Knickerbocker Ice Company in Baltimore

    As I am a recent transplant from Manhattan to the Charm City, I thought that for my first blog entry, it was fitting to highlight a little bit of New York that was once a very important business in Baltimore.  As I was sightseeing with a friend from Toronto this holiday season, I was slightly perplexed to encounter a historical photograph of the Inner Harbor containing a historical remembrance of a now bygone company that was uniquely attributed to New York City.

    The Knickerbocker Ice Company, incorporated in 1855 and headquartered in New York City, operated in Manhattan from a pier at West 20th Street on the Hudson River as well as Washington, Philadelphia, and Baltimore during the period of 1895-1899.  Most of the natural ice during this time was 'harvested' from upstate New York east of Rockland Lake and brought by barge down the Hudson River to New York City where it was further distributed by either boat or train to its Philadelphia location.  This location controlled the natural ice output to southern cities such as Baltimore and Washington.  The years of 1890, 1906, and 1913 were extremely warm and caused equal extremes in price fluctuations and a great deal of public distrust and disgruntlement over the ice trade and access to this valuable commodity.

    In Baltimore, the Knickerbocker Ice Company was located in the Inner Harbor at the foot of Federal Hill (as visualized in the colorized postcard, above, and a black and white photograph circa 1906, right, courtesy of the Detroit Publishing Company). It owned several ice industry railroad tracks along the edge of Baltimore's Inner Harbor which were often leased to other local businesses.

    The Knickerbocker Ice Company (at large) was sold in 1896 and The Sun reported on July 7, 1899 that it was to be merged with the Consolidated Ice Company to form the American Ice Company.  As it turned out, the American Ice Company succeeded in attaining monopoly control of the market and the establishment of "the ice trust." According to a May 1933 Fortune article, "Water Still Freezes," within three years from the time the trust was estabilished, it would be on the brink of bankruptcy but successfully revitalized itself by the early1920s virtually all of its business was in manufactured ice.  By the early years of the twentieth century, refrigeration cooling systems and their "plant ice" replaced natural ice production such that this unique trade commodity became vastly less valued.

    While there are no visible signs of the Knickerbocker Ice Company in Baltimore to this day, it is interesting to note that the American Ice Company of Baltimore ice manufacturing plant (listed in both the National Register of Historic Places and the Maryland Historic Trust) can be found at 330 W23rd Street, Baltimore, Maryland.