Ten Story Refrigerator Defrosted, But Awesome Pics

It's a pain to defrost a freezer. Especially those older ones where so much ice builds up there's no room to  stuff your Tater Tots and Eggo waffles into the freezer.

And when you defrost, water gets all over everything.

Inside the ten story ice building in Chicago, before it was
defrosted. Image from GaryRobert Photography

So imagine defrosting a ten story refrigerator that pretty much hasn't been defrosted since the 1920s.

That's what some people in Chicago's meatpacking district contended with at the Fulton Market Cold Storage Co.

The cold storage company decided to move operations to a modern refrigerator building, and developer Sterling Bay came in to totally redo the refrigerator building into modern offices for potential client SRAM, a bike component manufacturer.

Before they could begin work, the place had to be defrosted.

Luckily, GaryRobert Photography  was invited in to take pictures before the big thaw in the building began. He took some amazing shots of the icicles, many upside down, and really cool ice formations that took shape in the building over the decades.

Then somebody did a time lapse video of the defrost process, which is fun to watch.