What was it like in the summer in America before air conditioning? I noticed that people dressed heavier back then, as oppossed to today when people walk around in shorts, especially women. To add that running water was not as available and that deodorant technology was not quite up to snuff as today’s standards . . . .were people just really smelly back then? Also, weren’t they as uncomfortable as hell? Or am I just spoiled from A/C?
I do remember reading how in the 19th century families in New Mexico put clay jars in their homes, which apparently sucked up the humidity and made it bearable, but I just can’t imagine having to sepnd every day in the middle of July dressed to the nines! Any info?
People were hot and sweaty (if you go back far enough, men wore wool union suits as underwear even in summer). All windows were kept open (an especial problem before the invention of window screens to keep out the flies), but it often didn’t help. On hot days, people would go outside their homes, often sleeping there. Hand fans were used until the invention of the electric fan.
Sure people smelled, but since everyone did, it didn’t offend quite as much as it does now. Women used perfume to cover things up. Also, changing out of the union suit and putting on a fresh one would help, since it wicked away the perspiration.
There are a lot of variations at different time periods and different locales. How people dealt with head in 1934 (when you could go to an air-cooled movie theater) would have been different than in 1896. But you just tried to find any cool or moving air.
Also, it was more common than today, that city folk (or at least the unemployed members of the family) would try to spend the summer months in some countryside location where the temperature and/or humidity were lower.
Prime example: NYC people spending the summer in Catskill mountains, Long Island, and Jersey shore.
You want to know what it was like? I have got a way where you can watch what it was like…and you’ll almost feel the heat, and smell the sweat.
Watch the origianl movie “12 Angry Men” http://www.toptown.com/hp/mikeyb/linda/angrymen.htm, which is set in the 1950’s, I believe. It’s about 12 jurors who hear a case and are left to deliberate it in a juror room on a urban hot summer day.
Watch the movie. I’ve referred people to watch this movie to appreciate their work conditions when they complain about our building’s ‘Climate Control’.
ALSO, many people credit air conditioning with the industrial revolution of the past 30 years in The South.
I went through 12 years of school and public transportation in urban Philadelphia. People smelled, the heat and humidity were suffocating, and windows didn’t help.
My girfriend at the time worked for an insurance adjusting company with stacks of paper work and no A/C… AND NO FANS because they would just blow the papers around. The windows were shut when there was a breeze outside.
Every so often, a whistle would blow, and everyone would secure their work, go to window and throw it open for five minutes.
The biggest difference is that people didn’t know any better. So it was hot–so what? They had no other options, if they weren’t rich enough to afford a summer place in the Catskills, so they just bit the bullet and endured it.
Also, city folk who lived in apartments did a lot of sleeping outdoors, either in parks on the ground or on the fire escape. People who lived in houses sometimes slept on special “sleeping porches”, especially after about 1910, when houses began to be designed with these desirable features. Before that, they sometimes slept downstairs on the parlor floor, as it was always cooler downstairs.
But mostly they just put up with it.
And also, I will point out that architecturally speaking, the big front porch, or the “veranda” or “piazza” as it was sometimes known, was an American invention in the first part of the 19th century, as a way of dealing with the long, sultry afternoons of North America’s Continental climate. European domestic architecture doesn’t have big front porches the way American domestic architecture does. In the New World, you needed a shaded, breezy place to sit outside to while away the hours between 3 p.m. and bedtime, when it was just too darn hot inside.
And, er, I think the “New Mexico clay jar” thing is where you fill up a clay jar with water, and evaporation draws the water out through the porous clay, consuming heat and cooling the water. I believe New Mexico has fairly low humidity year-round. It’s part of the “Desert Southwest”. Living in a place where the humidity is unbearable (the Midwest), I can’t imagine how putting some clay jars around the house would help with reducing humidity. Nothing but good old fashioned A/C can make a dent in it, during July and August.
I grew up in New York without AC. IT was very hot at night, we didn’t sleep well and it sucked. Or cars had no air nor did the family business. We were just hot.
One architectural feature that was made to cope with teh heat was the cupola (the very small windowed room at teh very top of teh house. According to my Uncle who is an antiques dealer, these were built to create a sort of chimney effect in teh house. The hot air would escape through the top of the house and suck fresh air in. Sounds like a good explanation to me.
MY Grandmother’s house (built 1837) had an outdoor kitchen for the summer months and two porches off of the main bedrooms for sleeping.
Why they didn’t just dress lighter? Well, “it is better to look marvelous than feel marvelous.” OR: “why don’t we all go naked in the summer?”
[slight hijack} I seem to recall that the first air conditioner was made to cure malaria. Anyone know about this?
One of the cultural changes due to Air Conditioning is, apparently, the disappearance of The Summer Bachelor.
If you don’t know about this phenomenon, then read (or listen to) Alistair Cooke discoursing on it, or rent the movie The Seven Year Itch. The movie makes absolutely no sense unless you understand that it was a regular practice in the summer for families to decamp to the mountains or out of state for the summer, while the wage-earning husband stayed in town in the hot sultry apartment alone, only joining his family on weekends (and maybe not every weekend). It was under such circumstances that temptation could rear its head, even if not always the head of Marilyn Monroe.
An old trick was employed in the days of urbanized electricity… and later rural electrification. Ice, typically dry ice, was placed before a fan. In larger rooms, this idea would be duplicated as needed. The premise is that the heat of the room is transferred to the ice causing it to melt…no different than how ice cools a glass of soda (pop).
In earlier times, Laura Ingells Wilder’s writings document for us similar uses of ice (from a nearby stream) stored in an underground ice house until summer. It was either not fanned, or fanned by some means of employing human-power!
Of course, as I write this: If they knew how to make ice, esp dry ice, why couldn’t they make A/C, for goodness sake! I guess it just wasn’t economical at the time. I guess times needed to “economically evolve”, I wager.
Heck, how old is central air vs. steam radiators? And, in many areas to the north, A/C is a luxury since those rare heat waves do not justify the cost of even window units!
The novel To kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee describes this situation quite well , course A/C is for wussies and causes the temperature outside to rise .
AC is a little over 100 years old, but it was only in large buildings at first. I think it has been available residentially for 55 years or so, but was fairly expensive. ASHRAE has a timeline somewhere.
Basically people either went somewhere cooler, or sat in the shade and drank cool drinks. Not a lot of work got done in the Summer. I have been told that it was common practice in places like Bakersfield, CA, to soak the bed and sheets with water at night so people could sleep. I imaging these were straw-stuffed matresses, and would be tossed out and restuffed when the mold and rot got noticable.
In SoCal, most of the housing was built toward the beach because it was livable. Architecture used to be more focused on physical comfort, which is now the role of the engineer. The traditional Southwestern styles with heavy masonry walls and floors, and the high vented ceilings do serve a purpose. But if you need a building will 60% glazing area (non-opening for security!) in Palm Springs, we can do it. Just be prepared for the heat strokes when the rolling blackouts hit.
Heck vinnie, we don’t have air conditioning now.
Its by choice. We don’t need it.Very very seldom is it hot enough that a fan will not cool you
down enough to sleep. We just get a lot more done outside during hot weather than you air
“conditioned” heads. sorry for the pun.
I really do wear more clothes than most people , sweat evaporates and cools you off if you let it.
We have running water.I use deodorant,but not the anti perspirant type.
Not really. it has to do with what you get used to . I sure do appreciate trees.
I think you are confused here.
clay jars will cool water stored in them because of evaporation. We have a terra cotta
wine bottle cooler.
.
Architecture provided other solutions, as well. The high ceilings you see on old houses have the effect of keeping the rooms cooler in the summer. Hot air rises to the top, with cooler air below.
Shade trees were not merely decorative, they were vital for keeping the house and environs cool.
When the inside of the house got too hot, it was time to decamp to the front porch, and maybe make some hand-cranked ice cream or sip some iced tea.
A common winter activity in those times was to go out to a frozen lake or river in the winter and cut ice. They would fish the blocks out of the river, and store them in ice houses. Packed in a thick layer of sawdust and hay, the ice could survive through the summer with a minimal amount of melting.
This became quite an industry in certain northern states, such as Maine. The ice was packed onto ships and sold in southern states where ice was unavailable.
awnings - if you see photos from the 1800s you will see all sorts of awnings over windows. I remember the apartment building I lived in 50’s still had the fittings for them, and some people still used them. They kept most of the sun out, and at the same time, let the air in. plus, people had the same attitude we do about rain today - nothing you can do about it.
I grew up in the South (Virginia, to be more precise) without AC and it wasn’t particularly bad because you didn’t really know any different. We had a whole-house fan (in the roof of the house in the attic) and at night we’d open the attic door and the windows and the fan would pull the cooler air from outside into and through the house. During the day you kept the house closed up pretty well and the shades drawn. My grandmother’s house had a “summer kitchen” that was a completely separate building used for cooking during summer months. She also had screened porches on both the front and back of the house that had day beds on them. In summer, you could sleep on the porch. Her house had 10 foot celings and ceiling fans in every room and was built around an extra wide central hall (about 8 feet wide). You opened the front door and the back door and the breeze would run through the house and cool it down. It was also a wonderful place to ride your tricycle, bowl with balls of yarn, and do other fun stuff.
Actually, the big American porch has its origins in West African architecture, from slaves imported here, who knew how to build their own homes to avoid heat prostration in a hot, humid climate. Other folks knew a good idea when they saw one, and readily tacked it on to their own homes.
You’ll also notice in older homes the top window is supposed to be pulled down. that lets the hot air above to be vented out creating an air flow.
Our combination storm windows will not allow the screen to be raised. I think the engineer should have flunked basic air flow.
In Houston, where I’m from, I’ve always heard that the original street plan of the the city (now the downtown area :)), was based on the lack of A/C in a subtropical climate.
Main Street was (and is) oriented diagonally relative to the rest of the street grid (which runs north-south and east-west). Thus, Main Street runs NE-SW.
The idea was that the prevailing breeze from the west would more easily cool the houses located on Main. (Thus, having your house on Main St. was very desirable.)
Also, Rice University (in Houston) only started offering summer school classes within the last three decades when A/C started being widely installed. Before this, the campus essentially shut down in the summer months.