Herrick Ice Refrigerator | Time Travel Iowa

Many of the conveniences we enjoy in our homes are the result of years of innovation. Though we take many of them for granted, some, like the refrigerator, have greatly affected the way we live our lives. The Herrick ice refrigerator is one example of the improvements made in keeping our food cold and fresh over the years.

The secret to innovation and creativity is curiosity. Without the question of why there can be no “Here's how we make it better.” One such innovation, the Herrick ice refrigerator, was built in Waterloo and the Grout Museum District houses a model in excellent condition.

Nicholas Erickson, Grout Museum District: My name is Nick Erickson and I'm the Registrar here at the Grout Museum District and I'm in charge of all the objects. Here we have a Herrick ice refrigerator. It was meant for domestic consumption.

For more than 75 years the Northey family operated the Herrick Refrigeration Company. It was founded by WC Herrick in 1881 but shortly after, the Northey family purchased the company, keeping the original name.

Erickson: So these showed up around the turn of the century, became consistently popular throughout the 1920s.

Before the ice refrigerator many American households stored their perishable food in an insulated icebox that was usually made of wood and lined with tin or zinc. A large block of ice was stored inside to keep these early refrigerators cool. Herrick ice refrigerators were designed so that every inch of storage space was in a forced circuit of cold dry air.

Erickson: The ice chamber is over here on stage right. Your ice block sits on top of this rack right here again, up to 200 pounds of ice. In an icebox. The ice is just on the top of the piece here. The food chamber is down below the cold air. It descends into the food chamber, cooling the food but also has nowhere to go so it creates condensation and mold. In a Herrick Ice refrigerator, the ice melts in this chamber, runs down into a drip pan here that takes out a pipe on the back. The cold air descends, cooling the food immediately below the ice chamber and then, since there's more cold air coming down on top of it, it's forced over here to the other side. Now as the food gets cooled the air warms ever so slightly and then rises. Once it gets to the top the only direction it has to go is left where it's cooled again and the cycle repeats. This meant that a Herrick refrigerator was the first virtually free from condensation.

The Herrick ice refrigerator not only kept things cool but also ensured food preservation and no exchange of flavors, whereas if you kept the wrong products together in an icebox - butter and fish for example - one would often end up smelling like the other.

Erickson: Herrick was known as the aristocrat of refrigerators. This is a really fancy oak-lined refrigerator. The idea was to get it to match any type of parlor furniture you had in your home.

The Herrick ice refrigerator’s exterior was seamless with no screws or nails visible. The lining of the refrigerator was available in three materials: spruce, white enamel, and opal. The company boasted a 74-page catalog, with all of the options a consumer could get.

Erickson: Ice boxes in homes were very common. Ice refrigerators were also common to a degree. This particular model here is pretty large. This is towards the upper end of what a domestic home could afford. Immediately after this was the electric refrigerator right around 1930, so ice refrigerators started to be replaced by mechanical or electric refrigerators beginning right around the year 1930. This here is a General Electric monitor top or globe top from about the same time period 1930 to 1935 or so.

The American inventor Dean Kamen said “Every once in a while a new technology, an old problem, and a big idea turn into an innovation.” While it won't be found in households today, the Herrick ice refrigerator was an important part of the evolution to keep our food cold and safe.