The ice trade — natural ice, then the artificial plant

1895 – 1917 and after, in South Bend

A negative, settled: The first Businesses pass reported that Farr's 1883 directory lists no ice dealer and no artificial-ice plant for the city, and the pull stood open. The record now settles it: in 1883 there was none to list — South Bend's ice was cut and hauled — and the manufactured article arrives a dozen years later, with the lake-ice trade itself. The Maxinkuckee Ice Company, formed in 1894 by Sterling Holt of Indianapolis, John Pitman and Sam E. Medbourn, ran plants for both natural and artificial ice at Indianapolis, Evansville, Brazil and South Bend. Its South Bend branch opened in April 1895 with a full complement of wagons, horses and men, delivering lake ice cut at Lake Maxinkuckee in Marshall County.

Main and Sample, 1896: In February 1896 the company began work on a cold-storage and ice plant of its own in South Bend, drilling two wells first for the water supply; the site was Main and Sample streets. By late March the building stood enclosed, fitted, as the Tribune described it, for "the manufacture of ice from artesian water." The company's 1900 notice to the city states the position plainly: the Maxinkuckee Lake Ice Company owned the ice plant at South Main and Sample and was "in the market with both lake and artificial ice." The city that had imported its winter now made its own, in 300-pound cakes, beside the natural article.

The Artificial Ice Company, 1917: The Chamber of Commerce's own survey of South Bend industries, published in July 1917, carries the trade at its maturity: the Artificial Ice Company — "a reorganization of the Vacuum Ice Company," incorporated the previous January for $100,000, with H. B. Hanger president and L. B. Wolsenburgh vice-president and treasurer, both Kentucky men interested in a string of such plants, and O. A. Wilson, a South Bend resident, as secretary and active manager. The new plant's capacity was one hundred tons every twenty-four hours, made by the ammonia process, and the journal pronounced it, on experts' word, 100 per cent efficient. The trade's later course — into the age of the mechanical refrigerator — is not carried in the record, and is left where the record leaves it.

Sources:

1. Terre Haute Up-To-Date (1896) — the Maxinkuckee Ice Company formed 1894 (Sterling B. Holtz, president; John Pitman, secretary; Sam E. Medbourn, treasurer), with plants for natural and artificial ice at Indianapolis, Evansville, Brazil and South Bend.
2. South Bend Tribune, 23 April 1895, as quoted in the Lake Maxinkuckee history compilation — the company's South Bend branch established, delivering from Thursday morning.
3. South Bend Tribune, 12 February and 24 March 1896, as quoted in the same compilation — work begun on the South Bend plant, the two wells, the Main and Sample site; the building enclosed, for the manufacture of ice from artesian water.
4. South Bend Tribune, 12 March 1900, as quoted in the same compilation — the company's notice: owners of the ice plant at South Main and Sample, "in the market with both lake and artificial ice."
5. South Bend Chamber of Commerce, Through South Bend Industries (July 1917), via Michiana Memory, St. Joseph County Public Library — "Artificial Ice Company": the reorganization of the Vacuum Ice Company, the January incorporation at $100,000, the officers, the hundred-ton capacity, the ammonia process.