Historic Hood River
Moving Day
8-12-2021
Notes
It looks like moving day for the Davidson Fruit business office. They were located in Davidson Building on Cascade when it was built in 1905, but here they are moving the files into what we now call “the Union Building.” This building was constructed in pieces over about a decade as business grew. This brick building with easy access to the railroad was a large refrigerator with cork insulation and an ammonia-based refrigeration unit. Apples from this cold storage would be packed with ice and sawdust for the rail trip back east. Hopefully the office quarters weren’t part of the refrigerate area.
Category: Downtown Hood River
Tags: 1910s, cold storage, Davidson, fruit, packing, refrigeration, Union Building
Tags: 1910s, cold storage, Davidson, fruit, packing, refrigeration, Union Building
L. E.
Today would be a good day to have your office in the refrigerator room.
Lined with cork is interesting.
What an ideal set up Hood River had with this warehouse right on the main rail line and a rail road coming from the upper valley.
nels
Cork, which comes from trees in Africa, vs. sawdust from up the road. Interesting choice and I wonder why.
Judy
They drank a lot of wineðŸ‘
Alan Winston
cork versus sawdust
My guess would be cork for the same reason it makes good corks – impermeable to water.
Condensation in sawdust insulation would eventually saturate it, eliminating insulation value and leading to rotting.
JEC
the cork was in flat panels that could be glued to the concrete walls and ceilings.
ArthurB
Yes, JEC is correct. As much fun as it is to imagine filling the walls with wine corks from all the parties in Hood River, these were sheets of cork several inches thick. Thousands of square feet of it. The developer showed them to me when he was renovating the building about 10 years ago. I believe he save some samples, but I’ll have to give him a call to check on that.
Seeing a stack of sheets of cork definitely had me wondering how much all that cork cost back circa 1905.
nels
If I remember correctly, cork is the bark of a tree that is peeled off in sheets. In
Africa.
JEC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cork_(material)
actually, mostly from Spain and Portugal