Businessman breathes new life into ‘Olde Icehouse’

No matter what it is converted into, the two-story brick building on Thibodaux’s St. Patrick Highway will always be known to locals as the “old icehouse.”

Years ago, the Crystal Ice Company did business from the site. When Crystal closed, the People’s Ice Company took over, ensuring the community’s beverages stayed cold.

Regardless of what the sign said, the building was always known to locals as the old icehouse factory. It’s a name that’s lasted through the generations, and one that the site’s current owner and city native Joseph Thibodaux intends to honor.

“I always knew this old building as an icehouse or an ice factory,” he said. “When I purchased it a year ago, it reminded me of when I used to come here as a little boy with my grandfather to get ice for our ice box.”

Thibodaux has big plans for the site. He opened a bar in there in May – not surprisingly named the Olde Icehouse Bar – and hopes to add a restaurant within the next few years.

Converting the icehouse into an enticing place where adults could gather with friends wasn’t an easy task. The historic building’s concrete walls, for instance, are 23 to 26 inches thick, Thiobdaux said. And the concrete, he noted, is not the cured stuff used in buildings today.

It took a year for Thibodax, his son Keith and a few family friends to transform the building into the Olde Icehouse Bar. Because of stricter building codes across south Louisiana post-Hurricane Katrina, Thibodaux had to scale back his initial plans for the site.

“When I applied for the permits to do the restaurant and the bar, everything was pretty cool. We were going to do a bar area and a restaurant area,” he said. “But the State of Louisiana or the lawmakers in Baton Rouge that are responsible for determining the building code laws started changing things in midstream. They started telling us, ‘No, you can’t do it that way; we have new rules and new codes because of Hurricane Katrina.'”

Thibodaux opted to build the bar only, for now, because the codes were simpler. But the Olde Icehouse restaurant isn’t completely off the drawing board, he said.

“I wanted to make it a place where people can visit and socialize because usually people come to restaurants to meet their friends after a hard day’s work – or week’s work – on the job,” he explained. “We figured that was the only way that people would still be able to come to this historical landmark.”

Although this is Thibodaux’s first business in his hometown, it’s not his first exposure to the market. He and his wife Theresa owned and operated the Cajun Café on the Bayou in Largo, Fla., for 10 years.

“My goal was to bring our Cajun and Creole roots to Florida,” he said.

Whether operating a bar or a restaurant, Thibodaux’s theory is both businesses are about the same thing: serving customers. It’s all about providing people with a comfortable setting and making sure they are satisfied with the product, he explained.

Unlike a typical bar, the Olde Icehouse Bar has set hours that don’t stretch into the wee hours of the next morning.

“Our day starts at about 10 a.m. for the few retirees that come in to socialize with their friends,” Thibodaux said. “But the crowd doesn’t come in until about 5 p.m. We close around 11:30 at night,” he said. “This is not a nightclub; we open and close on the same day.”

Just as the name honors tradition, so does the jukebox. Thibodaux said the music is a mix of south Louisiana tunes. Missing from the lineup is the Top 40 du jour.

“The music we want to bring here is swamp pop, Cajun and Creole zydeco,” he said. “However, we picked an awkward time to open because most of the Cajun zydeco bands are playing in the north, making it hard to get them down here. But come the latter part of the summer and the beginning of fall, we will have a live entertainment lineup in full swing.”

Louisiana is unique, Thibodaux says, because it is the only state in the U.S. with its own cuisine, language and music.

A man committed to carrying on traditions, he said it only made sense to provide a venue for the music he’s enjoyed all his life.

An icon in Thibodaux, the two-story brick icehouse on St. Patrick Highway is now home to the Olde Icehouse Bar. Owner Joseph Thibodaux has plans to eventually add a restaurant to the site. * Photo courtesy of THE OLDE ICEHOUSE BAR