The street is noted for several historical landmarks situated on it, most notably the Club Lusitano and the Old Dairy Farm Depot.

During the First Opium War, the British occupied Hong Kong in 1841 and one year later, the territory was ceded to them in the Treaty of Nanking.

[2] The building eventually lent its name to the street it was situated on; it was Hong Kong's only source of ice, because that there were no "commercial ice-making facilities" in the colony.

The next landmark on the route is the flight of stairs that descend onto Duddell Street and contain four gas lamps from the 1870s that are declared monuments.

Although the current skyscraper is located in the same place as a former building that stood on the site until 1987, the old complex's address was 9 Ice House Street.