Woodmont Orchards Ice House Threatened - Vote set for tommorrow

[Tracy Lee Carroll]

One of the moust photographed buildings in New Hampshire is endangered.
See NH Photo Tour blog post.

Hollis Selectment are scheduled to vote tomorrow on its fate.
PDF of agenda for August 11th


Hollis Selectmen

Vahrij Manoukian - Chairman
6 Ash Street
465-7100

David Petry - Vice Chairman
88 Federal Hill Road
465-7419

Mark Johnson
16 Spaulding Lane
465-3888

Mark LeDoux
64 Dow Road
465-2918

Frank Cadwell
71 Depot Road
465-3311

Can this structure be saved? Should it be saved? What are your thoughts?

[Lisa Jackson]

(There's a similar thing going on with the Haselton barn in Hudson - to save or not to save, and who gets to decide, and who gets to take care of the place if it's saved.)

What would be great is if some organization like the historical society could step in and try to keep it standing for as long as possible. Rebuilding would take a bit away from its 'personality', unless it was something that could be made into a publicly-accessible site - (have pics and the history of the building put inside the building, or something).
It's sad to see things fall apart, but it's photographable because of how it changes over time. It was interesting to note that there is some construction inside the ice house that is keeping it standing now.
I hope they leave it, or choose to salvage it and get it labeled as an historical building.

-Lisa

[Tracy Lee Carroll]

Where is the Haselton Barn in Hudson?

[Lisa Jackson]

it's on Bush Hill Road across from a big old white farm house (I grew up there and my folks still live there). The barn teeters between being declared an historical building and being torn down.

[Tracy Lee Carroll]

I will have to look next time I go past. I was unaware of this. What is the state of it now?

[Steven Bonacorsi]

Hi Tracy,

There's that old saying, "out with the old, in with the new" with some truth in these simple words. The old is discarded, although missed and valued, the cost and effort to support, is usually too great. The Woodmont Orchards Ice House would need a champion(s), like yourself, to make a case to prove it is safe, budget, value, support plan, and then execute.

Many only buildings survive today because they have been integrated into the new, without losing many of the features of the old, but there are still sacrafices. For example, a Woodmont Orchards Ice House is now a "Store", or a "Home", etc...

I do not have the answer to how to save the Woodmont Orchards Ice House. But I hope my thoughts spark some ideas on how you may leverage on the successes of other properties that have survived into new era's by finding a way to change with the times, while holding on to as much of its past as it's able.

Respectfully,

Steven Bonacorsi

[Tracy Lee Carroll]

Thank you Steven. I do understand that there are ramifications to keeping a property and justifications that need to be made in order to keep something like this.

I know in Hudson we have bantered back and forth on the Benson's property.

I also have just come from Hudson's Old Home Days today and a tour of the Alvirne home. What an amazing thing to peer back in history and what a treasure for the town to have such a wonderful place. I understand that the ice house needs a lot of work to "keep" it, but t just raze it doesn't seem like a plan where anyone wins.

Thank you for your comments. Hopefully something can be done to save it.

[Ed Karjala]

It is a shame to think of an icon like this being simply done away with. Given the ties to the past both historically and figuratively, it seems very reasonable to either keep the structure standing as long as possible with repairs or to build a faithful replica that will last much longer. Motif #1 in Rockport, MA is a good example of an historic structure that was rebuilt to maintain tradition. Too much of our history has been razed and built over already. I hope Hollis sees its way clear to keeping the Ice House in place for as long as possible.

[Tracy Lee Carroll]

Exactly! Thank you for your comment, Ed. I hope the town of Hollis sees this gem for what it is and what it represents.

[Kelda]

Save this structure! Too often our historic buildings are being demolished for modern buildings iand lots instead of renovated and preserved! NH should put itself on a path of preservation of both it's environment and history!

Preserving an historic building shouldn't be based on how much revenue it can bring to it's town or if a famous person had slept the night long ago. We should preserve to remember how life used to be and to teach the future generations what life was like here in NH and around New England. If it's destroyed, it will be one more piece of NH's history smothered and one step closer to forgetting our past.

[Tracy Lee Carroll]

Ice House, Chennai, and the Ice Trade: It’s history!
By che_david

July 9th, 2006 @ 3:05 PM Uncategorized

Can you believe that the original Ice House was a part of international trade and commerce? The Ice Trade to be exact. Of course you can, after all it was called the ‘Ice House’, wasn’t it? But wait, it’s much more than that. It was part of a chain of Ice Houses built by a young, enterprising entrepreneur from New England called Frederic Tudor. There’s even a book on the subject, called ‘The Frozen-Water Trade: A true story’ by Gavin Weightman. A review of the book on www.curledup.com (http://www.curledup.com/frozen.htm) says: The Frozen-Water Trade is a delightful history lesson. At a time when ice cream and iced drinks are de rigueur, it is hard to imagine that once ice was not in fashion, and that a young man named Frederic Tudor created our “addiction” to the commodity.

Frederic Tudor came from a fairly wealthy Bostonian family, one that believed in the merits of quality education. At the age of thirteen, Frederic decided to drop out of Boston Latin School where he had been sent in preparation for Harvard. Young Frederic concluded that “college was a waste of time” and spent idle days inventing gadgets at the family farm. At seventeen, he traveled to Cuba with his brother and discovered that he could not find any cool drinks: “he would have given anything for a lump of Rockwood ice when he felt the heat of Cuba that summer.” It was then that the Tudors decided to start a business in ice trading. Cold New England winters created tons of ice that essentially just went to waste come spring. Why not “harvest” this ice and ship it to warmer climates, and make a neat profit in the process?

As the Tudor brothers started in the ice trade, they held their plans close to their chest. Frederic, for one, did not want any competition early on. Turns out that he needn’t have worried, for as Bostonians learnt of the trade, it was not competition that he had to contend with, but ridicule. As the years passed, Frederic had to deal with many pitfalls: heavy debt, incarceration, even a nervous breakdown before he could finally prove his point. The fact that he was a “stubborn and determined young man who seemed to thrive on the challenge of accomplishing something that others regarded as impossible and foolhardy” also helped.

Like a true enterprising businessman, Frederic predicted and built all the support structures needed for successful execution of his ice trade. He researched the insulating materials that would let the ice survive a ship haul all the way from New England to Cuba and other tropical climes. Peat and charcoal didn’t quite work well; he finally settled on sawdust, creating a thriving offshoot industry for Maine’s sawmills which now discovered a market for something that was just being thrown away. Frederic also designed and built numerous icehouses to hold the ice once it reached port.

In order that people preserve ice for a limited time after purchase, he also sold blankets that could be wrapped around the ice. Despite ice’s obvious appeal, trade in Cuba was not brisk. Yet Frederic Tudor stuck it out till the end. His highest point was when ice cut in New England (much of it from Fresh Water Pond in Cambridge) was shipped to the British East India Company to Calcutta. The cargo reached port with two-thirds of its goods still intact. The Brits were thrilled to receive the ice and did all they could to facilitate the ice trade from New England. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, concerns over pollution and the use of effective refrigerant materials drove the impetus towards artificial refrigeration. By this time, Frederic Tudor had made his fortunes in the ice business and died a wealthy, happy old man.

Gavin Weightman, a journalist living in London, has done a wonderful job of creating an extremely readable tale about true Yankee ingenuity. Frederic Tudor made something (and a lot of it!) out of nothing. The text is ably supplemented with old pictures of the ice trade. Pictures of icemen making deliveries in Boston and New York are true historical treasures. Today Fresh Pond (which is close to Harvard) in Cambridge is a jogger’s paradise. Weightman says that he approached a few joggers on an unusually warm late winter day and asked them if they knew that ice from here was shipped all the way to India once. “I could see a shadow of doubt fall across the faces of those I stopped,” he says, “is this guy crazy?” I sensed they were asking themselves, “How could you sell ice to India without a refrigerator?”‘ With The Frozen-Water Trade, Weightman proves that reality can indeed be stranger and even a lot livelier than fiction.

The Harvard Business School Archive’s review of a biography of Frederic tudor adds:
‘Largely forgotten today, the ice cutting industry was one of the major business enterprises in 18th and 19th century Boston. Ice cut in New England was packed onto insulated ships and transported across the globe. At the center of this booming industry was a successful entrepreneur, Frederick Tudor, better known as the “Ice King.” The Tudor Ice Company owned icehouses in Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Galle, Singapore, Jamaica, Havana, New Orleans, and Charleston. Tudor conquered many challenges in packing, shipping, and storing ice in far away lands–not the least of which were weather issues–as excerpted in a new biography of Tudor published by the Massachusetts Historical Society and Mystic Seaport.’

[Brion Carroll]

Time is something that can not be recovered. The Woodmount Orchards Ice House is something that is unique to the whole of New England. Not just New Hampshire, but the entire region of New England.

How is it that someone could support destruction of the building, especially the Commissioner of the Hollis Heritage Commission. This is not something that time should erase, but rather that our time should preserve.

Obtain donations and historical grants to revitalize the building, reestablish the river bank to keep it stable and then promote the effort. Make it clear that Hollis is proud of its heritage and the events that made New England unique. Historic Ice Houses are not something that are common in the United States, so to purposely destroy one of the few (or the only) remaining Ice House is irresponsible and disrespectfull of our history.

Find a solution to this situation that does not include desctruction of this historic landmark. This is not something you can play Monday morning quarterback to change after it is destroyed. Wake up and do what is necessary to save the Woodmount Orchards Ice House. Your children and grandchildren will thank you for this wise decision.

[Tracy Lee Carroll]

I just got an email today from Mark Johnson saying that the Woodmont Apple Farm Icehouse has been demolished. For the complete story, please view The NH Photo Tour posting.

This is truly such a waste.