As the number of these "line" companies and their elevators grew, producers suspected collusion between the railway and elevator companies. The National Elevator Company built only along CPR lines while Searle built along those of the Canadian Northern Railway. As settlement spread quickly westward, other companies - many of them American, such as the National Elevator Company and Searle Grain Company - negotiated with either the CPR, the Canadian Northern Railway or the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway to build elevators along a line of railway. The hundreds of standard grain elevators built to these specifications ensured the uniformity of the cultural landscape.Ĭanadian flour milling companies were the first businesses to respond to the railway's offer. It was the leg that gave grain elevators their name and determined their shape.īy offering free land rental the railway encouraged private companies to build standard 25,000-bushel elevators complete with a leg driven by a steam or gasoline engine as well as equipment to clean grain. To elevate the grain a mechanism known as the "leg" was devised, an endless belt with cups or scoops attached. The Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) demanded larger, vertical warehouses that could take advantage of the fluidity of grain, especially when acted upon by gravity. The industry needed a means of storing and shipping grain quickly, and small, one-storey wood frame warehouses erected by farmers were inefficient. There, they emptied the sacks into a waiting boxcar, a back-breaking and time-consuming job. The logistical problem of getting producers' grain into railway boxcars was first addressed by farmers shovelling their grain into two-bushel sacks, which they then transported to a loading platform along the rail line. In his book, Towards a New Architecture, he wrote, “grain elevators and factories, the magnificent first-fruits of the new age.” However, in 1923 French architect Le Corbusier hailed the elevator's stark simplicity and unadorned geometric shape as the ultimate example of form following function. As the first step in a grain trading process that moves the grain from producer to worldwide markets, the grain elevator was a strictly utilitarian building, designed to receive, store and ship grain in bulk.
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