Lynda Schneekloth, University at Buffalo architecture professor emeritus and grain elevator preservationist, inside the former Perot Malt House, Childs Street, Buffalo, NY, photo by Kate Kaye, February 2020
“Girls didn't go by the waterfront.”
Most women and girls who lived in Buffalo's First Ward -- the waterfront community at the heart of Buffalo's once-pulsating grain industry -- never went close to the waterfront or worked among the grain…
"The scoopers were at the whim of everybody."
A railroad man at age 17 who would soon become the “boss” of a grain scooping “gang” in 1962, Jack Driscol toiled on Buffalo’s waterfront his whole working life. Jack shared memories of scooping grain…
“They are so out of scale to anything that you see in your life that they are like a distant landscape right in front of you all the time.”
More than a grain elevator enthusiast, Lynda Schneekloth is a scholar of these giant concrete and steel…
Outside former Cooperative Grange League Federation (GLF) Grain Elevator at Buffalo RiverWorks, Ganson St., Buffalo, NY., photo by Kate Kaye in early 2020.
Outside former Cooperative Grange League Federation (GLF) Grain Elevator at Buffalo RiverWorks, Ganson St., Buffalo, NY., photo by Kate Kaye in early 2020.
“When we were kids we’d go to Concrete Central – just fields over there, old railroad tracks. And we'd hang out."
Some of Buffalo’s grain elevators had already shuttered by the time Pat Needham was a kid, but he worked hauling and scooping grain for…
Stairway at brewery built inside former Cooperative Grange League Federation (GLF) Grain Elevator at Buffalo RiverWorks, Ganson St., Buffalo, NY., photo by Kate Kaye in early 2020.
“Banging, creaking, popping, sliding, scraping: every sound you could imagine. Sometimes it sounded like a person screaming, the way the wind moved through there.”
As a kid, Steve Baczkowski sneaked into Buffalo’s abandoned grain elevators to hear…