In Canada the term elevator row refers to a row of four or more wood-crib prairie grain elevators.
In the early pioneer days of Western Canada's Prairie towns, when a good farming spot being settled, many people wanted to make money by building their own grain elevators, this brought in droves of private grain companies. Towns boasted dozens of elevator companies which all stood in a row along the railway tracks. If a town was lucky enough to have two railways, it was to be known as the next Montreal. In many elevator rows there would be two or more elevators of the same company. Small towns bragged of their large elevator rows in promotional pamphlets to attract settlers. With so much competition in the 1920s consolidation began almost immediately and many small companies were merged or absorbed into larger companies.
In the mid 1990s with the cost of grain so low many private elevator companies once again had to merge. This time causing thousands of "prairie sentinels" to be torn down. Because so many grain elevators have been torn down, Canada has only two surviving elevator rows, one located in Warner, Alberta, and the other in Inglis, Manitoba. The Inglis elevator row has been protected as National Historic Sites of Canada, while the Warner elevator row remains unprotected.
Read more about this topic: Grain Elevator
Famous quotes containing the words elevator and/or row:
“The cigar-box which the European calls a lift needs but to be compared with our elevators to be appreciated. The lift stops to reflect between floors. That is all right in a hearse, but not in elevators. The American elevator acts like the mans patent purgeit works”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910)
“And, indeed, is there not something holy about a great kitchen?... The scoured gleam of row upon row of metal vessels dangling from hooks or reposing on their shelves till needed with the air of so many chalices waiting for the celebration of the sacrament of food. And the range like an altar, yes, before which my mother bowed in perpetual homage, a fringe of sweat upon her upper lip and the fire glowing in her cheeks.”
—Angela Carter (19401992)