There is a time warp in Buffalo. Here's how to use it:
From downtown, drive south down Michigan Avenue and hang a left on Ohio Street, passing the Swannie House, a century-old dive bar and eatery that used to provide a night's stay for cargo ship captains and crew. You'll see the General Mills building and smell Cheerios in your nostrils as you notice the few factories that still puff gray smoke into the typically gray Western New York air.
Traffic will become sparse as you make your way into what seems like uncharted territory. You'll go by Louisiana Street and over a drawbridge that will take you across the Buffalo River and behind the Old First Ward. On the other side, hang another left onto Childs Street, and – poof! – it's suddenly 1920.
Or so it seemed on Friday, when the UB School of Architecture and Design provided a chance to go inside some of Buffalo's now-defunct grain elevators, which have stood unused for decades and are closed to the public.
The event was held in conjunction with last weekend's National Preservation Conference – held for the first time in Buffalo by the National Trust for Historic Preservation – an opportunity for Buffalo to showcase its famed architecture on the national stage.
"This is the first time, I think, that there's been national attention to what really is a great collection," said SUNY Distinguished Professor Bruce Jackson, whose photographs of the grain elevators were showcased throughout the buildings. "Every one of these is different. I've been on the inside of most of them now, and every room is different."
In one of those rooms, located in the row of towering grain silos known as Marine A, UB musicians performed an eerie-sounding John Cage piece that highlighted the building's breathtaking natural reverberation. When the percussionist struck a woodblock, it echoed as if he was deep inside a complex of dark caves.
It's no wonder that bands like My Morning Jacket have recorded vocal tracks in grain silos just like Marine A to achieve a distinctive largeness not possibly simulated in a recording studio.
Jackson described the elevators as "the largest machines ever made by man." Robert Skerker, co-chair of the Buffalo Preservation Conference, called them "the most significant buildings ever built here" in a speech to eventgoers.
Buffalo is well known for its Frank Lloyd Wright houses and its Art Deco structures like City Hall, but the grain elevators are often overlooked in an architectural sense, viewed by many ordinary citizens as nothing more than another example of urban blight on the ill-used waterfront. Robert Shibley, dean of the School of Architecture and Planning, sees them in a more flattering light.
"We advertised this event as ‘Inside Concrete Atlantis,'" Shibley said. "That's a reference to a book by one of our faculty years ago, A Concrete Atlantis, that speaks about how the images of these structures found their way into all kinds of modernist architecture manifestos."
The grain elevator was invented in Buffalo in the mid-1800s, influencing architectural trends and revolutionizing American industry. Buffalo's elevators – located directly on the Buffalo River, where ships could dock, unload, and load – were key in the production of grain products from Pillsbury dough to Genesee beer.
When the Saint Lawrence Seaway opened in 1959 and rendered the Erie Canal obsolete, though, ships began to bypass Buffalo, and most of the grain elevators fell into disuse. Now, community members and UB architecture students and faculty are trying to envision a renewal for the buildings in the future.
"[The grain elevators] are pretty robust, and they're not going to fall down," said Chris Romano, a clinical associate professor in the School of Architecture and Planning. "Most of them don't even have any cracks…There have been conversations about how to utilize these things in the future, and we're just starting the conversation…The [National Preservation Conference] was the trigger. The conference was a way to bring everybody together."
Other cities – such as Akron, Ohio – have turned grain elevators into hotels, according to Professor Emeritus Lynda Schneekloth of the School of Architecture and Planning. But, she said, doing that in Buffalo would require altering the buildings so that they are no longer historically accurate. She and Shibley suggest that a "landscape park," which would showcase the buildings as a connection to learning and remembering Buffalo's history, might be a viable alternative.
"[A landscape park] interprets history, it offers opportunities for doing things like [Friday's event]," Schneekloth said. "How about a rave, a dance…you could start thinking about all kinds of things."
Jackson said he could envision buildings like Marine A being converted into performance spaces for musicians, due to the natural reverb. But he also shared the nostalgia expressed by Schneekloth and Shibley.
"I'd like to see some of them remain exactly as they are, as monuments to Buffalo's great industrial past, and some of them converted to performance space," Jackson said. "I don't know what else…But it deserves thought rather than just [letting them decay]."
To provoke such thought, Shibley announced – to a crowd that included UB President Satish K. Tripathi and Interim Provost Harvey Stenger – that the School of Architecture and Planning would begin offering a continuing education program in sustainability and preservation in the spring.
For now, Shibley and others hope that the Preservation Conference served as a jumping-off point for a revitalization of Buffalo's buildings.
"We [the School of Architecture and Planning and the National Trust for Historic Preservation] share a common goal, which is to make places like Buffalo better," Shibley said.
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