Salisbury Ice House
Salisbury, North Carolina
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This foreboding building is known as the Salisbury Ice House. Starting in 1912, the Salisbury Ice and Fuel Co. offered coal, as well as the large blocks of ice that were commonly used in iceboxes as an early form of refrigeration. It helped local residents battle the heat of Southern summers by providing citizens with the ice produced onsite and stored inside its windowless, thick walls that acted like a giant, insulated cooler. Trucks would be lined up and the blocks were plentiful on the hottest days. The ice house operations were expanded in 1932, despite concerns surrounding an accidental ammonia leak. Flammable and toxic ammonia is commonly used as a chemical in commercial refrigeration operations even to this day; citizens were concerned that the ammonia was trapped inside the ice being sold to them. In the early 20th century, it wasn’t uncommon for food safety to be a very real concern. However, those worries were shortly forgotten when that building-sized cooler caught the attention of Lion Beer, and it became a distributor at the end of Prohibition in 1933. The Salisbury Ice and Fuel Co. expanded and grew until after World War II when refrigerated train cars became common. The need for ice blocks declined as more modern refrigeration practices were put in place and by the 1960s, they closed.
In addition to its industrial history, the land serving as the foundation for this imposing structure was once very closely tied to a Civil War prison, and there are tales of activity associated with the land, the building, and the surrounding area. |
1 Investigation at this location:
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