ROCHESTER — This city's Ear of Corn Tower got a little more internet famous last week thanks to a viral song about a child's love for corn.
Viral song gives Rochester's corny landmark chance to shine
Tourism officials highlight area's almost century-old Ear of Corn Water Tower.
Experience Rochester, the local tourism bureau, put out a TikTok video featuring the tower set to "It's Corn," a remix by the Gregory Brothers of an interview comedian Julian Shapiro-Barnum did with a boy named Tariq at a New York City playground.
The video spotlighting Rochester's kitschy landmark has already garnered more than 320,000 views, 53,000 likes and more than 3,000 shares.
"The trending corn song on TikTok presented the perfect opportunity to showcase Rochester and our beloved Ear of Corn Water Tower," Erin O'Brien, a spokesperson with Experience Rochester, said. "It's been fun seeing the positive response."
Commenters were excited to see Rochester get its moment in the sun and many wanted their own version of Olmsted County Commissioner Jim Bier's corn hat in the video. Others told stories about relatives climbing the tower in years past, or how jarring the tower can be the first time people see it.
"Rochester waited its entire life for this moment," one user wrote.
The Ear of Corn Tower was built in 1931 to provide water to the Reid, Murdoch and Co. canning facility. The cannery was sold to Libby Foods in 1948, then to Seneca Foods in 1982. Seneca shuttered operations at the cannery in 2018 and Olmsted County purchased the property just north of Graham Park in 2019.
The tower has been cause for debate over the decades. Some in Rochester wanted the tower taken down shortly after it was built for fear teens would get injured trying to climb it, while others doubted the tower's future when Seneca closed its plant. County officials declared the landmark historically significant in 2020 and repainted it last year for $410,000.
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