#367 The Ice Craze: How the Ice Business Transformed New York
07/16/21 • 54 min
4 Listeners
New York City on ice — a tribute to the forgotten industry which kept the city cool in the age before refrigeration and air conditioning.
Believe it or not, ice used to be big business.
In 1806 a Boston entrepreneur named Frederic Tudor cut blocks of ice from a pond on his family farm and shipped it to Martinique, a Caribbean county very unfamiliar with frozen water. He was roundly mocked — why would people want ice in areas where they can’t store it? — but the thirst for the frozen luxury soon caught on, especially in southern United States.
New Yorkers really caught the ice craze in the 1830s thanks to an exceptionally clear lake near Nyack. Within two decades, shops and restaurants regularly ordered ice to serve and preserve foods. And with the invention of the icebox, people could even begin buying it up for home use.
The ice business was so successful that — like oil and coal — it became a monopoly. Charles W. Morse and his American Ice Company controlled most of the ice in the northeast United States by the start of the 20th century.
He was known as the Ice King. And he had one surprising secret friend — the Mayor of New York City Robert A. Van Wyck.
PLUS: The 19th century technologies that allowed American to harvest and store ice. The Iceman cometh!
New York City on ice — a tribute to the forgotten industry which kept the city cool in the age before refrigeration and air conditioning.
Believe it or not, ice used to be big business.
In 1806 a Boston entrepreneur named Frederic Tudor cut blocks of ice from a pond on his family farm and shipped it to Martinique, a Caribbean county very unfamiliar with frozen water. He was roundly mocked — why would people want ice in areas where they can’t store it? — but the thirst for the frozen luxury soon caught on, especially in southern United States.
New Yorkers really caught the ice craze in the 1830s thanks to an exceptionally clear lake near Nyack. Within two decades, shops and restaurants regularly ordered ice to serve and preserve foods. And with the invention of the icebox, people could even begin buying it up for home use.
The ice business was so successful that — like oil and coal — it became a monopoly. Charles W. Morse and his American Ice Company controlled most of the ice in the northeast United States by the start of the 20th century.
He was known as the Ice King. And he had one surprising secret friend — the Mayor of New York City Robert A. Van Wyck.
PLUS: The 19th century technologies that allowed American to harvest and store ice. The Iceman cometh!
Previous Episode
#366 North Brother Island: New York's Forbidden Place
There are two mysterious islands in the East River with a human population of zero. They are restricted. No human being lives there.
One of these islands has been witness to some of the most dire and dramatic moments in New York City history.
North Brother Island sits near the tidal strait known as Hell Gate, a once-dangerous whirlpool which wrecked hundreds of ships and often deposited the wreckage on the island's quiet shore.
In the 1880s the island was chosen as the new home for Riverside Hospital, a quarantine hospital for New Yorkers with smallpox, tuberculosis and many more contagious illnesses.
Greg takes the reigns in this show and leads you through the following tales featuring North Brother Island:
-- A bizarre incident -- involving a body found in the waters off the island -- which first put the place on the map;
-- The nightmarish city policy of 'forced exile' to battle the spread of disease in the city's poorest quarters;
-- The tragic crash of the General Slocum steamship;
-- The complicated struggles of Mary Mallon, aka Typhoid Mary;
-- The implausible tale of a 1950s rehab center for teenage drug addicts.
Visit the website for images and videos of North Brother Island.
Next Episode
#368 Henry Bergh's Fight for Animal Rights in Gilded Age New York
Interview with Prof. Ernest Freeberg, author of “A Traitor to His Species: Henry Bergh and the Birth of the Animal Rights Movement”
Today’s show is all about animals in 19th-century New York City. Of course, animals were an incredibly common sight on the streets, market halls, and factories during the Gilded Age, and many of us probably have a quaint image of horse-drawn carriages.
But how often do we think about the actual work that those horses put in every day? The stress of pulling those private carriages -- or, much worse, pulling street trolleys, often overloaded with New Yorkers trying to get to work or home?
In the book, “A Traitor to His Species”, author Ernest Freeberg tells the story of these animals -- and of their protector, Henry Bergh, the founder of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). He ran the organization from the 1860s to the 1880s, and was a celebrity in his day -- widely covered, and widely mocked for his unflinching defense of the humane treatment of all animals, even the lowliest pesky birds or turtles.
His story is full of surprising turns, and offers an inside account of the early fight for animal rights, and engrossing tales of Gilded Age New York from a new perspective -- the animal’s perspective!
Ernest Freeberg is a distinguished professor of humanities and head of the history department at the University of Tennessee.
If you like this episode you’ll love
Episode Comments
Featured in these lists
Generate a badge
Get a badge for your website that links back to this episode
<a href="https://goodpods.com/podcasts/the-bowery-boys-new-york-city-history-1132/367-the-ice-craze-how-the-ice-business-transformed-new-york-15574041"> <img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/goodpods-images-bucket/badges/generic-badge-1.svg" alt="listen to #367 the ice craze: how the ice business transformed new york on goodpods" style="width: 225px" /> </a>
Copy