Ice Harvesting on Moody Pond, c. 1940. The raft of ice shown will be cut into between 60 and 100 cakes of ice. The ice house is in the background at left (Syracuse Post Standard, February 25, 1940) 
Ice Harvesting on Moody Pond, c. 1940. The initial raft of ice (see photo at right) has been cut into strips that are then reduced to 300-pound cakes that are lifted by a conveyor belt into the ice house. (Syracuse Post Standard, February 25, 1940) 
Ice Harvesting on Moody Pond, c. 1940. Mount Baker is in the background at left (Syracuse Post Standard, February 25, 1940)
Address: 94 Forest Hill Avenue
Old Address: 45 East Pine Street
Other names: Boyce and Roberson Ice House
Year built: c. 1890
William L. Steven
"Pond House in the Snow" (cropped). Photo: Beth Glover
45 East Pine Street was the site of an enormous ice house owned by Boyce and Roberson. An inclined ramp for hauling ice up into the building extended out into the pond. This property comes with a quit-claim deed for ice-harvesting rights over a large fan-shaped expanse of Moody Pond. After refrigeration came into use, and sometime after 1940, the ice house became derelict and was torn down, but the concrete edge of the footing can still be seen in the lawn, and defines its enormous dimensions. The building apparently had no slab, so that water from the melting ice could seep into the ground.
The ice in the photographs was 10 to 15 inches thick, and was cut at temperatures between zero and ten below zero. About five thousand tons of ice was cut in 1940, about half of which would be lost to melting.
Adirondack Daily Enterprise, May 22, 1952
Old Icehouse Gone From Moody Pond
To many Saranac Lake folk it was only an ungainly building — a detraction from the shores of Moody Pond and an ever threatening danger to trespassers, but to others it will always hold memories of fishing from the dock, a game of hide and seek or just a good dressing room before a swim in the nearby water.
Today the old Boyce and Roberson icehouse is materially nothing but a pile of lumber worth about $400 — the labor cost of tearing it down after it was condemned by village authorities.
Originally built in the 1890s and owned by the Meagher Ice Co., the place was purchased by Boyce and Roberson in 1925. In 1929 the building was rebuilt. And yesterday it was torn down.
In its day the old icehouse had harvested as many as 10,000 tons of ice a year to supply its users. It was used less and less each year and finally not at all after artificial ice was shipped to Saranac Lake from Utica.
The building was torn down by the Bishop Wrecking Co., of Plattsburg. Workers were unable to salvage some natural ice that had been stored some seven or eight years ago.
The wrecking company is the same firm that removed such old landmarks as Riverside Inn and the Algonquin Hotel.
There are no immediate plans for the site the%old ice house occupied over the years. Boyce and Roberson has completed installation of a modern cooling unit at their storehouse on Mills avenue that acommodates as much as two carloads of artificial ice. The new system eliminates a great waste— the problem always presented with the storage of natural ice.
Sources:
- William Kollecker, brief historic film footage of the ice house in operation, in the Adirondack Room of the Saranac Lake Free Library.
- "Harvesting Ice at Saranac," Syracuse Sunday Post-Standard, February 25, 1940.
See also: Ice Harvesting
Comments
2011-04-21 16:37:36 thats so cool i did not know that they did that —74.79.123.141
