The Concrete Central and Cargill Superior Elevators

The Concrete Central Elevator, located between the Buffalo River and the track of the former New York Central Railroad, was the furthest upstream elevator along the Buffalo River. Financed by the Eastern Grain Mill & Elevating Company and designed and built by Harry Wait of the Monarch Engineering Company of Buffalo, it was constructed in five sections from 1915 to 1917, stretched a quarter of a mile, and upon completion was the largest transfer elevator in the world. Its 268 bins could store 4.5 million bushels of grain, and it alone could simultaneously unload three lake freighters while loading four canal boats and up to 85 rail cars. Sold to the Continental Grain Corporation in 1944, it remained a functioning transfer elevator until 1969, was then used to store surplus grain, and closed in 1973. The Superior Elevator, originally known simply as the Superior Elevator, was built in 1915 by the Monarch Engineering Company for the Husted Milling Company under supervising engineer A.E. Baxter to replace an earlier concrete elevator destroyed by an explosion. During its construction, the Husted Milling Company became the Superior Elevating Company. It was the first elevator in Buffalo built in winter rather than in the more favorable summer building season. The elevator was expanded in 1919 and again in 1925. Purchased by Cargill Corporation in 1939, it served as a transfer point between Great Lakes shipping and railroad lines to New York, and Cargill continued using it as a grain storage facility until the 1960s, when the Saint Lawrence Seaway made its Buffalo location obsolete. In 1953, the American Society of Civil Engineers selected the Cargill Superior Elevator as one of seven Western New York Engineering landmarks.

Buffalo, New York · United States