The Ice Box – Pre Refrigerator
In the period before refrigerators were available households kept perishables cool by using an ice box. Usually a wooden box that was lined with zinc and other insulating materials the ice box was the smaller, less efficient, ancestor of our refrigerator.
Ice for the ice box was supplied by the iceman who delivered it through neighborhoods during the 19th and early 20th century on a wagon and then truck ice chunk. The family would buy a big chunk of ice that would fit into what is now the freezer. Many times chunks of ice would be chipped of to cool drinks or for making ice cream. The big ice chunk would last about a week and in most cases the melted ice was collected at the bottom of the icebox in a drip pan.
The items you wanted really cold such as milk or butter you would put up next to the ice. in what has evolved to be the freezer compartment.
Browsing through issues of Reminisce magazine you often come upon many contributors who have fond remembrances of the iceman handing out slivers of ice to the neighborhood children who came running when they spotted him.
You may still find some people that refer to the every day refrigerator as the ice box. My grandmother just calls it “the box”.
You can find revamped ice boxes today in homes where people have turned them into snazzy cupboards holding everything from kitchen staples to electronics.
“The icebox should be placed where it will not get the heat from the kitchen range. The best arrangement is to place it near the outer wall and have a side door cut to permit the iceman to place the ice in the ice chamber from the outside, thus saving the floor from his dirty wet footsteps. If this outer door is provided with a chain to hold it partly open during the winter months, the ice bill for this period will be nil, and in a short time the saving in ice will pay for the extra expense of the door. The most sanitary way of draining the icebox is to have it connected by a pipe with a small sink in the cellar. This sink should drain into the sewer. To drain the pipe direct from icebox to sewer will result in sewer gas rising and filling the icebox and poisoning the food. “
~ Putnam’s Household Handbook
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