Ice House

Ice House. Belle Meade Plantation. , In 1820 John Harding immensely improved his quality of life by constructing a six-room, brick federal style house on his property. Not long after finishing his new home he set to work on another improvement, building an ice house. An ice house was the next step for him in refining the status of his growing estate., Ice houses became an essential part of American culture prior to electric refrigeration. Beginning in 1799, ships carrying New England ice, insulated in sawdust, brought ice to the warmer regions of the American South. As plantation owners learned to insulate their stored ice with grass, or later sawdust, ice houses were used to store food and other perishable items. The shape of an ice house is very important to the structure's functionality. “The best form of an ice house would be that of a globe. Because that would have the greatest bulk with the least surface. Such a shaped house however would be inconvenient and expensive to construct. The next best is a cylinder. Practically, however, an inverted truncated cone will give all the advantages of a cylindrical form with the further advantage of being more economical in construction and in keeping and repair. The worst possible form is a cubical or a square ice house. For the corners of the ice in such a house will always melt away and leave the mass of ice round.” , The Western Manufacturer, Vol. 13, 1885., The location of the ice house at Belle Meade was re-discovered in 1982 during a two-week archaeological dig conducted on the property. It had long been assumed that the circular foundations adjoining the dairy were those of the ice house. Archaeological investigations in the summer of 1982, however, revealed that these were the foundations of a structure to house the steam engines which ran the family dairy operations. Additional research conducted during the second week of that two-week season turned up a recently acquired photograph which revealed the edge of a previously unknown structure in the front lawn of the mansion. Test units in that area uncovered the limestone foundations of the ice house on an approximate diagonal between the house and the dairy., The ice house was an important part of the property until it was replaced by ice boxes and refrigerators. Once the ice house became less of a necessity, it was removed from the property by a controlled burn, pushed in on itself, and the hole filled in. Today's ice house is a replica of the one that stood on the property during the 19th century and it is used to show the importance of ice on a site like Belle Meade., Captions: , Top: Image reveals a portion of the Belle Meade ice house with its distinctive cone shape , Middle: Archaeologist (left) is shown using G.P.R. (Ground Penetrating Radar) to determine the exact location of the original Belle Meade ice house. Radar image (right) reveals the round shape of the ice house foundation. , Bottom: Below are examples of 19th century ice houses . This historical marker is in Nashville in Davidson County Tennessee