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This was the village ice house. The
building was set into the hillside and below ground. The
roof was covered with dirt and sod; a big chestnut door
sealed in the ice which was cut from several ponds here in
the village and stored in sawdust, keeping cold year
round.
During the later years of village
occupation, Cooper & Hewitt Company built several large
ice houses at the end of the rail line at Sterling, New
York, right on the state border. The lake used to freeze
over then, and in a good year, as many as 350 railroad cars
could be filled with ice in the summer and sent down to
cities like Newark, Paterson or Jersey City. Once at its
destination, ice was loaded onto a wagon and driven around
the streets where people would order a block or two. The ice
man would carry it up with his tongs and they would but it
into their wooden box called an ... "ice box".
