Antique Ice Tool Museum — Attraction in East Bradford Township

The days of harvesting, storing, transporting, and delivering huge quantities of naturally frozen water (I am talking about "ice" if you want a simpler way of thinking about it) from the country to the cities may be over, but this museum does a marvelous job of preserving the artifacts of that industry. Lovingly collected and presented in a three storey historic Pennsylvania bank barn, you walk among the tools of harvesting lake and pond ice, view photos of the men and horses doing the work, see a range home "ice boxes", and restored ice delivery trucks. The refigerated (with blocks of ice in the day) rail car on the grounds is an excellent example of technology responding to commercial opportunities of shipping meat, fresh fruit and vegetables by rail. Ice continues to be a big business today (think about all those ubiquitous freezers full plastic bags in the grocery and mini-mart stores) but all production now comes from mechanical refrigeration. The Ice Tool Museum transports you back to the time when...

We did not really know what to expect from our tour here, but it sure sounded like it had the potential to be interesting and it's not a topic that you hear much about. Turned out the museum holds some very interesting items. After an overview of the ice business by the curator/owner/former ice man Pete and his daughter Peaches we headed into the museum proper. The museum is in a beautifully restored stone building that most recently had served as a girls private school. The school went out of business back in the 1930's and the building was abandoned until Pete bought it in 2009. He restored it over the course of three years and opened the museum in 2012. Many of the artifacts in the museum were also restored by Pete. The building looks fantastic and the vehicles in particular look phenomenal! Highly recommend a visit to the museum, I would not be surprised if it's the only museum in the country dedicated to the ice business and it's an interesting view into the past. The tour is free (donations...

We went to this museum because it was on the tour for Chester County Day. It was an unexpected delight. In the past I did have mild curiosity about the harvesting in storage of ice in the days before refrigeration but going to this little museum really brought that part of our country’s history to life in a way that I really enjoyed. The museum itself is in a lovingly restored barn, the items are very attractively displayed, and the family who has been in the business for two generations give some of the tours. They were so interesting to talk with. I highly recommend making it a prior stop here....