The Story Behind the Staircase in Our Lobby

From Berth 4 to Our Front Door

Walk into the lobby of our new 3 Kings Environmental building and one thing tends to stop people mid-step: a weathered, hand-riveted spiral staircase rising through the two-story entryway, its white paint chipped down to bare iron in a hundred places.

It’s not a design piece we bought. It’s a piece of history we saved.

The staircase came off the old grain terminal at Berth 4, Port of Longview’s historic Continental Grain export facility. Built in 1927–28, the terminal spent 60 years moving grain out to the world before it went dark in 1989 and sat empty for decades. In 2023, 3 Kings crews handled the abatement and demolition of the Berth 4 silos and surrounding structures.

When a structure like that comes down, most of it becomes recycled steel and concrete. But every so often, something comes off a job site that’s too good to send to the scrap yard. This staircase was one of those things. Our crews set it aside, and when we broke ground on our new building, we knew exactly where it belonged.

Why we do this

Salvage has always been part of how 3 Kings operates. We crush concrete on-site instead of hauling it to a landfill, we give old lumber a second life as furniture through Vintage Reclaimed, and we keep an eye out on every demolition for materials, fixtures, and artifacts worth preserving instead of discarding. The staircase joins a small collection of pieces around our new building pulled from past job sites, including a vintage Standard Oil gas pump and reclaimed wood accent walls.

It’s a small thing in the scope of a 100-year-old grain terminal. But every time someone walks past it in our lobby, it’s a reminder of what “making way for a better tomorrow” actually looks like in practice. It’s not just clearing a site, but finding what’s worth keeping.