Chapman, KS: 1911 and 1917 Rectangular Concrete Grain Elevators

1911: (Satellite)

1917: (Satellite)

Wood: (Satellite)

Current: (Satellite)
 

This is an example of how a new material, concrete, was used to build something using the traditional design for a previous material, wood. Of course, concrete grain storage quickly evolved to use round silos to avoid the weakness of square corners.  

Street View, 1911 and 1917

David Erickson posted two photos with the comment:

I'm sorry I didn't spend more time in Chapman, KS.  The elevators are beauties and have been photographed and posted here over the last several years. I was glad to get a chance to see them for myself.  But, I wasn't aware of the story behind the concrete rectangular elevators in the photo on the left. [First one below.] The Poor & Knight elevator in the background on the left image dates back to 1911.  It was built to replace a burned wooden structure.  1,800 bags of concrete mix were used to construct this elevator.  It is concrete throughout and has the same rectangular profile of a wood elevator.  The Frazier concrete elevator and weigh station in the foreground of this same image was built in 1917 to replace a wooden elevator that burned down that same year.

Information found from a posting by Grain Elevator Press, 2012.

1

2

Another view of the wood elevator that is on the right side of photo #2 above.

Street View

The wood elevator is in the right background of this view. On the other side of the tracks is the current co-op.

Street View, Oct 2021

I saved a satellite image to show that a co-op has a lot more than just some grain bins so that it can provide fertilizer, seed, etc. for the farmers. According to the above street view, they removed a couple of storage buildings and added a jump-form grain silo since this satellite image was taken.

Satellite

It also looks like they removed those small bins.

Street View