This factory produced and delivered ice for home Ice Boxes

American Ice Company Baltimore Plant No. 2, Baltimore Maryland

Date added: October 27, 2023 Categories: Maryland Industrial

Ice was a necessary commodity from the mid-nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century for both businesses and households to keep foods from spoiling. Comparable to the use of coal for heating in the winter, ice was needed on a daily basis during hot summers. The artificial ice manufacturing industry came to prominence after the failure of ice harvests in the north at the turn of the twentieth century. With the technological ability to produce ice artificially, ice companies built plants in Baltimore and throughout the United States around the turn of the twentieth century. With the rapid growth of household refrigeration after World War II, the industry faded and most ice manufacturing plants were razed. This plant is one of the few that survived and retains physical reminders of three important aspects of this industry: the manufacture of artificial ice in the 1905 stone building, the storage of ice in the 1919 brick ice storage house, and the delivery of ice to households and businesses from a wagon works accessed by the interior ramp in the stone building.

By the mid-nineteenth century the demand for fresh food - meat, milk, fruits and vegetables increased in America with the growth of cities and the economic well-being of the population. Prior to this time, most foods were preserved by methods including salting, pickling, smoking and drying. Ice soon became the most widely used method for businesses and households to preserve meats, fruits and vegetables and to transport perishable goods in railroad cars from farms and stockyards to population centers. At first, natural ice harvested from rivers and lakes was shipped to urban centers by sailing vessels or barges. Spurred by mild winters that created ice shortages, technological advances eventually made it economical to manufacture artificial ice in factories. Manufacturers of ice also claimed their product was safer than ice cut from lakes and rivers of questionable water quality.

In Baltimore, ice companies were formed in the mid-nineteenth century to meet the demands of local households and businesses. One of the early leaders in Baltimore's ice industry was the Oler Ice Company, founded in 1856 by William H. Oler (1818-1889). Oler, a Baltimore native of German descent, started with a single wagon for deliveries. By 1879, the company had fifty wagons supplying ice to the retail trade. His wholesale business was equally as large with one customer taking one thousand tons at a time. In 1884, the Oler Ice Company merged with Cochran and Company to form the Cochran-Oler Ice Company. The company owned eight distributing stations in Baltimore along with extensive wharf property, stables and shops.

Ice was harvested locally from the Susquehanna River in the vicinity of Perryville when weather allowed and transported by barge to Baltimore. In 1893, the company harvested sixty thousand tons of ice from the Susquehanna River. The Cochran-Oler Ice Company also controlled nearly four miles of waterfront at Cedar Grove Maine, along the Kennebec River. Ice cut from rivers was carried by steam up inclined planes to the tops of icehouses storing thousands of tons. By 1894, between 150 and 200 vessels brought ice to Maryland from Cedar Grove each year.

In 1893, Wesley M. Oler (1856-1927), the son of William H. Oler, became president of the company. Oler is listed in Who was Who in America, Volume 1, 1897-1942 (page 914). He was a director of the Citizen's National Bank, Baltimore Trust Company, United Railways Company and a trustee of the Woman's College (later known as Goucher College). In 1888, he was a delegate to the Republican National Convention. In 1898, under the leadership of Wesley M. Oler, the Cochran-Oler Ice Company merged into the Knickerbocker Ice Company, which also included ice companies in Philadelphia and New York. In 1900, the Knickerbocker Ice Company was one of many ice companies that merged into the American Ice Company, controlling half of the ice produced or harvested in the country.

Wesley M. Oler became president of American Ice Company in 1904 and moved to New York. American Ice operated chiefly in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington and several New Jersey towns. The company was a virtual monopoly setting prices for ice along the East Coast and controlling distribution networks from the major suppliers of ice in Maine and along the Hudson River.

The availability of ice was greatly affected by the uncertainty of the weather. Mild winters in 1890 and 1900 resulted in failures in ice harvests. The resulting shortages increased not only the price of ice, but contributed to rising prices for other necessities such as milk and produce that relied on ice for preservation. These shortages and the improved technology resulted in the growth of plants manufacturing artificial ice. In the early years most ice plants were located in the south where ice harvests were far removed and shipping costs were high, but beginning in the 1890s, there was a rapid growth in ice manufacturing plants in the northeast. In 1889, 14 of the 222 ice plants in the United States were located in Mid-Atlantic states (Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York plus the District of Columbia). By 1899, the number of plants increased to 169; and by 1909, there were 375 plants in the Mid-Atlantic region. At that time, half of the ice supplied in the country was artificially produced and Wesley M. Oler predicted that natural ice would "be a thing of historic interest only."

The Artificial Ice Manufacturing Process

The Middle West Utilities Company in Ice: A Handbook of Ice provides the following description of the process commonly used to manufacture ice in the early Twentieth Century. It is useful in understanding the physical layout and evolution of Baltimore's American Ice Company Plant #2.

The first step in the manufacturing ice, was to draw water into treatment tanks where it was filtered and softened as needed. Then it was brought to cooling tanks where it was cooled close to the freezing point. Ammonia pipes placed in the cooling tanks absorbed the heat of the water and cooled the water to approximately 35 degrees Fahrenheit.

Next, the water was drawn to cans to be frozen into 300 or 400-pound blocks. The individual cans were set into large freezing tanks filled with a solution of sodium chloride and water called brine. The temperature of the brine was kept at from 16 to 20 degrees by ammonia pipes. The brine extracted heat from the cans and, as the temperature of the water fell below 32 degrees, ice would start to form along the inside walls of the cans. Air was blown into the individual cans, driving any impurities into the center or core area. This core area was then removed by suction and fresh water piped into the core to freeze into a solid block of ice.

After the freezing was completed, overhead cranes would lift the cans out of the brine tanks into a dipping vat of warm water. This melted the block of ice from the can. The cans were tipped into a chute that led into an ice storage room to await distribution. Here ice could be cut into smaller blocks and delivered by horse and wagon to customers.

Baltimore's American Ice Company Manufacturing Plant #2

The American Ice Company Baltimore Plant #2 was built in 1905 in an effort to bolster ice production in Baltimore and rely less on natural ice harvests. Henry H. Head (1834-1924), a Baltimore native, managed the Baltimore office of the American Ice Company when this plant was built. A member of a family long involved with the manufacture of wallpaper and later window shades, Henry H. Head married Sarah Bryson Oler in 1869. By 1878, he was employed by the Oler Ice Company, eventually becoming treasurer of the Cochran-Oler Ice Company. After Wesley M. Oler moved to New York in 1904 to head up the American Ice Company, Henry H. Head assumed the management of the Baltimore Office. He remained as manager until 1919, when William H. Oler, a nephew of Wesley M. Oler, succeeded him.

This plant was situated adjacent to the Jones Falls Valley where several nineteenth-century cotton manufacturing mills located. The valley also featured railroad access. A spur from the B & O Belt Line provided access to this plant. The ice manufacturing facility was built of native stone, which was also used in other nearby structures.

The 1915 Sanborn Atlas of Baltimore, Volume 7, Sheet 702, provides a diagram of the plant within ten years of its construction. At the time, the northwestern part of the building housed the tank room. The southern three-story portion of the structure featured the engine room on the first floor and filters on the second floor, third floor and roof. The northeastern part of the building was divided into two sections. The Sanborn map indicates elevator motors at the southern end where equipment for hoisting large blocks of ice was likely to be located. The northern end was used for ice storage and receiving, as well as a machine shop. An overhang covered the first-floor eastern wall of the building. At the northern end of the site was a wooden icehouse and stables. There was a separate small, one-story office building just east of the stone building (no longer standing). A coal trestle, wood shed and blacksmith shop were directly east of the plant.

The 1919 Ice Storage House

In 1920, there were 4,800 plants in the United States making ice for commercial purposes, with a total production of forty million tons per year. From 1914 to 1926, the tonnage of manufactured ice rose from 28 million to 50 million tons. Per capita consumption of ice rose in this period from 480 pounds to 1,140 pounds.

The rapid growth in the ice industry warranted major changes to the American Ice Company Baltimore Plant #2 within 15 years of its construction. In order to store larger quantities of ice, construction of a new ice storage building was begun shortly after September 12^th, 1918 as indicated in plats of the S. J. Martenet & Company Collection, Maryland State Archives SC 5087. A letter from Mortensen & Company of New York to Henry Head of the American Ice Company requested a survey of the existing plant in order to make changes and improvements. In 1919, the new brick ice storage house significantly increased the amount of ice that could be stored at this location.

The walls, floors, and ceilings of ice storage houses were insulated to keep heat out. Coils of ammonia were hung from the ceiling to keep temperatures below freezing. Storage rooms were also kept dry to avoid latent heat transfer from humid air. The windowless construction of the brick ice storage house utilizing buttresses to support thick building walls was used for ice storage houses throughout the country in the early twentieth century. A similar building of the Champion Ice Manufacturing and Cold Storage Company stood in Covington, Kentucky. The American Ice Company built a similar ice storage house at 30^th Street and Glenwood Avenues in Philadelphia in c. 1910 as recorded in the Ballinger Collection of the Athenaeum of Philadelphia. Since these buildings had only a single purpose, the storage of large quantities of ice, and the need for such buildings became obsolete by the mid-twentieth century, it is rare to find surviving examples of this type of ice storage house.

According to the Power Pictorial, a publication of Baltimore Gas and Electric Company, the plant converted from steam to electrical power in 1924. The 1928 Sanborn Atlas, Volume 6, Sheet 632 indicates the arrangements of the plant changed a great deal after the construction of the ice storage house. The freezing tanks, a transformer, ice machines, and other equipment used for manufacturing of ice were moved from the northwestern part of the stone building to the northeastern part. An ice receiving area and a harness room were also located on the northern end of this side. A second floor was added to the northwestern part of the stone building to house a wagon works accessed by a ramp, and the ground floor was converted for storage. The southern part of the stone building housed an office, a machine shop, a painting shop, and filters.

The present-day arrangement of the plant reflects these changes indicated in the 1928 Sanborn Atlas. Many of the most interesting features of the facility appear to date from this time period: the massive brick ice-storage building, the vehicle ramp leading to the second floor of the northwestern part of the building, and the overhead bridge cranes in the northeastern part of the building.

Ice Delivery

The presence of the vehicle ramp in this plant is a physical reminder of early methods of ice delivery. The home delivery of ice by horse and wagon is one of the most memorable aspects of the industry for local residents and was an important part of daily life. An article in the Baltimore Sun Magazine of August 3^rd, 1958 by William J. Jaeger states, "The clip-clop of horses' hooves sounded through the streets in the early morning hours when drivers started delivering the usual order of a 10-cent piece (15 pounds) to each family... The rattle of ice tongs and rumble of the wagon were music to children's ears in the old days."

Deliverymen went door to door throughout the city making home deliveries of ice. Families would display a placard in windows indicating the amount of ice needed. Using a hatchet, ice dealers chopped large blocks of ice to sizes that would fit into household iceboxes and carry them to houses using ice tongs. At one time the American Ice Company used over 500 horses during the summer and maintained regular stables housing an average of 100 horses. At its peak, the American Ice Company had 135 routes.

The End of Ice Manufacturing at the Plant

As quickly as the artificial ice industry grew from 1900 to 1925, it faded nearly as rapidly from 1940 to 1965. While the earliest household refrigerators date to the 1910s, it is estimated that only half of American households had refrigerators by the start of World War II. By the mid-1950s, 80% of American households had refrigerators and by the 1960's this number increased to over 90%. Food-related businesses and restaurants in the mid-twentieth century also purchased electric refrigerator units and ice-making machines. They no longer had to rely on regular ice deliveries. One by one, local ice plants closed, and today only a single ice manufacturing facility remains in Baltimore.

In 1968, American Consumer Industries, the successor of the American Ice Company, sold Baltimore Plant #2 to the Roland Electrical Company. The stone manufacturing facility was converted to a variety of uses in the following 34 years, but the ice storage house remained vacant. The stone building has housed an electronics factory, craftsman workshops, metal fabricators, an auction house and a photography studio. At the end of 2001, Icehouse LLC purchased the plant with the intent to renovate and enlarge the facility as a warehousing and manufacturing operation for Resource Conservation Technology Inc, a supplier of innovative building and gardening technology.

Comparison Between the Baltimore Plant and Other Ice Manufacturing/Storage Facilities

The American Ice Company Baltimore Plant #2 is one of two known surviving ice plants in Baltimore. The other facility, formerly owned by American Ice Company, stands at 2100 W. Franklin Street. The manufacturing building was constructed of brick instead of stone, and, according to the 1914 Sanborn Atlas, ice was stored in a group of three long, low one-story buildings. In the mid-twentieth century these low ice storage houses were razed and replaced with a concrete block icehouse. While this plant is still used for the manufacture of ice by a local company (the Baltimore American Ice Company), it has been modernized and does not feature a large, early twentieth century ice storage house.

Other local plants of the American Ice Company were located in the 1700 block of Gough Street near Fells Point and the 700 block of North Eden Street. Although photographs of these facilities show ice storage houses similar to Plant #2, both the production buildings and storage facilities of these plants have been razed.

Icehouses have been renovated for new uses in other cities. In Pittsburgh, the Ice House Artist Studios is the adaptive re-use of a 1907 ice manufacturing facility into studios, workshops and rehearsal spaces and offices for arts organizations. In Denver, an icehouse has been converted into loft apartments.

Building Description

The American Ice Company Baltimore Plant #2 is located at the intersection of 23^rd Street and Hampden Avenue in the Remington community, a working-class neighborhood of small row houses located approximately two miles north of Baltimore's Inner Harbor. The facility is comprised of two industrial buildings: an original stone ice manufacturing building and a brick ice storage addition. The stone building, built in 1905, is two stories high with the exception of a small three-story section at the southeast corner. Building walls are punctuated by an irregular arrangement of windows and doorways in many different styles and sizes. The interior is subdivided into large open workspaces with high ceilings currently leased to woodworkers, metalworkers, and other industrial artisans. Features include original wood post and beam construction, wood strip flooring, three long clerestories, old metal fire doors, and an unusual curved wooden ramp that provides direct vehicular access from the street level to the second floor. None of the machinery used for the production of ice remains. The adjoining brick ice storage building, built in 1919, is an immense, nearly windowless structure with the height of a six-story building. Tapering brick buttresses support brick walls that are more than two feet thick near the base of the building. The fortress-like exterior is relieved just below the roofline by louvered ventilation openings. The interior of the building suffers from severe deterioration resulting from a collapsing roof that has permitted water entry, and has been vacant for decades. The brick walls are coated on the interior with asphalt and insulated with the remains of a wood plank wall that retained a foot-thick layer of ground cork. Iron refrigeration pipes dangle from the ceiling. Wooden stairs with wooden ice-elevator framework still stand in each half of the building. An insulated non-structural wood wall partitions the interior into two equal-sized full-height spaces. There are no interior floors, only wood sleepers resting on a crushed stone base. The plant is surrounded by small grass plots along the side and rear, cobblestone and asphalt paving along the inner block of the lot, and a concrete retaining wall on the north end of the lot. Despite some alterations and deterioration, the American Ice Company retains its integrity as an urban, early Twentieth-Century ice manufacturing facility.

The 1905 stone building is approximately 104 feet by 215 feet. The southern, front facade on 23^rd Street is three stories high at the southeast and two stories at the southwest. The two-story high portion of the elevation originally featured a gable end above the south wall that was removed in the 1990s because of concerns that it might collapse and fall to the street below.

Although early photographs show a fairly regular arrangement of fenestration, several openings have been significantly altered as a result of multiple renovations during the past eighty years. For example, two ground-level window openings have been enlarged to create doorways, and a metal panel overhead door was installed at the southwest corner of the facade. Original wood frames survive at window openings, but many of the windows have been replaced with aluminum one-over-one storms. All of the third-floor windows are missing and the openings have been covered with stucco. The windows on all floors originally featured rough stone lintels and sills, but concrete sills have replaced the original stone on the first and second floors. The front walls have been cleaned, erasing a painted sign at the top of the second floor that stated "AMERICAN ICE CO". A date stone depicting "1905" is located at the southwestern corner of the facade.

Although the western facade of the stone building along Hampden Avenue retains a fairly regular array of fenestration, the original glass windows have been replaced with translucent fiberglass. A few openings have vents and one has an exhaust pipe leading to the roof. A single doorway surmounted by a sign provides the only pedestrian access to the western side of the building. At the northern end of the elevation, a metal slat overhead door was installed below an iron lintel and two smaller windows. The door opens to a ramp providing direct vehicular access to the second floor of the building.

The eastern, inner-block, elevation of the stone building is punctuated by many different types of window and door openings. The front, three-story portion has a large modern glass and aluminum entryway on the first floor, large openings once filled with six groups of six over six windows on the second floor, and stucco-filled window openings on the third floor. Signs and a fire escape project from this elevation, and painted signs have been cleaned from the stone walls. Along the two-story high portion of the elevation, four ground-level loading areas and entrances provide access to the interior. These ground-level openings are covered by a variety of metal canopies. Mezzanine level windows have been greatly altered, with vents, exhaust pipes and newer windows; however, it appears that most of these openings featured groups of six over six wood windows. Six groups of smaller double-hung windows are located above the mezzanine level windows at irregular intervals. Alterations along this elevation can be identified with brick infill, variations in stonework, newer loading entrances and loading platform. These changes are indicative of the evolution of industrial functions in the building.

The interior of the stone building consists of three principal sections separated by brick and stone walls: a southern section with two to three-floor levels, a northeastern section with two floor levels, and a northwestern section with a single floor level.

The southern section features a main entrance stairway, many different styles of interior walls, and a mixture of plastered and dropped ceilings. While the exterior windows have been replaced with aluminum units, many openings retain wood frame casement interior windows set into the thick walls, some with obscure glass. The third-floor space at the southeast corner of the building is vacant, suffers from severe water damage, and is only accessible from a rooftop entrance.

The ground floor of the northwestern section of the building is occupied by several woodworking shops. It features concrete floors, wood posts reinforced by iron-supporting steel ceiling beams, and exposed stone walls. A semi-circular ramp to the second-floor level hangs from the ceiling beams, secured by large metal rods. A small office has been created adjacent to and partially underneath the ramp. The windows along Hampden Avenue retain wood frames but the former glass panes have been filled with translucent fiberglass. A stairway along the interior stone wall has been sealed by a door on the first floor, and flooring has been placed over the opening on the second level. A metal-slat overhead door located along this wall provides communication between the northeastern and northwestern sections of the building, and a horizontal-sliding metal fire door provides loading access from the southern sectional door. Stairways along the exterior stone wall provide access to Hampden Avenue, the second floor, mechanical space, and bathroom facilities.

The second floor of the northwestern half of the building features wood floors, wood posts supporting wood beams an exposed wood ceiling, and two long clerestories. The former windows of the clerestory have been replaced by translucent fiberglass, and the side-wall windows are blocked by gypsum wallboard. The large open space is interrupted by wood and drywall darkrooms remaining from the most recent tenant, a photography studio. Wood floors cover the ramp, but show significant deterioration at the base of the ramp near the overhead door. The floors were patched where the stairway to the first floor was removed and in front of the sealed window openings along Hampden Avenue. An older fire door across from the ramp provides communication between the northeastern and northwestern sections of the building.

The interior of the northeastern section of the building is primarily divided into two spaces. A small space at the south end has been modernized as a studio/office with carpeted floors, a mezzanine, and drywall partitions. The remainder of this section of the building houses a large metal fabricating shop. The original wood post construction has been replaced with steel I-beam columns supporting the roof as well as two overhead bridge cranes with post and cable wiring. A drop ceiling has been installed approximately eight feet below the ceiling, hiding the original clerestory that provided additional light into this space. The original ceiling height is only revealed at the northern end of the building. Mezzanines for storage and machinery have been installed at various locations within the large workspace.

A built-up asphalt roof covers the stone building. The exterior walls have been waterproofed with EPDM rubber and capped with an aluminum flashing. Although heating and air-conditioning equipment is mounted on the roof, neither the clerestories nor the mechanical equipment are visible from the ground level outside the buildings.

The 1919 brick ice storage building north of the stone building features buttresses and thick walls that taper as the building rises. The building measures approximately 112 feet by 81 feet. The brick buttresses divide the walls into ten bays along the eastern and western elevations and six bays along the north and south sides. The severe elevations feature common-bond brick walls, corbelled brickwork, and louvered ventilation openings above stone sills near the roof line. A glazed terra-cotta coping protects exposed parapet walls. Two of the openings, one each along the eastern and western elevations, feature a wood hoist for loading, and two of the openings on the southern elevation house double-hung windows. On the northern elevation, there are two openings, near the ground level, that are sealed with metal panels bolted in place. Ivy grows along a portion of the northern and eastern elevations.

The interior of the ice storage building has not been used for decades. The only access is through two heavily insulated wood doors located approximately eight feet above ground level at the northern wall of the northwestern section of the stone building. Each door leads into one half of the brick ice storage building, which is divided by a heavily insulated wood plank wall filled with ground cork insulation. Four massive iron trusses support the remains of a wood plank roof and a wood ceiling. The floor-to-ceiling height measures approximately sixty feet with no intermediate floors.

Large sections of the roof are missing or are collapsing. This condition has persisted for many years, allowing water entry that has led to severe deterioration of the wood interior walls designed to insulate the building. Missing sections of the wall reveal a sophisticated construction technique in which the brick walls were coated on the interior with an asphalt vapor barrier and then insulated with a foot-thick layer of ground cork insulation. Metal straps embedded in the brick wall anchored a floor-to-ceiling wood plank wall that retained the cork. Iron refrigeration pipes, which now hang dangerously, originally covered the ceiling and circled the top of the walls. Wooden stairs, although rotted at the base, still stand in each half of the building. The remains of a wooden ice elevator adjoin each set of stairs. Wood sleepers rest on a crushed stone base form the floor, although extensive deposits of fallen debris cover much of the area.

The American Ice Company Baltimore Plant #2 substantially retains its integrity as an urban, early twentieth-century ice manufacturing, storage, and shipping facility. Most of the renovations in the stone building resulted from the evolution of the ice-making operation, such as the relocation of manufacturing and storage operations following the construction of the brick building. In spite of severe interior deterioration, the brick building is virtually unchanged on the exterior. Since the artificial ice industry came to prominence for a short period of time in the early twentieth century and then quickly faded with the growth of household refrigeration after World War II, few examples of this type of facility have survived.