Akron Ice House
Coordinates: 41°05′13″N 81°30′42″W / 41.086957°N 81.5115458°W
History
| The Klages Coal & Ice Company at Bluff and N. Summit streets in Akron, Ohio. Klages Coal & Ice was co-founded in 1888 by German immigrants Henry Klages and August Blessman. In the early 1900s, the business was passed on to their sons, Louis Klages and Water Blessman. In 1939, the company opened the Iceland outdoor skate rink next to its East Market plant. In 1947, Klages opened the Royal Crown Bottling Co. plant. It remained a soft-drink company through the 1980s. |
In the 1880s, German immigrant Henry Klages won the exclusive right to harvest the ice on Blue Pond in East Akron. Klages Coal and Ice Co. eventually took over the cutting at Summit Lake and the Ohio & Erie Canal, packing more than 5,000 tons a year. Klages tilted the odds in his favor when he built an artificial ice plant at Bluff and Summit streets in 1891. Using new technology, he condensed, heated and filtered water, then poured it into canisters that were submerged in a salt brine and chilled with ammonia. As Akron’s population rose, the city’s ponds and lakes became polluted with industrial waste and raw sewage, necessitating a move away from traditional ice harvesting from local ponds and lakes.
Dr. Armin Sicherman, an Akron physician, became a leading opponent of “natural ice,” insisting that it presented a grave danger to public health.
“Here is a body of water exposed to contamination from the air,” he explained in 1905. “There are always germs of infectious disease floating about in the air and these are communicated to the water, to mention the more direct and positive contamination from sewage and surface drainage.
“The water freezes and the germs are in the water. The freezing does not kill the germs for they are very resistant to cold and they remain in the ice until liberated by its melting when placed in water, or milk, or in contact with food taken into the system.
“Upon the other hand, artificial ice being produced from distilled water, which is practically sterile, there can be no contamination.”
Artificial ice could be made all year and didn’t depend on the whims of nature. Furthermore, it was a lot cleaner.
Known uses for the Building located at 129 North Summit Street have been:
• Royal Crown Bottling Company 1947
External links
http://www.ohio.com/news/local-history-ice-harvest-a-cold-slice-of-ohio-s-past-1.256549