Kansas City Grain Elevators, Missouri

Kansas City's riverfront grain elevators grew up alongside the Missouri River and the rail lines that once made the city one of the country's busiest grain markets, second only to Chicago by the early 20th century. Concrete silo complexes like this one stored wheat and other grain awaiting shipment by barge and rail car, with the tall elevator housing the machinery used to load and unload it. Many of these structures date to the early-to-mid 1900s, when Kansas City's stockyards and grain exchange drove heavy industrial development along the riverbanks. As rail and grain traffic shifted elsewhere in later decades, a number of these elevators fell out of active use, though some in the district remain in service today.

Photo taken in April 2019.