Dallas Prior To Air Conditioning

Anybody here remember growing up in North Texas without air conditioning? I would be interested in hearing any recollections. How did you and people you knew keep cool during July and August? Did people give the heat all that much thought - in other words, did they complain and consider themselves miserable? Or did they just get used to it? This would have been back in the day when people tended to dress up for work and such. I have always wondered about how people who worked in the downtown skyscrapers managed to make it through the day in professional attire without air conditioning.

As hot as it can get here in North Texas, imagine what it must have been like in pre air conditioning Houston.

We survived with open windows and fans at home and work through the 1950s. In the 60s we had attic exhaust fans and/or evaporative coolers at home and refrigerated air conditioning in some offices and stores. I graduated in 1963 and never attended an air conditioned school. Through the 1980s very few warehouses or manufacturing plants had anything other than floor fans.

I spent two years in Panama in ca 1920 tropical buildings with high ceilings, large windows, and wide overhanging roofs on each floor and was never particulary uncomforatble with the natural ventilation.

The ca 1895 house I live in now has similar widows, ceilings, and overhangs and porches. Most rooms have windows or doors on at least two walls so cross ventilation is possible. I have window air conditioners but seldom turn them on before July 4th or after Labor Day.

I work out of doors year round. In the summer I wear loose long sleeve shirts and a wide brim hat, stay in the shade when possible, and drink plenty of water. On the way home I am comfortable in my truck with the windows down even though I have air conditioning I seldom use it.

Like MC posted, I never attended a school in Dallas that had anything other than ceiling fans and open windows. Grew up during '40s-'50s.

We had a small house (800 sq.ft.) in Oak Cliff. Dad put an exhaust fan in a North window of their bedroom and the South window next to my bed in the back bedroom would be left open about 15". The fan would help pull in that South breeze and take it right through the house at night.

Lived on corner lot, so East side yard next to side street was shaded by the house in the afternoons and we had about 15 large mimosa trees near the street. Most Summer evenings in the mid-to-late '40s, after an early supper, at least 4-6 neighbor families would bring lawn chairs, blankets and ice chests over to the yard and we kids would play as parents talked, cut cold watermelon, made ice cream, drank beer, etc. No one bothered to go into their houses until maybe 10-11pm, after the houses had cooled down a bit.

Finally had a "swamp pump" around 1957 in the living room window. Man! That water-cooled air during the Summer was fantastic! Big problem was the mildew it created from pushing so much moisture inside.

I just remembered a Summer vacation trip to Galveston around 1948. We rode street car to Union Station and boarded the train there very late at night. Lights in the car were turned off after everyone was settled. Lots of pillows. Top half of windows were open to allow the air to flow in and circulate while the train was moving. Most everyone slept. Arrived in Galveston after sunrise. ....Return trip the same; travel at night when cooler.

M.C. & Travis pretty well covered it. I worked at the Post Office in the Termnal Annex starting in 1954. We had no A/C, just fans but it was summer. We went to drive-in movies, drive-in restraurants and drove on vacations with the windows down. IT WAS SUMMER. IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE HOT AND WE SURVIVED.
Ralph

In the late '60s and early '70s, there was still no air conditioning at Robert E. Lee Elementary. But, we had high ceilings and giant double-hung windows, and a giant fan at the front of every classroom, circulating the air. We knew it was hot, but it was bearable. We didn't complain.

Ralph nailed it - in summer you were supposed to be hot. Fred is right too - kids weren't meant to be indoors watching TV or playing video games all summer and it was usually more comfortable outside in the heat than inside a stuffy house.

In the 1970's I worked for an apparel manufacturer in Dallas. About 1978 the company purchased the old Peter Paul - Almond Joy factory on Maple which was fully air conditioned (so the chocolate wouldn't melt). We utilized the facilities for material storage, assembly (100 female sewing machine operators), and distribution of the finished goods. Prior to then these operations were in non-air conditioned warehouse space.

It was amazing how productivity increased and damages decreased but in the midst of the first oil crisis the savings did not offset the increase in operating costs and the company folded.

Re Dismuke's query about office workers, I believe commercial air conditioning in Dallas dates to the 1930's. Many of the high rise office buildings and hotels built prior to then had air shafts: - they were constructed with an H shaped footprint on the upper floors rather than the monolithic square of modern buildings. This allowed for open window cross ventilation.

If memory serves there was an article in either Legacies or Elm Fork Echoes about the first air conditioned home in Dallas which also was in the 1930s.

I recall that electrocution was a constant danger with the evaporative coolers as they were hooked directly to an outside faucet and powered by electric motors for the fan and water pump. The bulk of the unit (which was the size of a washing machine) hung outside the window with just the vents protruding inside. There was a basin in the bottom and the water was pumped to the top then trickled down a straw like mat. The danger was on the outside if you happened to touch an ungrounded unit while standing on wet soil.

M C

i moved here in july 1955 from tennessee i never knew what heat was. tennessee is hot and humid during the day and cools off nicely at night we never had anything but a electric fan after we had been here a couple of months we got a swamp cooler it cooled good our next house had an attic fan then we got a big 220 volt fedders ac in the living room that would basically cool the whole house i loved to come in and stand in front of that big fedders i still like window units till this day the next time we moved we had central air, a chilled water system i remember my dad griping about a $17.00 electric bill i would take that today that big chilled water system ran most of the time but kept you cool

the giant fan was always pointed toward the teacher

I have taught public school for 25 years - and have worked in several old buildings built back in the pre-a/c days. You can see where the huge casement-style windows have been filled in to make smaller, more energy-efficient openings. Only trouble is, when the a/c inevitably goes out, those small windows don't create the beautiful drafts that the larger ones did. Too, the old buildings have likely had their interior structure modified so that there is no longer any possibility of cross-flow. Of course, modern architects don't even know how to design for climate these days.

rojinks Wrote:
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> the giant fan was always pointed toward the
> teacher

In our classrooms they were at the front, and pointed straight down the middle. I haven't seen a fan like them in nearly 40 years (they must have three or four feet in diameter - not a box or drum fan, but a huge version of the Emerson floor fan), and I assume they all went for scrap metal once a/c was installed.

My mother's parents in East Texas had one window unit, in the living room. It cooled just the living room and dining room, got turned on in the afternoon, and turned off before dark. In the evening we slept with all the windows and doors open, and the beds were moved under the windows in summer, to catch the breeze (when there was one).

I must share a couple of memories about Dallas before A/C. First, my grandmother worked at the "new" Sears at Ross and Greenville that opened in 1948. Three stories and a basement with full A/C. Much conversation around the house if she was likely to "get sick" coming out of the 72 degree building into a 100 degree Dallas summer afternoon. I don't think that ever happened.

Second is sleeping in beds strategically placed up against those windows to get full benefit of the breeze--when there was one. To this day I remember the sounds of the city at night--cars, buses, and especially street cars-- and, of course, dogs, crickets, etc.

Great memories, but I'll take A/C.
Mike

matthew stephenson Wrote:
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> I have taught public school for 25 years - and
> have worked in several old buildings built back in
> the pre-a/c days. You can see where the huge
> casement-style windows have been filled in to make
> smaller, more energy-efficient openings. Only
> trouble is, when the a/c inevitably goes out,
> those small windows don't create the beautiful
> drafts that the larger ones did. Too, the old
> buildings have likely had their interior structure
> modified so that there is no longer any
> possibility of cross-flow. Of course, modern
> architects don't even know how to design for
> climate these days.

I attended Summer school at Crozier Tech in downtown Dallas three years in a row in the '50s! I flunked classes during regular school terms that were so boring and taught by boring teachers, but made A in the same courses during Summer school, which was more concentrated on topic and compressed into six week sessions. ...Sorry, that last sentence was off topic. ......Anyway, classes always began around 7:30-8am and it was relatively cool. The doors and windows were all open and the crossbreezes created were fantastic! Like older houses and buildings, the school had very high ceilings (heat rises). We never were hot on those Summer mornings.

In 1954, my girlfiend lived on Harvard Ave and they had a huge Vornado window A/C in the living room.
I would always go over to it and pull my "t" shirt over the front of the a/c, and let those huge 3 cold vents blow into me.
Cooled me off quickly. Always have that memory.
That big unit cooled about half of their house.
Over at my house on Normandy Ave.,,, on hot nights, slept outside many nights because there was a cool breeze.

When I worked for AT&T at the Toll office on Bryan St. I was told by an old timer that back in the 50s the operators had a wildcat strike because it was so hot in the building(which had windows). They returned to work when large vats of ice were placed in front of electric fans at the end of each row of operators.

In the early 60s our tract house had an evaporative cooler window unit.

In the late 60s we got an AC window unit. I loved to come in out of the heat and just stand with my face in front of the vents. It smelled good.

I remember my doctor had his office in an old house in Oak Cliff and out back was a tall wooden structure with slats with water constantly flowing down from the top. I guess it was some kind of cooling system.

But as a kid, I don't recall being bothered by the heat too much.

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I never attended a school with air-conditioned classrooms until I went to college in 1971. We moved into our first house with central AC in 1965. Before that it was fans and window units. Even with window units, it was only certain rooms that had them. In one house we slept on pallets in my parent's bedroom in the summer because it was the only room except the living room with a window unit.
In my Dad's day in Oak Cliff, he and his siblings slept out on the screen porch in summer.

My Dad was a supervisor for Western Electric and during the telephone operators strike supervisors manned the switchboards. That's when they started using wash tubs full of ice with fans blowing over the ice. There was a picture of the men manning the switchboards with the tubs and ice in one of the Newspapers.

The wooden towers with slats were cooling towers for the air conditioners before they figured out how to cool them with radiators and fans like done today.

My experience pretty well parallels Dennis H's (we attended the same high school) and my observations parallel Wayne's re: cooling towers. Unbelievably, we still have at least one campus air-conditioned by such towers today in McAllen.

Related question: I know the water used in such towers is recirculated - still, considering today's water rates, what is the cost/btu compared with a modern refrigeration setup? Reason for my interest is rooted in my nostalgia for old movie palaces of bygone years. When they finally installed the water cooling towers Wayne describes in the post above, what did it cost to cool down those vast 2,000-3,000 seat auditoriums, all of which were built in the days when little, if any, thought must have been devoted to insulation? And must this not have been one factor in the eventual decision to shutter those venues and tear them down?

When I was a child in the 1940's and early 50's in Oak Cliff it was as hot or hotter than it is nowadays but did not really affect me at all, we played outside all summer long and never remember being hot at night.....most folks opened their windows and a lot of them like us had a very large enclosed porch (screened in) that we slept in......we had bunk beds and a regular bed on our Large porch and had a good breeze most of the time.......in the winter the screens were covered up by a large rolled up canvas covering. The worst thing I remember about summers in Oak Cliff back then was the Chiggers, I would get covered ever once in a while.....The Schools I went to back then::::Lida Hooe, Cockrell Hill Elem., James Bowie Elem. and Greiner Jr. Hi were of course not air conditioned but again do not remember being very hot, they would just open the windows and turn fans on if they had them....Bill Strouse

bill that was a chilled water sysyem after we moved to the wanut hill area we had two large compressors in the attic and the cooling tower was on the roof chilled water systems are still used in large warehouses i believe it is a cheaper way to cool the copper pipes the water flowed through were prone to leaks i remember we had to call around to different a c companies for repairs the techs did not want to work in the attics they were forever calling back and asking if the compressors were in the attic then blowing us off

Bill, I too attended the old Cockrell Hill School in 1953 when it was reopened as an annex for L.O. Donald elementary school. Loved that old building in that it had "character" unlike the cookie cutter newer schools being constructed during that era. I remember it being cooled by many shade trees, high ceilings, large windows and ceiling fans. In the winter each room was heated by a large iron pot bellied natural gas stove. Loved the creaky hardwood floors and its resemblence to every school you ever saw in the "Little Rascals" shorts. :-)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/22/2012 04:08AM by Mr. Freeze.