These buildings, called grain elevators, store harvested grain. The grain is lifted to the top and poured in, and then distributed from the bottom through gravity or mechanical means.
Although many people (myself included) associate grain elevators with the great plains, mechanized grain elevators originated in Buffalo, New York in 1843. Proximity to shipping opportunities on the Erie Canal and the Great Lakes made it useful to handle grain in bulk.
Though today we are accustomed to the idea of grain elevators, at one time they were regarded as unusual and innovative. When the architect Le Corbusier first saw one, he called it, “The first fruits of the new age.”