Grain Elevators are ubiquitous buildings, yet there is little popular understanding of them and their origins.

An index to this and related typologies spells out the interrelationships concisely (without the clutter of images and descriptive text). Related and similar building and structure types are in a sibling websection.

Post-Modern Grain Elevators!

Reduce, reuse, recycle, rejoice!

---



"Sleep in a Silo, Dine in a Mill, Shop in a Factory" - that's the imaginative reuse of an abandoned concrete elevator-mill complex in downtown Akron, Ohio, the original location of the Quaker Oats comapny, and now renamed "Quaker Square". Their website has some information and photos of the 1973-75 retrofit of a cluster of 36 grain silos that were originally built in 1932 and once housed 1,500,000 bushels of grain.




---



The Kellog's company in Battle Creek, Michigan celebrates its dependance on the homes of grains - after they leave the fields and before they meet the mill - by styling its tour center with whimsical Post-Modern facsimilies of Grain Elevators.

I don't even have to eat any of their sugar-laced cereal to be happy about the cartoonishly whimsical milk-carton-like faux elevators.

Model Grain Elevators

Grain Elevators as collectible items!




---



A pair of salt & pepper shakers I found in a collectible store near Napoleon, Ohio, are maybe from the 1970s. The salt shaker (those have four holes, right?) is labeled with a partly rubbed-off decal stating "ROACHDALE ELEV. / COMPLETE / FARM SERVICE."

Unless this "Roachdale" is a company or family name (I doubt it), this set is probably from the only town in the U.S. named "Roachdale," in Putnam County, Indiana, west of Indianapolis.




---



This was found in an internet search, and may still be available at GoCollect.com. The internally lit ceramic model comes complete with authentic reflectively painted dust collectors!

Grain Elevator Images

Iconic & Artistic Grain Elevators




---


The Farmers' Fall Festival in my hometown of Chillicothe, Ohio, happens every October. Now it is entirely in the large park at the edge of the downtown, but it used to include some downtown streets. The brochure from 2003 show a previous festival main stage where it was located in front of our downtown grain elevator - which was demolished 14 years before this brochure was printed! Apparently the grain elevator is symbolic of farming and harvests.

Next...

The Grain Elevator typology begins in:

Grain Elevator Types 1 - Pre-Elevator and Early Types: Grain Warehouses

Grain Elevator Types 2a - Mature Types: Square-Bin Self-Contained Grain Elevators

Grain Elevator Types 2b - Mature Types: Round-Bin Self-Contained Grain Elevators

Grain Elevator Types 3 - Later Types: Conveyor & Annex Type Grain Elevators

You are at:

Grain Elevators 4 - Post-Modern Grain Elevators!

...It continues in:

Grain Elevators 5 - Related and Similar Building Types

---

You are at Built Environment : Structures : Buildings : Grain Elevators : Grain Elevators 4 - Post-Modern Grain Elevators!

way up to the Built Environment site map or site list

to Place Types

to Architectural Location Types

to Structure Types

down to Building Types

farther down to Barns and Barn Types

farther down to House Types

to Architectural Styles

to Objects and Building & Structure Elements

to Transportation Geography

to Inventories and Nominations

to Example Properties

---

< GrainElevator_Types4.html >
(Apologies to Bruce Selyem Country Grain Elevator Photographs
for not reqesting permission to use his thunbnails yet...)
© INTREPID HISTORICAL SERVICES - Kevin B. Coleman
Chillicothe, Ohio, USA