3. Red Hook Grain Terminal

Hoping to maintain a tight grip on American grain shipments, New York State officials decided around 1900 to expand and modernize the Erie. They called the improved waterway the Barge Canal. In the 1920s, the state built a series of 54 grain silos in Red Hook, Brooklyn, to facilitate the trade. These 12-story concrete structures, architectural wonders of their time, could store millions of bushels of grain. Unfortunately, the amount of grain shipped through New York declined steeply during the twentieth century. By the 1950s, the Red Hook Grain Terminal was largely obsolete. Deactivated in 1965, it remains as monument to the prosperity the Erie Canal once brought to the city.