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From: "J DOT Henry Priebe Jr DOT " root AT bluemoon DOT net
Date: Sat, 25 Dec 2010 12:34:06 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: (erielack) Hornell Ice and Cold Storage Company
"HornellNY_CityIceAndFuel1926.jpg" - image/jpeg, 772x1871 (256c)

On Fri, 24 Dec 2010 Wdburt1@aol.com wrote:

>
> Some partial answers to Henry's questions:
>
> There is reference in Erie Railroad Magazine articles from the late 1920s
> and early 1930s, and local newspapers during the same period, to both the
> Hornell Ice & Cold Storage Company and the City Ice & Fuel Company. They
> apparently refer to the same company, which was the contractor and/or lessee
> that operated both the Hornell and Marion icing plants for the Erie. These
> were the two principal icing stations on the railroad.

Here's the 1926 Sanborn for Hornell's 1913 ice plant. Originally Hornell Ice &
Cold Storage Company, by 1926 is was run by the City Ice & Fuel Company.

WDB,

Thanks for your input on this subject. My impression from the limited research
I have done is that the Erie was somewhat intimately intimately involved with
Hornell Ice & Cold Storage Company and found it expedient to contract out the
operation of the larger icing facilities to the City Ice & Fuel Company.
Surprisingly, there is very little reference for City Ice & Fuel on the web,
both with the & and with "and" in the name. Thanks to blind luck I managed to
find reference to the City Products Corp. and Harvard Business School has a
webpage with sort of a thumbnail history of the business.

http://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/lehman/chrono.html?company=city_products_corp

"City Products Corporation was incorporated in Ohio in July 1894 as the
Independent Ice Company. In December 1908 it acquired City Ice Delivery
Company and assumed that name. In February 1921 the company name changed once
again, to City Ice & Fuel Company, and in April 1949 the company became City
Products Corporation."

"Beginning in the 1930s and for the next several decades, City Products
pursued an ambitious acquisitions strategy. By the 1960s the company was
broadly diversified, with particular strengths in car icing, vacuum cooling,
ice manufacturing and distribution, cold storage warehouses, dairies,
breweries, distribution of coal and fuel oil, and the distribution of general
merchandise."

I have found no tie in with the Erie RR. I haven't found any evidence of a
sale so I don't know if they bought the Hornell and Marion plants or just
operated them.

In my travels through the time and space of my Sanborn map collection I have
come across many City Ice & Fuel Company plants. There was a good sized one in
Buffalo's extensive NYC Stock Yards. There was one at E. 43rd St in Cleveland
on Pennsy's C&P line. Just poking through Buffalo, Cleveland, Columbus and
Cincinnati maps, I see CI&F Plant Nos. 1, 2, 3, 5, 9, 20, 25, 29, etc. It
seems like it was a pretty big company operating nationwide by 1950 as City
Products Corp.

Coincidentally, on one Buffalo map is a "City Products Corp'n City Ice & Fuel
Div'n Station No 5" on Essex St. Back in the 1980's I rented space there with
a couple of other people for use as our hot rodding and car repair shop. A lot
of the old refrigeration gear was still in place on the walls. It was a great
space for shop and had a nice overhead traveling beam with a chainfall capable
lifing entire cars off the ground. That plant wasn't near any RRs though.

Being born in 1961, I missed the "ice box" and coal furnace age so I find the
consumer and commercial ice and coal industries very interesting.

Henry

J. Henry Priebe Jr. Blue Moon Internet Corp Network Administrator
www.bluemoon.net Internet Access & Web Hosting
www.railfan.net Railfan Network Services



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