A bright, shiny new barge sits in front of the abandoned South Damen Avenue silos. We haven't been able to find out much about them, but preliminary research seems to indicate they weren't for grain -- but for sand for some kind of glassworks.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Slice of Life: The Abandoned Damen Silos
A bright, shiny new barge sits in front of the abandoned South Damen Avenue silos. We haven't been able to find out much about them, but preliminary research seems to indicate they weren't for grain -- but for sand for some kind of glassworks.
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http://memory.loc.gov/pnp/habshaer/il/il0600/il0641/data/il0641.pdf
ReplyDeleteIt was for grain...here is the engineers report
Older photos showing buildings at the Damen silos that have been torn down
ReplyDeletehttp://pruned.blogspot.com/2006/10/grain-elevators.html
Thanks for those links. You're right -- they're grain elevators. I did a little more research later and forgot to update this article.
ReplyDeleteI found some old Chicago Tribune articles referring to the location as the Santa Fe silos. It stated something along the lines of the city gave the land for the silos to the Santa Fe railroad in exchange for giving up other land nearby where there had been a deadly silo explosion (the guy jumped from the burning silo hoping to land in the water, and splatted on a dock). The railroad was OK with the deal because it wanted another way to access the Chicago River.