Buffalo's Waterfront
Subtitle: A Guidebook
Publisher: Meyer Enterprises
Published: December 1990
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 71
ISBN-13: 9781879201002
Subjects: General; United States - Northeast - Middle Atlantic (General); Travel; Travel - General
Table of contents: title: Timeline. 1758: Daniel Joncaire Sieur de Chabert builds a farmstead on the south bank of the Buffalo River -- 1817: An open boat, the “Troyer,” brings the first flour into Buffalo from the west -- 1820: Samuel Wilkeson builds a pier at the mouth of the then Buffalo Creek -- 1825: Erie Canal opens -- 1828: First machine shop and foundry in the village of Buffalo established by Seals, Mayhew & Co. at Ohio and Indiana streets. Also, the schooner “Guerriere” brings the first load of wheat from the west, 2,500 bushels, but there was no demand for it and it was sent down to Dunkirk --1833: Second Buffalo lighthouse completed on stone hillock, or molehead, at end of pier -- 1842: Joseph Dart builds a grain warehouse with an elevating mechanism to remove grain from ships. His Evans Elevator is a world’s first -- 1850: Blackwell Canal, later renamed the City Ship Canal, opens. A smashing success -- 1851: Ohio Basin opens -- 1852: Main and Hamburg Canal opens -- 1861: Civil War period finds dramatic increase in wheat received in Buffalo. Receipts of 1861 double the level of 1860. This, in turn, sets off an 80-year boom in elevator construction -- 1897: Steel tank elevator, the Electric, completed and the Great Northern, another steel tank elevator, essentially complete. Both are electrically powered. The Electric has the first movable marine tower -- 1899: First reinforced concrete grain bin, “Peavey’s Folly,” built in Minneapolis. First full scale concrete elevators built in Midwest, 1900-1901 -- 1900-1903: Lackawanna Iron & Steel complex built -- 1901: Concrete superstructure placed on old timber crib substructure on outer harbor breakwater, a world’s first -- 1902: Dakota Elevator built of steel. Replaces wooden; title: Dakota that burned earlier -- 1903: Tile elevator built at Washburn-Crosby site -- 1906: By this date, Buffalo’s first reinforced concrete elevator, the Washburn-Crosby B, in operation -- 1913: Article by Walter Gropius on industrial architecture in Jahrbuch des Deutschen Werkbundes, illustrated with seven pages of American grain elevators and factories, among them the Washburn-Crosby and Dakota -- 1914: Grain elevator impact seen in the work of Italian Futurist Antonio Sant’Elia and in the sketchbooks of Erich Mendelsohn. Also, the Superior elevator, first elevator engineered by the prolific A.E. Baxter, built -- 1923: Swiss-born architect and theorist Charles-Edouard Jenneret-Gris, Le Corbusier, publishes Vers une Architecture, or Towards a New Architecture, using grain elevators as prototypes for an industrially rooted style -- 1924: Erich Mendelsohn visits Buffalo -- 1926: Mendelsohn publishes Amerika: Bilderbuch eines Architekten, containing photographs of several Buffalo elevators -- 1929: Bruno Taut publishes Modern Architecture, the first book on the new architecture targeted to an English speaking audience. Concrete Central is illustrated -- 1932: The improved Welland Ship Canal opens. Large ships, particularly those carrying Canadian grain, can now bypass Buffalo -- 1940: Electric elevator extension -- 1943: Peak of grain trade -- 1954: Last elevator construction in Buffalo, the Connecting Terminal extension -- 1959: St. Lawrence Seaway completed -- 1955-1965 The grain transshipment trade in Buffalo plummets due to navigational improvements in Mississippi and St. Lawrence rivers and changing railroad freight rates -- 1965: General Mills closes Dakota elevator. It is later demolished -- 1974: Erie Basin Marina opens on downtown waterfront -- 1978: Tifft Farm, once a site of coal docks and canals, reopens as a nature preserve -- 1983: Bethlehem Steel announces the ending of steel making at its Lackawanna plant -- 1984: Electric elevator demolished -- Present: The only active grain elevators are those owned by milling or malting companies. Closing of heavy industries has greatly lessened waterborne pollution. Fish return to Buffalo River. Contaminated land and river bottom sediments remain. Leisure use of waterfront increases dramatically; public demands more waterfront access.