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Building History

The Diamond Ice and Storage Company incorporated in Seattle on 11/25/1892. As Paula Becker has written of the firm for HistoryLink.org, the founding investors were George E. Sackett (1843-1921), Charles E. Crane (1853-1918) and Hans Johannes Claussen (1861-1937), who also founded the Seattle Automatic Refrigeration Company earlier. (See Paula Becker, HistoryLink.org, "Diamond Ice & Storage Company of Seattle incorporates on November 25, 1892," published 04/04/2018, accessed 06/03/2025.) Early ice companies shipped natural ice from caves, lakes or other areas to Seattle by the 1870s and also produced "synthetic ice" made by freezing water on a large scale by the late 1880s. Before the advent of mass-produced refrigerators. icemen delivered ice blocks in horse and wagons and later trucks to cool residential and commercial iceboxes. Beginning in the late 1910s, ice deliveries began to be threatened by the first refrigerators produced in the US by companies such as William Crapo Durant's (1861-1947) Frigidaire Company (a subsidiary of General Motors) or Nathaniel B. Wales's (1883-1974) Kelvinator Company (both initially headquartered in Detroit) using toxic and flammable refrigerants such as ammonia, propane, chloromethane, methyl formate or sulfur dioxide. By 1930, engineer Thomas Midgley, Jr., (1889-1944) and Ohio State University chemist Albert Leon Henne (1901-1967) developed a less dangerous refrigerant, brand-named "Freon" (dichlorodifluoromethane), invented while they worked for General Motors' Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company (DELCO), closely aligned with the Frigidaire subsidiary. Subsequently, GM and DuPont teamed up to form the company Kinetic Chemical Company to produce the halocarbon Freon on a large scale after 1930. Between 1974 and 1985, halocarbons like Freon and a sub-group, fluorocarbons, were found to be destructive to the ozone layer of the Earth's atmosphere, prompting the worldwide negotiation of the Montreal Protocol to Reduce Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer signed on 09/16/1987.

Construction of the Diamond Ice and Storage Company Building occurred during a busy time in Seattle's central business district. The Seattle Daily Times described the building scene in 11/1911: ""Not since 1909 has the building activity of Seattle been so manifest as at the present time, the prominent feature of the many new projects being their location within the business district. The Hoge and Bon Marche buildings are receiving the finishing touches, the Amos Brown Hotel at Third and Cherry is having the steel and concrete frame erected, the new Phinney Block on First Avenue, between Marion and Columbia Streets is receiving foundations, the Smith Building, at Second and Yesler is having the site prepared, the new plant of the Diamond Ice and Storage Company at Western and Union is having piling driven for the foundation, the new Plymouth Church is rapidly approaching completion and several structures running into the hundreds of thousands are under consideration by the office of the building superintendent." (See "Building Prospects Best in Two Years," Seattle Daily Times, 11/05/1911, p. 42.)

PCAD id: 25761