Old Fashioned Cold Shelf or California Cooler

This almost 36 minute long video has some interesting tidbits. Please be advised it likely contains inaccuracies. 

Somewhere in the middle, it says that a cold shelf used to be standard in American kitchens before refrigerators were the norm. It says this was a stone shelf on the north wall of the house inside a kitchen cabinet where they stored items like butter, hard cheeses and cured meats.

Please note that if you are in the Southern hemisphere, you may need to make that a South wall.

I've never heard of a cold shelf before. I have owned a marble pastry board and a pizza stone and I'm familiar with the fact that stone can help keep things cool.

Anyway, it was cooler than room temperature but was not the equivalent of modern refrigerators that keep everything below a certain temperature consistently. It's not exactly a substitute for a refrigerator. It doesn't do what a refrigerator does.

But if you are off grid or even just tired of extremely high electric bills and wanting to incorporate more passive solar design because it's more disaster resistant than modern refrigerators, you may wish to research it.

There is a Wikipedia article about California Cooler (cabinet) (as opposed to the drink which was my first hit) and a listing for Cold Pantry in the Pantry article on Wikipedia from the disambiguation piece.

Apartment Therapy has a piece about a California Cooler in an old farm house.

House Digest has an article suggesting it's a feature we should bring back.

When I was homeless for several years, I learned to prefer drinks kept cold by being stored outside the tent overnight rather than having ice added. I would absolutely use a California Cooler for drink storage if I had a house with this feature.

Even if it's just water, having something cool to drink on a hot day can be wonderful.