A Hundred Years Ago on the Hudson

This article appeared on the front page of the Hudson Evening Register on February 21, 1911. The photograph, from the New York State Archives, shows ice harvesting on the Hudson at Stuyvesant Landing in 1912. 

GOOD WEATHER FOR THE ICE HARVESTERS

Looks as If All the Houses Along

the River Would Now Get In

a Full Supply.

This was a good day for the harvest of ice and the Hudson river icemen made unusual headway. As early as 4 o'clock the scraping and the ploughing gangs were busy at various houses along the river and at 7 o'clock everything was ready for immediate hoisting.

The Howland, Every and Arrow houses at Athens are nearly full, while the "Bull Durham" and the McCabe houses are expected, it is said, to be filled by Saturday. It will take nearly two weeks yet to fill the Knockerbocker [sic] houses. The Scott house at Newton Hook is being filled rapidly and the Greene-Bedell house at Coxsackie will be filled by Thursday, it is thought. The Washburn house, the largest in this city, will be filled by Thursday, if nothing unusual happens.

Mr. Washburn, the local dealer, is breaking in a new field to-day, which will aid him in filling his big house more rapidly. The field he is now marking out lies west of the long canal and several hundred feet north of the old field.

The mercury stood between zero and 4 below at many points along the river this morning and the ice, which for the past few days has been crumbling and cracking somewhat, has been tightened up. The icemen are now confident of a full harvest. In ponds about the county the second and in some places the third cutting is being taken in. Majority of Columbia county's cold storage men have their houses ready for next summer's produce.