The Marine "A" Elevator

The Marine "A" Elevator. The Industrial Heritage Trail. , Image Source: Historic American Engineering Record. Jet Lowe, photographer, 1990. , The Marine 'A' Elevator, constructed in 1925, is actually the third Marine elevator built by the Abell family of Buffalo. The original wooden Marine elevator, built in 1881, was located beside the Hatch Slip at its junction with the Buffalo River. It had a capacity of 150,000 bushels; a wooden annex added in 1894 added another 500,000 bushels of storage. , When the time came to expand again, the Abell family acquired an undeveloped site high up on the Buffalo River for construction of a new elevator, rather than attempt to construct more capacity at their existing site. When the new concrete elevator was built in 1925, it became known as the Marine "A", and the original wooden elevator was called the Marine "B". , The elevator was designed by the James Stewart Company, with A.E. Baxter acting as supervising engineer. The Marine "A" had a capacity of over two million bushels. Its greatest advantage - the rapid handling of grain - made the elevator very desirable to shippers. In 1954, the elevator was purchased by the Norris Grain Company, which operated it until 1962.