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Catherine Callahan
Advanced Design Studio Fall 2004
Landscape Architecture Department, Cornell University
Studio Instructor: Adit Pal
Buffalo: A Recent History
The Great Lakes system of North America is one of the two largest
inland water systems of the world. Starting deep in the heart of the
continent, Lake Superior and Lake Michigan flow eastwards to
Lake Huron, then into Lake Erie, and finally into Lake Ontario
from where the whole system drains into the St. Lawrence River
flowing into the Atlantic Ocean. The entire system is navigable by
ship, except where Lake Erie flows north to Lake Ontario through
the Niagara River across the Niagara Falls. And therein lies the
seed of the rise and decline of modern-day Buffalo, New York,
located 30 kilometers south of these world famous waterfalls.
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The presence of the non-navigable falls
required one of the great construction
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projects of the 19 century - that of the
584 kilometer long Erie Canal, which
linked Lake Erie eastwards to the Hudson
River and by extension to New York City.
Buffalo’s location on the edge of Lake Erie
upstream of the falls, made the city a natural point of connection to the mid-west,
the center of grain production at the time
in the United States. Prior to this time, grain
had to be shipped down the Mississippi
River to New Orleans, from where it was
taken by ship to the eastern cities of the
United States and then to Europe. The
ability to ship grain directly east to New
York City via the Erie Canal resulted in
enormous savings of both time and money,
and consequently it was the opening of
the canal in 1825 that transformed Buffalo into a thriving industrial city.
On the shores of Lake Erie, grain arriving
from the American mid-west had to be
transferred by hand from larger ships that
plied the lakes, to smaller boats that could
navigate the shallow and narrow canal.
As the amount of grain increased dramatically, an urgent need developed for a more
efficient method of transferring it from
ship to boat. In 1842, Joseph Dart, a Buffalo merchant, answered this need with
the construction of the first grain elevator,
a simple wooden structure, consisting of
huge bins. A conveyor belt, powered by
steam, had buckets attached to it that would
scoop up the grain from the ship, deliver it
to the top of the bins, and pour the grain in
at the top.
The grain elevator dramatically increased
the rate at which grain could be unloaded,
and other grain elevators were quickly
built and soon Buffalo became the largest
grain port in the world. By 1863, Buffalo
had 27 elevators in operation. However,
the advent of the railroad began to domi-
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no.14 | summer 2006
nate the grain industry - rail travel was
faster and more reliable all-season method
than shipping over water resulting in lower
costs and insurance, and Buffalo began to
lose it’s importance.
After it’s resurgence as an important transshipment center in the 1880s due to the
ascendancy of the American north-west
as grain-producing territory, Buffalo and
the Erie Canal once again lost the battle to
the better economic incentives provided
by the railroad companies. Coupled with
poor maintenance and mismanagement
of the Erie Canal, the railroad system effectively bypassed Buffalo as point of
transfer for grain. Tens of thousands of
jobs in Buffalo’s grain elevator district
were lost over the turn of the century beginning a long period of decline. Buffalo
today is a mid-sized post-industrial city of
nearly 300,000 people, with a depressed
economy, furthered by the decline of it’s
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manufacturing base in the 20 century.
The Industrial District
Buffalo’s grain elevator district that lies at
the southwestern corner of the city is today reminiscent of a modern day ghost
town. Scores of abandoned grain elevators line the banks of the Buffalo River as
it snakes its way through the edge of the
city toward Lake Erie. These massive
buildings of concrete and steel are now
mostly empty. Their slow decay provides
a haunting backdrop for the empty streets
and howling winds blowing off the lake.
Although most are abandoned, almost fifty
grain elevators exist today, several of
which are listed on the National Register
of Historic Places.
The industrial waterfront area at Buffalo
has to grapple with issues of limited access, incompatible industrial land uses,
and pollution, along with a depressed city
economy resulting in a lack of demand
for real estate. These issues make the site
unsuitable for typical waterfront uses such
as parks, residential development and
waterfront recreation that have revitalized
other cities. The elevator district, although
underutilized, is still a working industrial
area, populated by large trucks and loud
machinery. Cold winds blow off Lake Erie,
rendering the entire district unpleasant
throughout much of the year. And much
of the waterfront soil is polluted with toxic
chemicals. Nonetheless, the visual
strengths of the district are intriguing, foremost of which are the elevators themselves
- impressive constructions that speak of a
time when was Buffalo was a prosperous,
bustling city. Today the warren of smaller
urban canals that once served the area
are filled in and paved over. The Ohio
Street Basin once a turning basin for large
boats along the Buffalo River, is now a
neighborhood park. The New York State
Thruway runs above what was once the
Erie Canal. The site is bordered along its
southeastern edge by the neighborhood of
the First Ward. This working class Irish
Catholic neighborhood once housed the
scoopers who manned the elevators. They
and their descendents still occupy the tiny
well-kept houses that sit in the elevator’s
looming shadows. Visitors who know the
history can find traces and remnants of
the story but almost no interpretive
signage exists to educate people.
The Studio
The focus of the graduate-level, eightweek, landscape design studio was to visualize and plan landscape strategies that
supported the historical interpretation of
the industrial heritage of the Buffalo waterfront. However, since heritage interpretation may or may not require conventional landscape initiatives, the definition
of what is ‘landscape’ itself was broadened over the course of the studio. We
were encouraged to take a fresh look at
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spatially understanding the history and context of the large industrial waterfront area and the choice of spatial strategy was
left up to each student. The studio incorporated the idea of historical multiplicity where the general consensus is that the layers
of the past, even if they represent different and sometimes forgettable ideas, should be preserved and not necessarily suppressed.
The Grain Elevators
The grain elevators at Buffalo were built on a scale unprecedented in modern society, and the early European modernist
architects such as Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier recognized
their stark beauty. They were drawn to the elevators as the embodiment of the “form follows function” ideal, which was a
driving tenet of the modernist movement. As models of American efficiency, ingenuity and industrialization, the elevators’ design was driven solely by the function of storing grain. Essentially, the buildings are constructions of huge cylindrical bins
devoid of pretense, decoration and ornamentation. These bins
can be seen today in the exterior shapes of the buildings and it is
these cylindrical forms that are a defining element in the district’s
landscape. The grain elevators influenced the aesthetics of great
modern architecture as far apart as Oscar Niemeyer’s and Le
Corbusier’s capital complexes at Brasilia and Chandigarh.
A study of the floor plans of the grain elevators provides an
illustration of the changes in form over the decades as engineers
experimented with ever more efficient methods of holding grain.
Early grain elevators were made of wood and generally employed rectangular bins. Although generally covered with metal,
they were still extremely prone to fire and the average life-span
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of a wooden elevator was only eleven years. In the late 19 a
number of different materials including brick, tile and steel were
experimented with and the bins were either rectangular or circular. Brick and tile presented problems of structural integrity and
were almost never watertight. Steel was expensive, susceptible
to rust and corrosion and was a poor thermal insulator. For these
reasons, the use of these materials was eventually abandoned in
the elevator industry.
Around 1915, concrete became the favored material for grain
elevator construction and has been used almost exclusively since
then. Concrete was economical, structurally stable and fire resistant, and most of Buffalo’s surviving grain elevators are made
of this material. Although the majority of them are no longer
functioning, they have been left standing because of the high
cost of demolition and associated environmental remediation.
Exploring the plan of the Great Northern Elevator through collage
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Creating a dialogue between the industrial
past and the contemporary landscape through
superimposition
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A New Function
My studio project proposes a new interpretation for the form follows function ideal
by revealing the form behind the function.
Floor plans for the elevators reveal the
structure of the bins and their evolution
over time, from rectangular to cylindrical. By bringing the floor plan out into the
landscape, the form behind the function is
revealed. But there is a twist here as the
form loses its original function or, alternatively, gains a new function. By playing
with modernist ideal, we can bring the
essential forms of the elevators into the
landscape where they will relate visually
to the existing forms.
The floor plan of Buffalo’s Great Northern Elevator was chosen as representative of the elevator form. Constructed in
1897, the elevator consists of circular steel
bins encased in a brick box, and was an
engineering advance in its day. The Great
Northern still stands today and is the only
remaining elevator of its type in the US,
giving it an iconic quality. Its form was
adapted into concrete and used in grain
elevators around the world. As such, the
cylindrical forms of the bins have become
a kind of archetype of the grain elevator.
When the floor plan is laid over the site in
plan, new relationships become visible,
inscribed within circular boundaries. Clusters of existing elevators relate to sections
of the First Ward neighborhood. Neighborhoods relate to parks, parks to traces
of historic canals, and the river to the elevators and neighborhoods. Whatever new
function these superimposed forms assume, they will create a visual dialogue
with the tall cylindrical forms of the elevators. The circles arranged orderly
within an orthogonal framework are also
a non-didactic reference to the great irri-
gated grain circles of the present-day midwest, creating a temporal link with the
agricultural history of the prairies.
The Final Design
Through a model of reforestation, the final design re-appropriates the function of
the grain elevator floor plan from that of
housing grain to that of housing plants. The
process of re-vegetation follows a successional model whereby annuals (in this case
grains) are followed by meadow grasses,
which are followed by shrubs, then pines
and finally hardwoods. The reforestation
proposal has several social and environmental advantages as well. It provides
green space for the residents of the neighborhood and for visitors to the site. It provides habitat for birds, insects, butterflies
and other wildlife. It filters runoff from
paved areas. And finally, the plants would
provide a level of phytoremediation in removing toxic elements from the soil. By
inscribing the area in circles, the design
connects the grain elevators with the Ohio
Street Basin (now a community park) and
to the residential neighborhood of the First
Ward. Where possible, the connecting
spacers between the bins become paving
and overhead structures. The edges of
these circular plantings would be maintained over time. Other site-specific installations create a dialogue with the grain
elevators and their history including the
transportation of the area. For example,
huge letters, such as are on the sides of
the elevators, would be crafted out of steel
and placed along the old canals.
The grain elevators themselves remain as
an integral part of the design. As a visual
witness to the history of Buffalo’s heyday,
the elevators continue to decay providing
a monolithic backdrop in the new landscape.
Developing an interpretive landscape structure
for the 1st Ward district using the grain elevator
plan form
Inscribing new landscape functions around the
southern grain elevators
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