HISTORIC SITES

This is a good time of the year to think about what used to be a big industry in the Town of Bethlehem. It was cutting ice out of the Hudson River, storing it in ice houses for local use and sending it down by barge to New York City. There used to be about 134 ice houses up and down the river. In a good season they cut as much as 2 million tons of ice out of the river. They have a fancy name today when they talk about this industry - it is called “Ice Harvesting”.

Not too far from where our Association building is located there was a big ice house. When you drive down Barent Winnie Road on your way to the Henry Hudson Park you will notice on your left side on top of a hill the big white house that was built in 1907 as a summer house for then Governor of New York, Martin Glynn. Going on down the road on the left you will notice 2 stone lions. They were there at the entrance to the J.B. Lyon’s estate which no longer exists because it was destroyed in a fire. Going down the road on the right side is a very big white house. This was the home of the owner of the Ice House. His name was George Best. His ice house was located just down the road on the river. George Best was a lumberman who came to this area from Saratoga to build a home and start an ice business. When Mr. Best died in 1918, his widow sold the business to another ice man - Mr. Schifferdicker.

In our Tollgate building we have some ice equipment and there is a letter in there written by Mr. Schifferdicker’s son, G. B. Schifferdicker. I think very few people have taken time to read it, so we are going to publish it in this issue for you to read and to picture what it looked like when the ice business was big in the Town of Bethlehem.

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ICE AND ICE HOUSES By: G. B. Schifferdicker

Bill Waldbilling asked me to write about the ice business along the Hudson River. When my father’s ice house burned in 1925, I was only seven years old, so you can see my memory is dim.

My grandfather, Charles F. Schifferdicker, started our ice business in the late 1880’s or earlier. I believe my father took over about 1910.

About all of the stored ice of that period was harvested from the river, but when the Troy dam was built and the river was deepened and little by little pollution set in, many of the ice companies made artificial lakes five to eight feet deep and took their ice from these sources.

I can recall only three of these ponds, as they were called, Kelly’s in Kenwood, where crushing plant is now, my father and one in front of Mrs. Mable Thorn’s house.

My father’s pond was filled each fall by 18 inch wooden pipe line running from a dam (still there) across the Vlaumanskill creek (at Cedar Hill) in front of the J.B. Lyon’s farm house. This pond covered 20-30 acres. In the spring of the year the pond was drained and corn was raised on the rich flat bottoms.

Of course ice cutting depended mainly on cold weather usually mid-December and January. The lightest ice my father would take was 10 inches thick.

I remember cakes of ice cloudy on top (snow ice) and clear on the bottom. Snow ice was made by tapping the ice field thru the snow. Tapping was done by driving a sharply pointed iron bar at an angle thru thin (3-4 inches) ice. These bars weighed 10-14 lbs. Water would come through the holes in the ice and flood the snow which froze and made thicker ice.

During ice cutting I think my father hired about 40 men more or less. I imagine there are a lot of men still around who work on the ice. (Mr. Henry Meyer)

A day work of cutting and storing ice was a long one, daylight to dark, about 9-10 hours and it was hard work.

Sometimes additional snow had to be scrapped off the ice field by large horse drawn scrapers. Cutting the ice in the field was done by gasoline driven circular saws pulled by two men. This saw was mounted on sled runners and pulled easily.

Cakes of ice about 10’ x 12’ (I’m not sure of the size) were cut and barred loose to be pike-poled up on open canal to what were known as basin saw’s. There were two sets of these set at right angles to each other. These saws were a series of gang saws with 40” circular blades driven by huge electric motors (I couldn’t even guess the horsepower?)

The first set of saws were 24” apart, the second set were 36” apart. The large cakes of ice were poled through the first set of saws which cut several strips nearly through the ice. Then without turning the large cake it was run through the other set of saws which gave you several cakes of ice 24” x 36”. These cakes were then barred apart sent up the elevator and into the ice house to be stored in tiers with a layer of salt hay between each tier.

Salt hay came from the Atlantic coast salt marshes and was used because it did not rot.

In the summer ice barges would come up river from New York City and tied up at the dock on the river side of the ice house.

These barges were quite large as I remember about 25’ x 60 to 70’ and about 7’ deep. The stored ice was barred loose in the ice house, sent down a run and loaded into the barges and sent on its way. I believe the company my father did business with was the Knickerbocker Ice Co. of New York City.

Of course in Grandfather’s day the ice was delivered house to house, to saloons and markets by horse and wagon. I think the early 1900’s they had some of the liberty chain drive trucks.

This is just a small bit about the ice business. Just about every town and village along the river had one or more ice house. In this era there were houses at VanWies Point-Wheeler, Schmidt- - Paar Island (in the back of the old Abbey Inn on the river side - Staat Island across the river, Sunny-side across the river, Schodack across the river and so on down. On the side Schifferdicker, Baker Coeymans, Coxsackie, Catskill, Athens and on and on.

Of course with the coming of artificial ice and electric refrigerators natural ice was no longer needed, so there ended a multi-million dollar business.

Many of the old ice houses were used to grow mushrooms such as Frangella of Coeymans and Knaust of Catskill.

Pop always said natural ice was best because it melted slower.

Hope you can make sense out of this. I can’t. Jerry

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You can learn more about the ice business by renting our video or DVD entitled “Ice Harvesting” with Henry Meyer telling more about what it was like when he worked the ice in that Ice House for both Mr. Best and Mr. Schifferdicker.