would be a way of snatching victory from the defeat symbolized by the loss of the Great Northern. One of these towers could be located to the northern edge of Canalside along Erie Street, where it would become an attraction which would soon be found on the cover of the city’s tourism brochures. It would be relatively easy to make the tower operable, perhaps with a center section of a grain ship alongside the pier demonstrating how the tower takes grain from the hold of the ship and lifts it to the top of an elevator.

The second tower could be located on the water’s edge in the Outer Harbor Park, facing the lake. A silent sentinel, it would highlight the destination of all the grain ships that have visited the Port of Buffalo over the past 200 years. It would also provide a vertical landmark, equaling if not supplanting the lakeside windmills that now dominate the viewscape.

Buffalo has done much to protect and preserve our historic legacy, yet there is still room for improvement. We need to show what can happen rather than oppose what is happening.

James Carr is a retired urban planner.

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