Ice House - Glen Rose, TX
N 32° 14.088 W 097° 45.359
14S E 617206 N 3567140
A sign placed by the Somervell County Historical Commission and the Glen Rose-Somervell County Chamber of Commerce describes the days of ice houses, and how this historic model was put to good use on hot days.
Waymark Code: WM1226D
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 02/07/2020
Views: 5
The sign reads:
In the days before refrigerators, passing by this ice house conjured up visions of ice cream or iced tea. What little child couldn't visualize cold homemade ice cream on a hot summer's day? And what adult, who had been working hard outside and swigging luke-warm water from a jar, couldn't wait to get back to the house at dinner time to drink a cold glass of tea made from ice chipped off a block? Texas summers can be brutal without the luxuries of air conditioning or refrigerators. There was no such thing as "cold" in the summer until technology prevailed, unless it was one of Glen Rose's famous springs and artesian wells
Ice was manufactured elsewhere and brought to this little stone house in huge blocks of perhaps 50 or 100 pounds. Sawdust or straw insulated around the blocks: an old quilt or gunny sack provided insulation for the trip home. Depending on the size of an icebox in the kitchen, one of these blocks fit nicely in there to preserve milk, butter, and cooked food. This one innovation helped keep people from getting sick from nearly-spoiled food.
In the early days of Glen Rose, community picnics were held in the park near the mill. Vendors of lemonade put blocks of ice in washtubs with the lemonade and hawked their product: "Ice cold Lemonade! Made in th' shade — stirred with a spade! Good enough for any old maid!" Cost: 5 cents per cup. And the cup was rinsed in cold water and used by the next customer! As someone said, "That was the days before germs!"
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This ice house is a contributing building to the Glen Rose Downtown Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places, and their Registration Form (see URL, below) provides some good reading:
The windowless limestone Ice House on West Elm Street is one of the most striking of all the structures on the Glen Rose Courthouse Square. Measuring 9 feet 2 inches wide and 9 feet 1 inch deep, the vault-like structure has a single 6-foot 8-inch tall heavy wooden door bearing a substantial iron latch and two hinges. All four walls are comprised of roughly shaped limestone set into mortar. The top of the ice house is covered with a shed-style wooden framework supporting a roof covering of v-crimp galvanized steel sheet material. Across the front, supported on heavy wires, is a wooden awning covered with galvanized corrugated sheet steel. An iron pipe protrudes from the back side approximately 8 feet 4 inches above ground level.
The Ice House was constructed about 1930 by unknown parties. Long-time Glen Rose residents remember paying for ice taken from the vault at the adjacent Glen Rose Produce Company. The building kept 50- and 100-pound blocks of ice that had been produced elsewhere sufficiently cool that they remained solid until sold to retail customers. These consumers then used the blocks of ice to keep perishable foods cool in their kitchen ice boxes or sometimes chipped it up for use in freezers to prepare homemade ice cream.
Group that erected the marker: Somervell County Historical Commission, Glen Rose-Somervell County Chamber of Commerce
URL of a web site with more information about the history mentioned on the sign: [Web Link]
Address of where the marker is located. Approximate if necessary:
109 W Elm St
Glen Rose, TX USA
76043
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