By JOSEPH OETTINGER JR.
Special to Pascack Press
WESTWOOD—One summer Saturday in 1958, I accompanied my father in one of my grandfather’s trucks to a location on the north side of Grand Avenue in Montvale, just west of the Octagon House. There we picked up ice for an event sponsored by the Emerson Fire Department behind Linwood School.
A man at the establishment separated chunks from a large block with an ice pick. We transported the ice in wide, round galvanized tubs.
That cooling method was nearing the cusp of change. By the late 1960s, convenient plastic-bagged ice cubes would become readily available at local food and liquor stores.
Our kitchen refrigerator in the 1950s was a Sears Coldspot electric unit with a small freezer compartment in the upper center; it required periodic manual defrosting. My parents still called it the icebox, suggesting their familiarity with an earlier refrigeration technology.
When researching Westwood’s early history, I never encountered the term “icebox,” but people obviously had them in homes and businesses to preserve perishables. Iceboxes were typically made of wood and lined with tin or zinc.
Ice for the iceboxes came from businesses that harvested it from lakes and ponds in winter. The ice was stored in warehouses and insulated with straw and sawdust. Local news archives offer a glimpse of Westwood’s early ice industry.
As Westwood’s railroad village began to blossom after rail service arrived in 1870, a market emerged for commercially harvested ice. An 1873 account reported that Robert Yates had built an ice house north of Westwood Avenue along the Pascack Brook near Hillsdale. He began harvesting from a pond along the brook in early 1874. By 1876, he reportedly had more than 100 tons stored and began offering it for sale at 40 cents per 100 pounds.
Around December 1876, Thomas E. Brickell (1848–1919) built an ice house 16 feet wide by 30 feet deep. Brickell operated a butcher shop on the west side of present-day 54–68 Westwood Avenue and undoubtedly required a reliable supply of ice for his meat business. The account did not specify the ice house’s location, but it was likely behind his shop.
In about November 1888, Brickell bought six lots from his uncle, George T. Brickell (1801–1896), near the northeast corner of Railroad Avenue (now Broadway) and Lake Street. He created an ice pond by diverting water from the Pascack Brook and completed construction of an ice house around January 1889. Brickell’s ice business received liberal press coverage.
In August 1889, Brickell enlarged his pond, and in December 1889 he invested in a patent hoister for his ice house. In late March 1890, he received a shipment of 105 tons of ice from Oneida Lake, suggesting that, at least initially, he imported ice to supplement his harvest.
In November 1893, Brickell again enlarged and deepened his ice pond. In February 1894, he filled one of his ice houses with a crop of 10-inch-thick ice — an account indicating the operation included multiple ice houses by that time.
In October 1894, an “ice famine” hit Westwood after an unusually warm winter. Local dealers’ inventories were exhausted, and residents were obliged to drive to Meister’s Mills at Peetzburg (a section of present-day New Milford) to obtain ice.
By January 1895, the ice famine had ended. Yates’ pond yielded a fine crop, and Brickell began filling his ice houses with 10-inch-thick ice. Around December 1895, and again in September 1896, Brickell enlarged his pond yet again. In about January 1897, he purchased several adjoining lots to further expand production.
In November 1899, Robert Yates erected an additional house for the storage of ice.
On April 5, 1901, a news account reported that Robert Yates, 24, had died of scarlet fever. The account noted he was unmarried and conducted the ice business in Westwood. Based on his age, he could not have been the same Robert Yates who established the business in 1873; he was most likely a descendant or relative.
The turn of the 20th century brought ownership transfers for Westwood’s two ice operations. In November 1901, Peter W. Demarest purchased the ice business of the late Robert Yates. Between July 1901 and November 1902, William Bartsch purchased Thomas E. Brickell’s ice business.
Editor’s note: Joseph Oettinger Jr. is a local historian, and author of “Ultimate Pascack Classics” & “Westwood Classics: Select News Accounts From the Early History of the Pascack Valley & Westwood, N.J. (Six Miles West of the Hudson),” a two-volume collection of vivid news vignettes from the late 1800s and early 1900s.