This is the third post in the Relict Landscapes and the Past in the Present series edited by Paul Hackett
Grain elevators, which once numbered in the thousands across the prairies, are perceived as an endangered and disappearing building typology,1 as well as a rich component of prairie identity and community memory.2 In Facebook groups, coffee table books and postcards the peeling paint and ruination of grain elevators are presented and re-presented as places of nostalgia and aesthetics.
Research by Heritage Saskatchewan into the living heritage of grain elevators has found that grain elevators are not as abandoned as they appear, rather many are used by farmers or agriculture companies.3 This frequently requires modifications to the buildings to meet contemporary needs. In many cases grain elevators are preserved through continued economic usefulness made evident through material changes to their fabric and facilities, demonstrating an adaptive reuse that is difficult to justify under the heritage standards intended to conserve them.
These modifications cause a tension in the surfaces of grain elevators: the value of aesthetics (where our eyes rest on the surface of the buildings)4; against the values of heritage conservation (where we wish to hold surfaces in stasis, despite their own “creaturely” needs)5; and the values of their owners (who wish to use these buildings as economically useful structures). The final tension is in communities, where grain elevators once played a core social role, no longer filled by their modern counterparts, nor those modernized for current use.
One of the few tools for “saving” historic places is by designating a property as a heritage site. Heritage conservation is concerned with managing change in the built environment; caring for the material fabric of sites that are valued by communities. Conservation privileges the original form and material over subsequent changes.6 This is seen in the primary document that outlines the principles, guidelines and processes for conservation, the Standards and Guidelines for the Conservation of Historic Places in Canada, where Standards 3 and 5 emphasize minimal intervention, and Standard 12 states that changes should be reversible.7 To be considered heritage at all, buildings have to demonstrate their “authenticity,” which means the structure should show why it’s considered heritage-worthy in a self-evident way, usually through the originality of its materials.8
When used as a tool for retaining and defining the sites of history, heritage conservation is, in its current ethos, based on values. The purely economic valuation of historic places has a contentious history,9 but given the difficulty in finding alternate uses for grain elevators that fulfill the standards of heritage conservation shows that flexibility is necessary. This, says heritage architect Ali Piwowar, is a difference between living heritage and heritage conservation where “the goal of living heritage is to shift and adapt in order to not be frozen in time rather to be a part of the present and future.”10
A confluence of events through the 1970s-1990s, including the abandonment of the vast network of railways that connected elevators, lead to the decline of wooden crib grain elevators and the rise of cement terminals, which rely on a much larger catchment area and a more automated system. Many elevators were torn down seemingly out of spite by the companies operating them, or were put on the market at prices hundreds of times above what a farmer could afford.11 Conservation architect Bernard Flaman ascribes much of the loss to perceptions of modernist structures as tied to their technological capabilities (and therefore market value): “the fate of the wood grain elevator mirrors that of other modernist structures, such as industrial sites and airports, which are rendered obsolete when the technology that created them is superseded.”12 The owners that use these “obsolete” grain elevators have carved out small niches that do not – and can never – compete with the major grain handling businesses.
Designation alone does not save a building; it needs to be used. Adaptive reuse is the practical application of conservation principles. It is, broadly, using a building for something other than its original purpose. A factory becomes a loft, a church becomes a concert hall. The grain elevators being conserved in the prairies are largely in the form of adaptive reuse as museum objects. Hepburn SK, St Albert AB, Val Marie SK and Battlefords SK (to name a few) are reusing the buildings in a form of commemoration and tourism. Some buildings present unique challenges – attractive factories can be contaminated – making their adaptive reuse more expensive. In Piwowar’s study she points out that reusing the upper floors of a grain elevator requires additional egress, in addition to thoroughly cleaning the grain dust from the buildings to minimize fire risk.13 Grain elevators are susceptible to moisture, which can ultimately render a building beyond repair.14
Other grain elevators, wilder ones from a conservation perspective, have been kept alive by cutting through the fabric of the building to add extra legs, storage bins and facilities to the exterior, or by gutting the interior to update outdated mechanical features.15 This is a subtle shift in use, usually from being owned by a major company or cooperative (Imperial, Wheat Pool etc.) to private ownership such as the 1960s elevator owned and operated by the Chaplin Grain Corporation in Chaplin SK. The private owners must add value to their business, like seed cleaning or specialized storage for organic grains and pulses.16 The smaller bins at older elevators are useful for separating different products, especially useful when handling organic products with strict rules on commingling during storage, cleaning and transportation.17 This is not so dramatic as a factory becoming a condo, yet the use has changed.
The tension within adaptive reuse is to fulfill the social needs of a community in addition to conserving the materials of a building. This is especially important with buildings that once had a key role in the wellbeing of a community, as grain elevators did.18 The loss of grain elevators was an economic shift, as well as a community shift – people at the time describe this loss as the “death” of the community when the last grain elevator closed. People love these buildings, but without a function they are more of a hazard than anything. If commemoration of grain elevators is desired by communities, that commemoration needs to center the needs of those communities first and foremost; conservation not centered on people is pointless.
If the conservation of materials is the only desired outcome, then modifications must be necessary; an unused but designated building is simply putting off its inevitable destruction. Communities demonstrate their values in historic places by keeping them; no heritage professionals are needed to conserve grain elevators if communities and owners value them for their market value, social value, or community value.
Today, driving down an Elevator Avenue or Railway Road in a rural community, and noting the empty expanse facing the town is to be haunted by the absence of the grain elevators. Grain elevators once held a vital place in the social fabric of rural prairie communities and the new cement terminals do not provide this. However, there is a need to see modernization as a form of care for iconic structures deemed irrelevant in the contemporary economy, and a continuation of their industrial purpose. The tension held in the surfaces of the grain elevators may remain, so the adaptability must be in the strictures of the heritage community. Instead of seeing these heavily modified elevators as denatured of heritage value, they should be understood as authentic adaptations of the original, and as the embodiment of living agricultural heritage.
[1] Carrie Tait, “Historic Grain Elevators Are Crumbling across the Prairies,” The Globe and Mail, May 17, 2020, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/alberta/article-historic-grain-elevators-are-crumbling-across-the-prairies/.
[2] Alixandra Piwowar, “Living Heritage: Re-Imagining Wooden Crib Grain Elevators in Saskatchewan” (Ottawa, Ontario, Carleton University, 2015). Pg. 18.
[3] Isaac Farrell, “The Continuing Economic Relevance of Saskatchewan’s Grain Elevators,” Heritage Saskatchewan Blog, October 23, 2023, https://heritagesask.ca/about-us/news/blog/the-continuing-economic-relevance-of-saskatchewans-grain-elevators.
[4] Torgeir Rinke Bangstad, “On the Face of Things: Surficial Encounters with the Memory of Architecture,” in After Discourse: Things, Affects, Ethics, ed. Bjørnar Olsen et al., Routledge Archaeologies of the Contemporary World (London New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2021). pg 88.
[5] Ibid. Pg 100.
[6] Erica C. Avrami and Randall Mason, “Mapping the Issue of Values,” in Values in Heritage Management: Emerging Approaches and Research Directions, ed. Susan MacDonald et al. (Values in heritage management, Los Angeles, California: The Getty Conservation Institute, 2019). Pg. 20.
[7] Parks Canada, Standards and Guidelines for the Conservation of Historic Places in Canada: A Federal, Provincial and Territorial Collaboration. (Ottawa: Parks Canada, 2010), https://central.bac-lac.gc.ca/.item?id=R62-343-2010-eng&op=pdf&app=Library. Pg. 28.
[8] Herb Stovel, “Origins and Influence of the Nara Document on Authenticity,” APT Bulletin: The Journal of Preservation Technology 39, no. 2 (2008): 9–17. Pg. 11-12.
[9] David Throsby, “Heritage Economics: Coming to Terms with Value and Valuation,” in Values in Heritage Management: Emerging Approaches and Research Directions, ed. Susan MacDonald et al. (Values in heritage management, Los Angeles, California: The Getty Conservation Institute, 2019). Pg. 204.
[10] Alixandra Piwowar, “Living Heritage: Re-Imagining Wooden Crib Grain Elevators in Saskatchewan” (Ottawa, Ontario, Carleton University, 2015). Pg. 12.
[11] “Dave” (grain elevator operator), in conversation with author, May 3, 2024; & Bernard Flaman, Maureen Pedersen, and Garth Pugh, “Nomadism to Settlement; Grain Elevators on the Canadian Prairies,” Docomomo Journal Canada Modern 38 (2008): 26–32. Pg. 28.
[12] Bernard Flaman, Maureen Pedersen, and Garth Pugh, “Nomadism to Settlement; Grain Elevators on the Canadian Prairies,” Docomomo Journal Canada Modern 38 (2008): 26–32. Pg. 28-29.
[13] Alixandra Piwowar, “Living Heritage: Re-Imagining Wooden Crib Grain Elevators in Saskatchewan” (Ottawa, Ontario, Carleton University, 2015). Pg. 103.
[14] Reclaiming The Oldest Wooden Crib Grain Elevator In Canada – Massive Reclaimed Wood Project – Intro, Video, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K7a4aAdUwA.
[15] “Dave” (grain elevator operator), in conversation with author, May 3, 2024
[16] Ibid.
[17] “Organic Production Systems: General Principles and Management Standards” (Ottawa, Ontario: Canadian General Standards Board, 2021), https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2020/ongc-cgsb/P29-32-310-2020-eng.pdf.
[18] Elizabeth McLachlan, Gone but Not Forgotten: Tales of the Disappearing Grain Elevators (Edmonton: NeWest Press, 2004). pg 74.
Feature Image: Grain elevators in Nanton AB, September 26, 2017. Photo by Bernard Spragg. NZ on Flickr.
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