Design
For Buffalo's Grain Elevators, an Experimental Second Act
The formerly empty icons have become a space for art, ping pong balls, and eerie trombone concerts.
Outside, birds chirp, gravel crunches underfoot, and a crew of scullers drifts idly along the picturesque Buffalo River. But enter the inner bowels of the abandoned Marine A grain elevator — dating from 1925, it's the largest of Buffalo's 14 extant concrete behemoths — and the little that is bucolic disappears entirely.
Cavernous corridors reach as far as the eye can see. Up above, a similar but more conical volume, stretches some 140 feet. Take a step, and the echo reverbs for about nine seconds.