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A First Ice-Making Plant and an Alligator in the Great Miami

October 25, 2018 By Andrew Walsh Leave a Comment


Dayton Ice Manufacturing and Cold Storage Co First Plant

When the above structure was built in 1892, it was the first ice-making plant “in this section of the country.”

Located at the corner of Harries and Spratt Streets, the Dayton Ice Manufacturing and Cold Storage Co. was likely the reason that Spratt would soon be renamed Ice Ave.

In the early 1890s, the company delivered 10 pounds of ice for 10 cents. The price got better as the order size increased: 20 pounds for 15 cents; 50 pounds for 25, and 100 pounds or more at 50 cents per 100.

Dayton Ice Manufacturing Co Map Ice Ave and Harries
1898 Map Showing the Location

The general manager of the company was Frank J. Kunkle, who grew up on his family’s farm in Butler township and attended public schools in Vandalia and then Wittenburg College before returning to Dayton to work as a bookkeeper for C. Wight & Son, a lumber manufacturing firm.

After a decade of working his way up, in 1892 he moved on to the Ice Manufacturing Co to assume the general manager position. Kunkle died suddenly just five years later, and his lengthy obituary in national ice and refrigeration trade publications attests to his positive reputation as well as the status of the company at the time.

In 1902, a Dayton Ice Manufacturing Company employee, John Wasmuth, was involved in an unusual situation: the capture of an alligator that had escaped from a local home and had settled in the Great Miami River.

The animal had been kept at the home of a H. H. Ritter until it broke free, and for several weeks it “had been a subject of interest on its occasional appearances in the Miami, near the Bridge street bridge” (today’s Monument Ave bridge).

Wasmuth assisted John Wheeler, a horseshoer, who, “when he learned of the presence of the saurian in the river, made a harpoon and went in search of it.”

The two men “rowed out to where the alligator was disporting itself in the placid Miami,” and “a blow from the harpoon fastened that weapon just above the right hind leg, crippling the alligator, which showed some fight.”

The men “pluckily” brought it to land, with Wheeler placing a boat oar in the alligator’s mouth to prevent biting. The oar “bears the imprint of the alligator’s teeth, looking as if it had been backed with a dull hatchet, and showing the wisdom of this precaution on the captor’s part in preventing an attack on any of the bystanders, a large number on the bank witnessing the landing of the recreant alligator.”

The injury to the gator was said to be very minor and “will in no way cripple” it, and after its re-capture it was placed on exhibition at Jim Stuart’s on Second Street across from Cooper Park. H. H. Ritter, from whom it originally escaped, gave up all claim to the animal.

The original ice plant was demolished by 1920.

By 1955 the whole block was a parking lot. Today it is the site of the Cooper Place townhomes:

The market for ice has obviously changed quite significantly since the late 1800s, but it’s interesting to note that a cold storage company still calls greater downtown Dayton home, although many Daytonians likely have never heard of it.

Dayton Frozen Solutions, at 20 Eaker Street, was bought in 2016 by current chief executive Chad Diggs and an investment group that includes a couple of his friends and fraternity brothers. The group had developed their business chops by turning around a struggling Gettysburg Ave car wash, and after buying the cold storage business, then called Terminal Cold Storage, they introduced new innovations in order to grow and remain relevant in the future. The recent craft beer boom, for one, has created a new group of customers. Dayton Frozen Solutions is a certified minority-owned business.

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Filed Under: Historical Dayton Tagged With: C. Wight & Son, Chad Diggs, Dayton Frozen Solutions, Dayton Ice Manufacturing and Cold Storage Co, Frank J. Kunkle, H. H. Ritter, John Wasmuth, John Wheeler, Sanborn Maps

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