The Ice House

Story

Ice House Street is a one-way street in Central, Hong Kong Island, Hong Kong. Named after the structure previously located on it that housed the city's only source of ice, it stretches from Lower Albert Road to Connaught Road. The street is noted for several historical landmarks situated on it, most notably the Club Lusitano and the Old Dairy Farm Depot.HistoryDuring the First Opium War, the British occupied Hong Kong in 1841 and one year later, the territory was ceded to them in the Treaty of Nanking. Four years later, in 1845, the Hong Kong Ice Company was founded. It was set up with the intention of selling ice blocks from the United States—specifically from New England and New York State. These were transported to the colony on clippers and traded as a commodity. To persuade the company to sell ice to local hospitals at cost price, the Government of Hong Kong granted the company the site for an ice house rent-free for 75 years. The building eventually lent its name to the street it was situated on; it was Hong Kong's only source of ice, because that there were no "commercial ice-making facilities" in the colony. The house was on the intersection of Ice House Street and Queen's Road Central, and continued to store ice imports until 1874, when ice production started in Causeway Bay.