Experimental Silos

In 1909, University of Nebraska graduate Claude Harrison Hinman (1879-1967) began teaching classes for Kansas Agricultural College Farmers' Institute. Traveling along the Santa Fe Railroad and communicating from a boxcar, Hinman lectured to regional farmers as part of the institution's "dairy train."(1) He assisted Professor J. Kendall with an experimental silo comprised of staves and a thin cement wall.(2)

E.H. Webster, then director of the Kansas Experiment Station, heralded cylindrical silos over their rectangular predecessors, claiming that the latter resulted in spoilage.(3) The college promoted silo construction in various extension services.  Hinman wrote a substantial bulletin devoted to the topic and the Extension Department mailed it without charge to anyone who was a member of a farmers' institute. In addition, the college offered Hinman's expertise to any farmer willing to cover his railroad ticket and lodging. Thus, Hinman helped to erect silos in Augusta, Herington, Hiattville, Linwood, Mulvane, Tonganoxie and Wellington. These were chiefly comprised of plastered cement or concrete on metal lath, a type that had first been developed by the United States Department of Agriculture (below).(4)

During the 19-teens, Hinman moved to Colorado and established a commercial silo operation. The Hinman Silo Company had its earliest offices on Champa Street in downtown Denver. Catering to wealthier farmers, Hinman sold vitrified hollow tile and salt-glazed tile silos. He also offered barn plans. The business seems to have flourished until the Great Depression, when the Hinmans relocated to Mesa.

One of my favorite experimental silos is the Peavey-Haglin, located in metropolitan Minneapolis, Minnesota and listed on the National Register.

(1)"Now a Dairy Train." Emporia Gazette (15 October 1909).

(2)"Local Notes." The Kansas Industrialist 36:24  (23 April 1910).

(3)"Rectangular Silos Fail." The Kansas Industrialist 37:14 (7 January 1911).

(4)Prof. G.C. Wheeler. "The Concrete-Metal Silo Is Satisfactory to Kansas Farmers." Emporia Gazette (17 March 1911).

Images:  "The Perfect Silo." Western Farm Life XIX:3 (1 February 1917) and C.H. Hinman, photographer. "Plastered Cement on Metal Lath Silo in Process of construction" as it appears in H.E. Dvorachek. "Silos and Silage in Colorado." Colorado Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin 200 (August 1914).

Happy Home (1923)

Architect-builder Edwin L. Markel (1888-1956) completed a new residence for his family in 1923 and invited the public to visit his "Happy Home." Located at 4416 South Galvez Street, the house featured Celotex insulating lumber as an interior plaster base and as a sheathing under the exterior stucco and brick. Markel selected Celotex after visiting J.W. Thompson's Building Material exhibit (shown below) in the Weis Building (830 Common Street).

In November 1922, realtor Meyer Eiseman announced that Louisiana would soon boast the only town in the world to be built of bagasse. Located on the former Ames Farms tract, the celotex houses were intended to lodge plant workers after the company invested $1,000,000 in the West Bank riverfront property.(1)

The Celotex Corporation recognized the model home as an effective marketing device. It hired New York architects Henry Otis Chapman, Jr. (1898-1967) and Harold W. Beder (1876-1967) to design its demonstration house (shown below) for the 1939 New York World's Fair's "Town of Tomorrow".

Claiming Celotex products to be completely termite- and dry rot-resistant, the company published brochures and souvenir books for fair-goers. Savings and Loan Day was held on September 30, and the Celotex House hosted hundreds of association delegates who came to view the structure and its grounds.

After the Second World War, Celotex heavily promoted its ominous-sounding product, "Cemesto."(2) Precision-Cut Homes was a local builder that established a fireproof concrete block industrial plant mobilized for Cemesto prefabricated construction. It launched its model homes first in Jefferson Parish, at Cross and Second Streets.(3) The company could supply homes to qualified veterans for a mere $5,500 and offered dealer franchises to those located within a 300-mile radius. Precision-Cut was a short-lived venture: its 2500 Calliope Street plant was advertised for sale in August 1947.


(1)"Builders to Use Cane Pulp Board." The Times-Picayune 7 November 1922. Cambridge landscape architect John Nolen planned the Celotex "Farm City" of Clewiston, Florida for the company (1923-24).

(2)Celotex had launched Cemesto-Board in 1931.For more on Cemesto, see Jack Breihan, "Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Company." DOCOMOMO_US Newsletter (Summer 2008): p. 7. URL: http://www.docomomo-us.org/files/DOCONewsSummer08.pdf

(3)"New Plant for Pre-Fab Houses." The Times-Picayune 19 May 1946.

Images above:  Top:  "Celotex Insulating Lumber." Advertisement. The Times-Picayune 4 February 1923.

Center and Bottom:  The Celotex Corporation. "Thanks for Dropping in to see the Celotex House." Brochure. Chicago: The Company, 1930. Architectural Trade Catalogs, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

WTC: Concrete's Poster Child

As Edward D. Stone's International Trade Center and Curtis & Davis' Exhibition Center (Rivergate) neared completion, the Portland Cement Association featured the structures in its Fortune magazine advertisements. Utilizing an illustration by poster artist Bob Peak (1927-92), Portland's copywriters stressed that concrete made good "business sense."

"Concrete gives a world trade center built-in sales appeal. The buildings of New Orleans' new International Trade Center are designed to serve the buyers and sellers of merchandise from every corner of the world. Here, through the imaginative use of concrete, is expressed the very spirit and pace of modern-day trade. In the Convention-Exhibition building, the New Orleans architects used a concrete barrel shell roof to create striking beauty, as well as an interior clear span of 225 feet, sufficient to seat 17,600 people. Textured exterior concrete walls provide tasteful concrete throughout. The highly compressible qualities of New Orleans' soils were mastered by prestressed concrete piles, providing firm foundations for the light but strong reinforced concrete frame and floors designed by advanced new structural criteria. Gleaming exterior curtain wall panels of precast concrete assure visual interest."

Image above: Bob Peak, illustrator for Portland Cement Association. "Concrete Gives a World Trade..." Promotional flyer. [Published in Fortune July 1965].  Architectural Trade Catalogs, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Recipe: "Universal Cement" (1856)

To compound this, a quantity of mastic should be dissolved in highly rectified spirits of wine, only enough of the spirits being used to effect the solution of the mastic.

Then soak an equal quantity of isinglass or fish-glue until it is thoroughly softened.  Dissolve this in a quantity of rum or brandy sufficient to form a strong glue, to which add half the weight of gum ammoniac finely pulverized.

Thus for thirty penny-weights of the mastic, thirty penny-weights of isinglass and fifteen of gum ammoniac will be necessary.  The quantity of spirits and brandy depends on their quality; the stronger the liquors, the less of them is needed. and the better will be the mixture.

Warm these two mixtures together over a slow fire, and when they are well mixed, place them in bottles, which must be hermetically sealed.  This cement becomes perfectly dry in twelve or fifteen hours.

When the mastic is to be used, the bottle should be heated in a water bath to liquefy it; the fragments should also be heated before sizing them, and the surfaces well cleansed, as a matter of course.

Those who give this recipe, say that glass, crockery, etc., when thus restored, are as solid as before having been broken, and that the seams are hardly visible; but experience proves that these seams, although imperceptible at the time of the operation, soon soil for want of the perfect polish of the remainder of the article; this diminishes the advantage of the cementing.

From:  M.L. [Mary Louise] Booth, translator.  The Marble-Workers' Manual. Designed for the Use of Marble-Workers, Builders, and Owners of Houses.  Containing Practical Information Respecting Marbles in General; Their Cutting, Working, and Polishing; Veneering of Marble; Painting upon and Coloring of Marble; Mosaics; Composition and Use of Artificial Marble; Stuccos; Cements: Receipts, Secrets, Et., Etc., with an Appendix Concerning American Marbles.  New York: Sheldon, Blakeman & Co., 1856,   pp. 114-115. Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.