Every week we publish a historic photo highlighting a story from Naperville’s past from the history archives of Naper Settlement.
Back before making ice was a simple procedure we could do in our kitchens, ice had to be “harvested” in the winter and stored for the rest of the year.
Today’s photograph is of men moving ice blocks taken from a frozen Naperville quarry into wagons to be transported to icehouses for storage.
In the Midwest, ice harvests also were done on rivers, lakes and ponds close to railroad lines.
Demand for ice grew substantially in the 1800s, especially with the growth of the meat industry in Chicago, which expanded its reach nationally by shipping products using railcars cooled by ice. As a result, the number of companies involved in the process increased as did the geographic area from where ice was harvested.
Typically, teams of men would start by shoveling snow off frozen rivers and lakes and then using a chopper or chisel to cut ice out in blocks. A hook would grab the blocks and place them on a ramp to be loaded into wagons and transported to an icehouse.
According to Holland’s Business Directory published in 1886, Boettger and Becker was advertised as Naperville butchers and ice merchants.
This would make sense as butchers needed ice to preserve meat, and being in the ice business meant they wouldn’t be at the mercy of paying ice trader prices.
Joe Drendel cut ice from the mill pond in the DuPage River — close to present-day Centennial Beach — and hauled it to saloons and breweries in town.
Joe Bapst had an icehouse at Webster Street and Jefferson Avenue. He also had a grocery and bakery at the northwest corner of Washington Street and Benton Avenue.
Ice could preserve fruits and vegetables, milk and other dairy items, and also had its uses in other industries — even in the storage of dead bodies.
Once a luxury only for the elite, new innovations in harvesting and transportation meant ice could have wider use commercially and in homes.
The earliest ice harvests were in New England, but the practice spread to the Midwest in the 19th century.
Because its use allowed food to be transported longer distances, businesses began using it to ship perishable goods. A refrigerated railcar transporting meat from Chicago to New York required 4,000 pounds of ice and 700 pounds of salt. Railcars and merchant ships could also get ice to warmer climates and even other countries.
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For a while, ice was the second largest U.S. export, second only to cotton.
However, ice wasn’t easy to transport long distances over road. As a result, harvests often occurred close to ports where it could be more easily moved.
Icehouses designed to preserve ice all year generally had an underground pit to keep it cooler. Sawdust and hay might be placed on top to help preserve its life and prevent it from becoming one large block.
Icehouses were common along railroad tracks in the Chicago area, in part because so much of the meat and railroad industry was based there. Rail lines transported goods to both the East and West coasts.
In homes, the use of iceboxes became common. A block of ice would be placed in a compartment separate from the food and beverages to keep the items cold.
Homeowners would order blocks weighing anywhere from 25 to 100 pounds to be delivered by an iceman.
The ice harvesting and trade was replaced in the middle of the 20th century by mechanical refrigerators and freezers, which are household staples still in use today.
Andrea Field is the curator of history at Naper Settlement. For more information, go to www.NaperSettlement.org.
Steve Metsch is a freelance reporter for the Naperville Sun.