From the Bryant Room Archives
by Myrna Sloam

Charles Woodin's Ice Plant by Roy Moger

The following is an excerpt from a story written by Roy Moger (1907-1990) author of Roslyn Then & Now and former Roslyn Village Historian. The complete text is available in the library's Local History Collection.

Do young people today ever wonder how their grandparents kept their food refrigerated before the electrical age? I guess, that if they were asked, they would say, "They used ice." And they would be right. But would they know where the ice came from? When I was a boy, during the first quarter of the twentieth century here in Roslyn, there were two sources of ice: one was natural ice, and the other was manufactured ice.

Natural ice was cut from the various ponds in the area during the winter season. The largest pond and the nearest, was the grist mill pond, known today as Silver Lake. The ice on this pond was often eight to ten inches thick. It was cut and stored in an ice house at the northeast side of the pond behind Desson's butcher shop on East Broadway. The cakes of ice were cut by hand with a long saw with large teeth. The area to be cut was marked off on the ice in a large grid. This was done with a horse pulling a scraping device with teeth, which cut lines on the ice. As the cakes were sawed out they were drawn up into the ice house by a horse. The cakes of ice were secured by a pair of tongs to a rope, which went over a pulley fastened at the peak of the roof to the ice house and then returned to the pond where it was attached to the horse. As the horse walked out on the ice away from the ice house, the cake of ice was pulled up a slide and into the ice house.

The ice house was built with insulated walls and each layer of ice placed in the ice house was covered with saw dust as insulation for the next layer. The cutting of the ice left open water, which would freeze during the next cold spell, giving the skaters beautiful black ice to skate on until the next snow. Eventually, when the ice became thick enough, it would be cut again and stored in the ice house. The next summer some of the ice would be used by the butcher and the rest sold house-to-house from an ice wagon. Thus the householders were supplied with ice for their refrigerators or iceboxes….
During my boyhood natural ice was gradually being supplanted by manufactured ice. In Roslyn, an ice plant had been built on the east side of Hempstead Harbor just south of what is now the boundary line between the Village of Roslyn and the Village of Roslyn Harbor. It was built on a pier which extended out to the channel so that coal barges could be brought in on the tide and tied up at the south side of the pier. This ice plant was owned by Charles Woodin, who lived on the corner of West Shore Road and Mott Avenue. That is, on the old corner of West Shore Road, and Mott Avenue, which is now covered by the western approach to the Roslyn Viaduct….

Charles Woodin's ice plant was one of the largest buildings in Roslyn. It was several stories high with a tall chimney held in place by a number of long metal wires. The sides of the building and the roof were covered by corrugated iron sheets. I don't remember any windows, but there must have been some, probably on the dock side of the building. I do remember the loading platform on the east side of the building. It was built so that it was level with the bed of the ice wagons that came there for ice. There were no windows on the east side of the building and only two doors, a regular size door that a man could walk through and a very small door, just large enough to allow a 300-pound cake of ice through.

There was an electric bell button at the side of the door. When the button was pushed it rang a bell somewhere way inside the building, which aroused the person inside, who called out to inquire what was wanted. Billy Jenkins, who worked for my father, would answer by calling out, "fifty pounds for Moger." Within a few minutes the small door would fly open and out would slide a fifty-pound piece of ice onto the platform and the little door would snap shut again. Billy would cover the piece of ice with a burlap bag, which he had ready. He would slide it over to the edge of the platform near our cart. We would come down off the platform. Billy would lift the piece of ice into the cart. We would get in and hurry home to get the ice into our icebox before too much of it had melted away…. The ice business was very problematical to say the least, but to the housewife, refrigeration and the preservation of food was a constant worry. Now with electric refrigeration this worry has been reduced to a minimum…..

NOTE: According to a newspaper clipping in the Local History Collection, Charles Woodin's ice plant began operation in 1909 and had the capacity to make 15 tons of ice a day.

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Email: localhistory@bryantlibrary.org

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