Knickerbocker Ice Company

Before steam-powered conveyor belts, which were generally found in large icehouses, the company used ice cakes moved by either man or horse to fill the houses, which was extremely time consuming.

Frederic Tudor, of Boston, is believed to have created the first commercially owned icehouses and shipped ice internationally for profit.

Alfred Barmore rescued and revolutionized the industry by incorporating saws and horsepower to harvest ice more quickly and efficiently, and in larger quantities than before.

[6] Icehouses were doubled walled and insulated with sawdust, wood shavings, or straw to prevent heat from melting the ice during the warmer months.

[5] When this occurred, the price of ice doubled, setting off a wave of unrest and demonstrations by the public who felt they were being taken advantage of.

[7] Van Wyck was accused of conspiring to create an ice monopoly and it is believed the mayor and his brother were given $1.7 million in the trust’s stock.

[citation needed] In 1900, Van Wyck and the suspected city officials appeared before Justice William Jay Gaynor and told the court that Charles W. Morse, President of the American Ice Company, advised him to purchase these stocks, which he said, he never did.

President Wesley M. Oler took the stand for the company in 1911 when detectives traveled to Rockland Lake to find the icehouses packed with ice but no workers to load the product onto barges to New York City.

[8] When detectives dug deeper into the situation, they discovered Oler secretly made deals with other companies to purchase ice when they were suffering from deficiencies.

Oler told the court he searched for skilled workers to harvest ice during the warm season but was unsuccessful, which is the why these complications occurred while he was president of the company.

Two years later during the demolition of the remaining icehouses, one that was still filled with sawdust to insulate the ice caught fire and destroyed almost all of Rockland Lake Village.

Twenty years later, an abandoned icehouse in Washington Heights, Manhattan burned on December 13, 1946, destroying an adjacent apartment building at 2525 Amsterdam avenue at 184th street and killing 37 people.