Louis and John Wollenberg, merchants in coal and wood, built the Wollenberg Elevator in 1912 for new grain and seed business. It was built in part from wood salvaged from the Kellogg A Elevator, which formerly stood in the Buffalo harbor.

Unlike most of Buffalo's many grain elevators, the Wollenberg was built far from the city's busy waterfront at an in-town location where it was designed to receive and dispense grain by rail and truck.The design and construction of the structure descends from the first wooden grain elevator built in Buffalo in 1842. With a capacity of 25,000 bushels, the structure was small compared to the enormous concrete elevators that were going up at the same time on the Buffalo waterfront.

The elevator and attached mill and store served together as a storage processing facility for the Wollenberg brothers for 40 years. The facility was abandoned after it's closing in 1987 and eventually became the property of the City of Buffalo.

Much of the original processing and grain transporting equipment remains in place, including the hopper and scale at the bin floor level and the various belt-driven machines in the basement. The original wooden stairway continues to run from the bagging floor to the bin floor and event ladders reaching into the upper levels of the workhouse remain in place. The system of scoops, with separate lines serving the four main bins and the smaller auxiliary bins, also remains intact.

On June 25, 2003, the Wollenberg Grain and Seed Elevator took it's well-deserved place on both the New York State and National Registers of Historic Places.

This building has since been destroyed by fire.