Peavey–Haglin Experimental Concrete Grain Elevator, Grain elevator in St. Louis Park, United States.
The Peavey-Haglin Experimental Concrete Grain Elevator is a cylindrical concrete tower in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, built to store grain, with walls that taper from thicker at the base to thinner at the top. It still stands as a freestanding round structure on the site where it once held large quantities of grain.
The tower was built in 1899 as the first attempt to use concrete in this cylindrical form for grain storage in North America. That experiment laid the ground for a new type of grain facility that spread across the continent in the following decades.
The elevator is seen as the starting point of a building form that spread across farming regions of North America, because it proved concrete could work for agricultural storage. Visitors can still see the cylindrical shape that became a model for grain facilities built in the decades that followed.
The elevator sits in a residential area of St. Louis Park and can be seen from outside without entering any property. Daylight is the best time to get a clear look at the concrete structure and the shape of the tower.
Shortly after it was finished, the structure was put through a public test where local residents watched grain being released from the tower to see if the concrete would hold. The test succeeded and convinced those who had doubted that concrete could replace wood as a building material for grain storage.
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