The Ice House

The Ice House. DeBary Hall Historic Site. One of deBarys’ early outbuildings was this frame ice house. From the retreat’s start in the 1870s, it would have been helpful to visitors and cooks., At first, the estate’s ice came from northern rivers, and lakes, and ice farms. Packed in sawdust, the blocks arrived at Jacksonville in ocean vessels, loaded into warehouses or river steams. How much ice survived the trip to Enterprise? One area settler reported hurrying to her town’s landing, only to find ice packed in a barrel yielded mostly “a wet barrel.” , Even so, some ice definitely reached DeBary Hall. It cooled beef and sea turtles in the ice house while also supplying the kitchen’s big ice box. In time, local plants furnished ice in this region; and later, electric refrigerators made ice boxes themselves obsolete. By then, the old ice house had become a storage shed., (captions) , The final destination for ice, DeBary Hall’s ice box. Among its features was a floor drain for melt-water. Photo courtesy of Jeff Crumbley., DeBary Hall and the ice house (left background). One reason for the darkness in this 1890s photo is that both buildings are mustard colored, not white. The ice house stands west (to our left) of its current location, but when and why it was moved are not clear. Detail from an image in the Florida Photographic Collection/State Archives., An 1882 map of deBary estate, with its ice house highlighted in yellow. Since the early retreat had few structures, this building must have been a priority. Detail from a survey by D.D. Rogers, courtesy of the Halifax Historical Museum., One item in the DeBary Hall diet. The family returned from fishing trips to New Smyrna Beach with sea turtles that were salted and stored in the ice house until cooks butchered them for soup. Hand-colored print (view of a restaurant kitchen) from Harper’s Weekly, January 1884. Courtesy of the Marine Science Center, Ponce Inlet.