look at this map of Chicago from the 1850s at the mouth of the South Bank of the river
where Lakeshore Drive currently runs where two of the city's most impressive structures these
are the Illinois Central grain elevators built between 1855 and 1856 these forgotten Towers were
prototype for how Chicago and later the nation would come to handle grain these icons portrayed
the city's status as an American Central trading Point these grain elevators were so
impressive that they were visited by journalists and royalty alike described as harsh environments
of sound and dust but how do they come to be how did they ultimately fall today we discover
Chicago's lost grain elevators I'm your host Ryan silkash and you're watching it's history [Music]
in the 19th century Chicago skyline looked entirely different from today Prime industrial
real estate was along the City's river which functioned as a port and Industrial Area in
contrast to the loop which was a business district the grandest structures were all along the river
you see Chicago's economy and location made it a critical American Agricultural trading
Hub although we focus on the city's history as an industrial power the magnitude of the
midwest's food production shouldn't be understated proximity to the South Branch of the Chicago River
and the Des Plaines River meant that Chicago had access to the Mississippi in 1848 the Illinois
and Michigan Canal opening meant that Chicago had access to much of Western Illinois agricultural
production making it the most important center of Agriculture trade in the midwest but what
no one expected was that with the massive influx of grain and an inadequate immediate
outflow storage would become a serious concern so as piles upon piles were left throughout the
city a solution was needed most of the grain would be sent to the east coast via the Erie Canal but
rail became a major factor in the 1850s and 1860s when Chicago arguably became the country's Central
rail Hub quantity grew rapidly trade access was expanded as far west as Colorado and as
far north as North Dakota wealth was Consolidated in Chicago as a result as were the central trade
Logistics meaning that the grain from several States was now beginning to pile up beyond the
city's storage capacity hence Joseph T Moulton and his brother George had an idea after laboring
in some of the city's smaller early elevators the self-educated mechanics from New Hampshire saw an
opportunity to change the way Chicago did business with the implementation of their Monumental take
on the technology as a result by 1870 the City had nearly 60 grain elevators dotting all the
important Junctions of river and rails in a moment we'll take a look at what remains of
these elevators today but first I'd like to answer the question what is a grain elevator let's say
a farmer harvested grain somewhere in Iowa in the early days he would need to manually load
his products into wagons pulled by horses to the nearest train Junction from there the grain would
be loaded onto a freight train with the ultimate destination of Chicago then once on site grain
arriving by rail was loaded into smaller buckets also known as Hoppers which were elevated to the
top sections via a steam-powered elevator from there the grain was processed in a multi-level
System including quality control Separation by type and weighing later grain would be
sent to the midsection of the elevator to be kept in the bin where it would be stored and
eventually distributed via tubes called shoots to the ships waiting below one revolutionary
aspect of the system was that wholesale was now possible in a different way as multiple otherwise
unrelated Farmer's Grain could be mixed and sold to one Merchant without that Merchant needing
to negotiate deals with each Farmer on the other hand Farmers had the advantage of selling to one
buyer cities like St Louis were slow to implement the same approach to business only strengthening
Chicago's position in trade the separation process was made possible by one rotating shoot that
could be aimed at various bins below the tower's elevators were massive and dangerous as mentioned
before they were run by Steam and consisted of multiple buckets which ran up a rotating belt
scooping the grain below and dumping it above these elevators were also utilized in stirring
the grain to avoid rot surprisingly the top floor of the elevators were not only to facilitate the
physical movement of goods but Telegraph rooms enabled real-time deal making with farmers
attributors who sent the grain for sale as well as Merchants from the East Coast who
could place orders once the order was confirmed and a river freighter was docked below gravity
would release massive quantities of grain at High Velocity which meant that the loading process was
highly efficient construction of the structure was also simple and efficient as Riverbanks tend
to be soft Timber pilings were driven into the mud for friction and Limestone caps were placed
on top of them to provide a firm foundation for the massive weight placed above the internal
bins were another Innovative example of molten's design as Timber was laid horizontally as opposed
to vertically this provided durability as you might imagine the quantity of wood needed to
create these bins was enormous but the challenge was solved at ease since Chicago was also a hub
of Timber enjoying shipments from States like Michigan and Wisconsin we actually covered the
very unusual story of Chicago's Christmas tree shipwreck which can give you you more context
on this City's history as a Timber Hub now you might be wondering what happened to these early
elevators to which I'll share both the short answer and the long one the short answer is
that the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 destroyed the vast majority of grain elevators along the
river leaving only the representative Sturgis and Buckingham elevator intact at the riverfront
I imagine this must have been an eerie sight upon the backdrop of a burnt down City but what
about the long answer well let's just say it gets political elevators off the main branch and inside
of Rail Yards mostly survived the great fire these were further west and south some experts
suggest that the elevators on the river's main branch didn't have much of a future regardless
as the introduction of the westbound Chicago Burlington Quincy and Rock Island railroads came
into the city things were about to change you see Scotland native George armor came to the United
States in 1834 in addition to being Chicago's first president of the Academy of Fine Arts
George was also a grain Trader and contractor for the Illinois and Michigan Canal segments
many believe he invented the first steam-powered grain elevators in the 1850s notably he was also
a contractor for some of the early railroads going west and had powerful Connections in
that industry so with or without the Chicago Fire for him to overtake the existing Empire along the
main branch and reconsolidate on the South Branch was only a matter of connecting the dots his setup
was far more modern as dedicated slips were built off the river and the land adjacent was outfitted
with rails this Arrangement was far more spacious than the congested main branch meaning loads could
be moved faster and cheaper actually the density of these nearby yards grew so aggressively that
the Board of Trade took interest resulting in guaranteed prices for Farmers on future contracts
control over the market based on speculation surprisingly it turns out that these Wall Street
types of the 19th century were also jerks as they extorted the whole system by buying and hoarding
the grain itself speculating on Futures contracts with inflated prices and then trading the grain at
those inflated prices once the shares were sold this system was used to make fortunes bankrupt
competitors and take over their businesses for this reason the elevators only got more massive
in size as the sole interest was no longer just that of trading food but rather trading stocks
at jacked up prices speculation caused prices and wheat to soar and at times for the trade of
physical product to Halt the situation was so out of hand that by the 1890s grain storage in Chicago
quadrupled this must have been quite a sight to behold coinciding with the boom of skyscrapers
and Industrial chimneys the city City must have looked as brutal as the traders who sparked the
growth in the first place and on the north side of town one of Chicago's most notorious businessmen
was about to take this notion to the next level Philip Danforth armor who has no relation to
George armor emerged on the market to build what Professor Thomas Leslie described as quote
Financial fortifications on Chicago's Goose Island Northwest of the loop the location strategically
captured the Northwestern contracts from farmers in Minnesota and The Dakotas a notion enhanced by
the fact that the Chicago Milwaukee St Paul and Northeastern Railways passed directly through you
see unlike his predecessors Philip armor was far more interested in cornering the wheat Market than
the trading of physical product thus his hoarding was so extreme and urgent that some of his
elevators went up in as little as 30 days what's more he actually tried to keep construction Secret
so as to not alert the market to his scheme this guy was so greedy that in the dead of winter he
financed the de-icing of Chicago's Port so that wheat could be brought in by ship in addition
to train and remember those shoots I mentioned earlier the ones that used the miracle of gravity
to distribute product directly on the boats well armor had his installed in Reverse meaning that
Chicago was technically importing wheat from its Lake for the first time in history and as you can
imagine this situation it wouldn't last forever unlike many great examples of architecture grain
elevators were not typically lost to demolition instead fire was their weakness as the combination
of Timber and arid conditions needed to store grain meant that fires happened all the time
generally speaking the elevators were a dangerous place for this reason city planners were cautious
about where these elevators were allowed to be built as they didn't want to endanger nearby
structures moreover designers began seeking Alternatives eventually leading to the concrete
silos you might be used to seeing in more Modern Times by the 1920s Chicago's Calumet Harbor took
precedence and more modern cement silos emerged this move was also needed to further develop the
Chicago Loop into the more Regal looking area that it is today with wider streets and Grand
skyscrapers in place of where train tracks and grain elevators once lined the riverbank this was
further reinforced in 1922 when Chicago expanded its River capacity by rerouting existing traffic
away from the loop thanks to a new channel on the South Side this move actually explains another
phenomenon that I didn't quite understand in our Merchandise Mart video as to why those central
train yards became less strategic to the city so now that we have the history and context let's
have a look at what actually remains of Chicago's great grain elevators we already know that most
grain elevators on Chicago's North Branch were lost to the great fire so we'll start our before
and after Journey with the second generation of this technology at Goose Island where armors
1887 A and B elevators as well as the B Annex for grain hoarding were located as you can see here on
Google Earth the island now hosts many businesses but grain storage is not one of them referencing
this 1901 Chicago map provided by our viewer Brian you'll see that Goose Island once had five total
elevators today it seems nothing is left although if you look across the river to the Southwest
there's a modern material yard that can give you an illusion of grain silos if you blur your eyes
now the C and D elevators and the Chicago and St Louis grain elevators on Chicago's South Side left
the remnants of slips and land docks that were explicitly created for grain Logistics there's
still a surprisingly large amount of Industry here complete with train yards and barges but
nothing is left of the 20 plus grain elevators that once dotted this portion of the riverbank
where elevator number 31 once stood is now a park in place of elevator number 30 we have a lot with
a typical looking Chicago warehouse and if we move slightly up the river to where number 17 and 18
once were the elevators are also gone however it would seem that the Rail lines from our map are
still very much in place The Story Goes On and On like this after spending time comparing old
maps with modern ones I quickly realized something important here that like any ancestor these lost
grain elevators shaped Chicago and you see their influence on the city's DNA the traces are left
behind in how the city developed but as for the physical presence of their remains well they're
simply long gone with only a few exceptions in fact one such exception is the Santa Fe
grain silo initially this elevator was a wooden structure that burnt down and would be replaced by
a cement version located on its own peninsula in in the South Branch of the Chicago River these 35
silos at 80 feet in height were some of the most impressive Chicago had to offer yet as you can
see from these photographs they are in an urgent state of disarray I'd guess it's just a matter
of time before a hungry developer demolishes them silos have been transformed into new structures in
other parts of the world such as a hotel in Cape Town or the Crown Plaza Hotel in Akron Ohio but
I somehow feel that this type of innovation on the south side of Chicago it might be wishful thinking
for now especially since there are more important structures to be preserved by the 20th century
the 300 grain elevators that once dotted Chicago's skyline had all but disappeared many were lost to
fires such as the dust explosion at 102nd Street and the Calumet River which took 350 firemen to
fight this fire spread to many elevators along the river's slips and although you probably haven't
heard about the event it was big news at the time and led to conspiracy theories some believed that
the fire was started because it would be cheaper to burn a silo of bad wheat or that the companies
wanted the insurance relief to help them relocate their businesses to cities like Minneapolis
or Kansas City which were beginning to outpace Chicago in storage capacity by that time perhaps
the most interesting theory was that burning the product would create a shortage in Supply
resulting in panic and then a spike in demand therefore making wheat products a hot commodity
on the trading floor the same way shortages in baby formula or toilet paper for example cause
people to seek it out more aggressively basically creating hoarding consumers either way Chicago was
transformed by its storage facilities and has a lot to show for it even now such as Buckingham
Fountain which was donated to the city by the Buckingham family who had earned their Fortune
with the surges and Buckingham company elevators at the mouth of the Chicago River Philip armor
started the armor Institute now known as IIT on the south side and let's not forget that the rice
company created the rice wing of Chicago's art institute thanks to Their donation and so on and
so on but perhaps the biggest takeaway is that the modern American skyscraper benefited greatly from
the development of grain elevators from the lift system to the foundational caissons fire safety
and height in fact George Moulton Jr would take his father's company into the 20th century and
masters of skyscraper construction and they also left behind many landmarks such as the
Fisher Building in Chicago and the guarantee building in Buffalo if anything grain storage
was a step towards Chicago reaching its Grandeur one final thought I find myself wondering about
some missing details here I'd love to go far more in depth on precisely what happened to each grain
elevator so if you or anyone you know might be an expert on this topic please reach out to me
and perhaps we'll do an interview on my Instagram account and for those of you who'd like to watch
something like that make sure you're following me over there also if you'd like a dedicated video on
Chicago's Goose Island let me know by hitting that subscribe or join button and we'll wrap
it up there for today thank you all for watching until next time this is Ryan so cash signing off