Kirby Garage: Was it Originally an Ice House?
Before refrigerators were readily available, ice houses were common on farms. During the winter freeze, blocks of ice could be cut and harvested from ponds, then stored in an insulated ice house for use in summer. When the time came, the blocks would typically be delivered to homes, where they would be stored in ice boxes. An ice box was an insulated cabinet for perishable food. It had a compartment on top where the ice block would be placed on a tray to keep the food below it cool.
The possibility of an ice house in the Kirby estate was first mentioned by Barb Quayle and Nan Stomberg, Senior Girl Scouts who wrote a history of Camp Julia Crowell during summer camp in 1965. Their work is mostly accurate. The only thing wrong was their claim that the Nature Hut has been originally used as an ice house. At first, I dismissed this idea. The Nature Hut is in an awkward location. Why would anyone haul heavy ice up a steep path, drop it over the side of the hill, onto the porch, and finally slide it into an uninsulated building? No. But yet… they got everything else right. They tracked down plenty of other details that were generally lost by the 1990s. The idea of an ice house must have come from somewhere. Kirby himself and many people who knew him were still alive when the girls did their research. Maybe they were onto something. It couldn’t have been the Nature Hut. But it could have been the garage, which the girls overlooked entirely. Not surprising. Who notices a seemingly plain old garage when there’s a mill and a bouncy dance hall nearby?
At the time that Kirby House was built in 1921, the first refrigerators were available for home use. But according to historian Tom James, many people distrusted them. The chemical refrigerant was sulfur dioxide which was both toxic and stinky. Commercial refrigerators at the time used ammonia – a technology that many people associated with the fires and final, dramatic refrigerator explosion at the 1893 Chicago World Fair. ”When electrically powered [refrigerators] became available in the 1910s many people still preferred to stick with ice. In North America, the icebox remained the dominant form of domestic refrigeration until well onto the 1920s.”
Kirby, being a genius for cutting edge domestic gadgets, may have been OK with the risk. Certainly, by 1936, when the Kirby estate went up for sale, he had acquired a Frigidaire unit. Fridges had upgraded to freon by then, generally safe as long as it was contained. However, the Kirbys' kitchen also held “a large, stone-lined ice box”. This suggests that they probably started with the ice box and later added the fridge.
Considering that Kirbys had a pond located close to their house, it would be reasonable to imagine that they harvested ice, at least for their own use. It would be equally reasonable to guess that their ice house, if they had one, would be situated between the pond and their house; close enough to both to make transport relatively easy in both summer and winter. While many traditional ice houses were conical, plenty were basically insulated, windowless, sheds. Further insulation could be obtained by building the shed into a hillside. The Kirby garage fits all the qualifications.
The Kirbys did not keep many records. We will probably never know for sure whether the garage started as an ice house, but just the probability adds to the richness of RHP’s intriguing cultural landscape. It’s another example of how Americans moved from the pre-industrial world to the adaptations of electricity.
Sources:
Buckeye Agricultural Museum and Education Center http://www.buckeyeagriculturalmuseum.com/ 877 West Old Lincoln Way / Wooster, OH 44691
History of Early American Landscape Design https://heald.nga.gov/mediawiki/index.php/Icehouse Accessed Dec 4, 2024
Tom Jackson. Chilled: How Refrigeration Changed the World and Might Do So Again 2015, Bloomsbury Sigma
Kirby estate, 1936 Real estate listing
Quayle/Stomberg History Project https://www.friendsofrhp.org/quaylestomberg-history-project.html
The possibility of an ice house in the Kirby estate was first mentioned by Barb Quayle and Nan Stomberg, Senior Girl Scouts who wrote a history of Camp Julia Crowell during summer camp in 1965. Their work is mostly accurate. The only thing wrong was their claim that the Nature Hut has been originally used as an ice house. At first, I dismissed this idea. The Nature Hut is in an awkward location. Why would anyone haul heavy ice up a steep path, drop it over the side of the hill, onto the porch, and finally slide it into an uninsulated building? No. But yet… they got everything else right. They tracked down plenty of other details that were generally lost by the 1990s. The idea of an ice house must have come from somewhere. Kirby himself and many people who knew him were still alive when the girls did their research. Maybe they were onto something. It couldn’t have been the Nature Hut. But it could have been the garage, which the girls overlooked entirely. Not surprising. Who notices a seemingly plain old garage when there’s a mill and a bouncy dance hall nearby?
At the time that Kirby House was built in 1921, the first refrigerators were available for home use. But according to historian Tom James, many people distrusted them. The chemical refrigerant was sulfur dioxide which was both toxic and stinky. Commercial refrigerators at the time used ammonia – a technology that many people associated with the fires and final, dramatic refrigerator explosion at the 1893 Chicago World Fair. ”When electrically powered [refrigerators] became available in the 1910s many people still preferred to stick with ice. In North America, the icebox remained the dominant form of domestic refrigeration until well onto the 1920s.”
Kirby, being a genius for cutting edge domestic gadgets, may have been OK with the risk. Certainly, by 1936, when the Kirby estate went up for sale, he had acquired a Frigidaire unit. Fridges had upgraded to freon by then, generally safe as long as it was contained. However, the Kirbys' kitchen also held “a large, stone-lined ice box”. This suggests that they probably started with the ice box and later added the fridge.
Considering that Kirbys had a pond located close to their house, it would be reasonable to imagine that they harvested ice, at least for their own use. It would be equally reasonable to guess that their ice house, if they had one, would be situated between the pond and their house; close enough to both to make transport relatively easy in both summer and winter. While many traditional ice houses were conical, plenty were basically insulated, windowless, sheds. Further insulation could be obtained by building the shed into a hillside. The Kirby garage fits all the qualifications.
The Kirbys did not keep many records. We will probably never know for sure whether the garage started as an ice house, but just the probability adds to the richness of RHP’s intriguing cultural landscape. It’s another example of how Americans moved from the pre-industrial world to the adaptations of electricity.
Sources:
Buckeye Agricultural Museum and Education Center http://www.buckeyeagriculturalmuseum.com/ 877 West Old Lincoln Way / Wooster, OH 44691
History of Early American Landscape Design https://heald.nga.gov/mediawiki/index.php/Icehouse Accessed Dec 4, 2024
Tom Jackson. Chilled: How Refrigeration Changed the World and Might Do So Again 2015, Bloomsbury Sigma
Kirby estate, 1936 Real estate listing
Quayle/Stomberg History Project https://www.friendsofrhp.org/quaylestomberg-history-project.html