Historic Preservation of the Door COunty Granary
“We must preserve the good history of our past, both in our personal lives and in our community.”
Historically known as the Teweles & Brandeis Grain Elevator, the Door County Granary earned its spot on the National Register of Historic Places for the role it played in agricultural shipping. Its location in a protected harbor along a navigable waterway serviced the farm families who had cleared their wooded property and cultivated productive farm fields.
The Granary is the last remaining structure of the turn-of-the-20th-century agricultural economy that transformed Sturgeon Bay into a year round community. Its presence on the westside waterfront tells a story that weaves together outlying farms, Great Lakes shipping, the Ahnapee and Western Railway, and the Shipping Canal — many of the pieces that have made Door County the unique place it is today.
March 29, 2018: The Door County Granary is saved from further dismantlement and moves across the Maple-Oregon Bridge by DEVOOGHT to a temporary location on Sturgeon Bay’s east side to be preserved.
The Granary’s siding and ground level had been removed after the city ordered the building to be dismantled and sold for pieces. The Granary is pictured here with its upper levels, the grain bins and headhouse, highly intact and structurally sound to be moved.
What is a Grain Elevator?
How a Grain Elevator Works
Dan Overes, Director-at-Large for the Ogilvie Wooden Grain Elevator Society
Prairie Sentinels
National Film Board of Canada Prairie Production
Historic Significance
2017: Sturgeon Bay Historical Society accepts State Historic Registry for Teweles & Brandeis Grain Elevator in Madison.
2016: Teweles & Brandeis Grain Elevator
2019: DEVOOGHT move the Granary back across the Maple-Oregon Bridge to its historic location and final home.
2022: The Door County Granary waits to be restored to its former glory. The building’s original 30 columns were refurbished in Tennessee and returned to Sturgeon Bay in preparation for the Granary to be stabilized on its new foundation atop 51 pilings that had been driven into the lakebed.
1904: Door County Co-op wharf including the Teweles & Brandeis Grain Elevator in it’s heyday on the west waterfront where it was built and currently stands preserved, rehabilitated, and transformed into the Door County Granary.
Sturgeon Bay’s bustling industrial waterfront. The Teweles & Brandeis Grain Elevator has seen many variations of signage and siding through its 125 years of existence on the waterfront.
The Sturgeon Bay Historical Society salvaged all of the original materials and equipment from the ground floor work house after the grain elevator was partially dismantled by the city in 2018. Below see the grain bin selector wheel, original grain chutes used to distribute grain from the upper level grain bins to ships and rail cars for transportation, the grain elevator’s belt and bucket system used to move grain to the upper level grain bins, and building materials such as the original wood flooring the Sturgeon Bay Historical Society has reclaimed during the rehabilitation process.
