These days we take ice for granted. We just open our freezer and there it is. But way back when, ice was a precious resource that had to be renewed often. And so, since 1882, Angelinos had turned to the Union Ice Company to make and deliver their ice to them. Back in 1913, when this photo was taken, deliveries were made by horse-drawn wagons. Here we have ten wagons, each pulled by a pair of horses, parked outside the Union Ice depot on Santa Monica Blvd. I assume the building behind them is where the ice was manufactured because in the Southern Californian heat, it didn’t last long, and if you’re traveling by horsepower, you’re not going very fast.
Ten horse-drawn carriages from the Union Ice Company gather at their depot on Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles, 1913
I remember the ice man. One of my first memories. He wasn’t around long, but that was fine with me, as he was very scary, with his big leather vest and his giant tongs, with which he slung a giant block of ice onto his back and carried through our house to the kitchen where he thunked it into our ice box. I believe his conveyance was also horse powered, even then in the forties. (The ‘rag man’ was definitely horse powered.) But this was in San Francisco so the ice had a better chance of lasting. Now I feel sad for the ice man and wonder what happened to him as he was only around long enough to leave an indelible impression on me, and then, to my mother’s everlasting joy, we got a refrigerator, which we, of course, still referred to as the ‘ice box’. It was too large to fit in our tiny kitchen, so lived from then on in the dining room. And I mean from then on. It lasted long after I left home and was still humming away when my mother retired and sold the house to move closer to her grandchildren. They don’t make them like that anymore.
I read a fascinating book about the “ice business” in Maine in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was written by a local woman who was a very small child when the business was booming. Several of the workers boarded in her family home. She had tons of historical photos. A piece of history that’s nearly forgotten. They shipped the ice ALL over the world! India was one of their biggest customers.
In the earliest days before methods of mechanical refrigetation, ice was often made in artificial lakes where blocks were cut and shipped into towns where an ice house was located. There were ways to store it cooled until the wagons could deliver it. This photo makes me think the ice facility may be out of view on the left (peeking around the edge there) and that this is an office/dispatch structure or a harnessing point. Those horses had to be kept somewhere nearby, but you wouldn’t want a bunch of piles of horsepuckey right where you were storing the ice. Is that thing on the right for storing hay?
Thanks Martin, looking forward with eager anticipation for your publishing’s.
Best, Paul
What I remember about the ice man is much the same as Mary Hogg recalls, but my favorite memory is on hot days the neighborhood kids would tag along with him and when he had broken chunks as sometimes happened when tonging the block that he hefted onto his shoulder leather padding, he took the chunks of ice and threw them to us kids to suck on. Somehow he always managed to break some ice so we could have this wonderful free treat.