The Gaithersburg Ice House was located at 107 East Diamond Avenue. The building is now a Mexican restaurant and a check-cashing business.
| Name | Date | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Jill Anderson | 3/5/10 | I remember going to the ice house on a field trip in elementary school. I can't believe it is a mexican restaurant now! |
| jake | 11/9/10 | i used to bag ice there when i was 14 years old part time after school |
| Tanya | 4/22/11 | My dad used to take my sister and I to the ice house during the summer in the 70's. They made the BEST snow cones. Haven't had one as good since! |
| Mitch Gardner | 4/30/11 | Being the young entrepreneur we would buy blocks of Ice and tow them behind our bikes in an old wagon to my house at the site of the entrance to MV as it was being built. My dad had found an old ice shaver and we got flavored syrup and sold snow cones to the heavy equipment operators that were building Montgomery village Ave. The only problem was that the ice was half melted by the time we got it to the site. |
| Jerry White | 8/11/11 | Tanya; thanks for the compliment. And yes, they were some good snow cones. My Father-in-law owned the ice house from the late '60s till the early '80s. I remember working many hours there helping him crush and bag those 50lb bags. My wife help her mother sell the snow cones. |
| Jerry White | 8/11/11 | A correction: We were talking and her parents must have sold the place near the end of the '70s rather than the early '80 as I said earlier. We're not sure. I noticed though, that the 'before' photo was taken sometime after they sold it. I have some photos taken earlier but couldn't see any way to post them here. |
| Chip Ward | 11/9/11 | It may be interesting to to note that when I was a kid one of the "rights of passage in Gaithersburg was to be able to take a 300# block of ice from long to short end. The Ice House was then owned by The McBains. @ 1951/52 |
| Richard Frazier | 12/18/12 | Mr. Lutz ran the Ice House at one time. The best snow cones ever! |
| patrick carter | 10/20/13 | Used to ride my bike a couple miles to purchase a snow cone here in the mid 70's. The cost was 25¢ When G'burg was an all-american city inhabited by Americans. |
| M. Glazier | 4/29/14 | Yes, My family purchased the Gaithersburg Ice House in April/May of 1975. I remember cause I was at G'burg High School and it was at the end of the school year. Jason Lutz owned it until then. Mr. Lutz just served Ice and Snow Cones. He was a wonderful old guy. I remember Mrs. Lutz collected salt and pepper shakers...she had hundreds of them. Back to the Ice House: We continued with that and started selling beer, wine and kegs. It was the closing of East Diamond Avenue access to Route 355 (at the bridge near the old Roy's Place Restaurant) that forced the business to close, along with many other businesses on East Diamond Ave. My father sold the place in 1988/1989 after he got hit by a train at the Shady Grove railroad crossing. He survived...it made the front page of the Washington Post. At our height...we supplied ice to the construction company that was builidng the Metro Subway. They could not pour the concrete over 90 degrees out...unless they used ice instead of water. We saw our t-shirts all over G'burg, Rockville and as far away as Ocean City Md. We delivered ice all over Montg County & PG County. |
| Chris Calantonio | 9/14/14 | My grandfather was David McBain and he owned the ice house in the 40s/50s. Don't have any memories but have several sets of ice tongs and picks from the store. He also owned the Rockville ice house at the same time. |
| Kenny Anderson | 10/2/15 | My dad, Jim Anderson bought the Ice House from Doug McBain about 1960 and sold it to Grayson Lutz about 1968. If you bought a snow cone during the Summer or especially the Labor Day Parade, you bought it from me, for 10 cents! Helped pay for my college. Dad supplied ice to all the construction sites countywide, including Leisure World, Bureau of Standards, almost any one in Montgomery County. Our busy season was the Fair, when we probably worked 20 hour days. All the ammonia and ice making equipment had been removed when dad bought it, but there was a gigantic water pump in the back of the building. |
| Jeryll Dorsey | 3/29/17 | As a child in the late 1950s, I would ride with Ruize Tyler to ice house for Tyler's Market in old Emory Grove ! |
| Nancy Jones | 6/6/19 | Ice House had snow cones in the summer. Yummy! |