Life Before Air Conditioning

Air conditioning hasn't just cooled our rooms. It’s changed the way we live.

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Before homes were cooled by air conditioning  – in that bygone and less comfortable era – coping with the heat of summer influenced the way we lived.

Families gathered on the front porch to cool off, relax, visit, read the newspaper, share the day’s activities, gossip about neighborhood goings on and generally wind down.

Neighbors would more easily stop in to visit if they saw you sitting on the front porch.  

Here in the Southern U.S., houses were designed with airflow in mind, thus higher ceilings and more windows. The dogtrot house design was common.

Wikipedia describes the dogtrot design as consisting of “two log cabins connected by a breezeway or "dogtrot", all under a common roof. Typically one cabin was used for cooking and dining while the other was used as a private living space, such as a bedroom. 

The primary characteristics of a dogtrot house is that it is typically one or 1 1⁄2-stories, has at least two rooms averaging between 18 to 20 feet (5.5 to 6.1 m) wide that each flank an open-ended central hall. Additional rooms usually take the form of a semidetached ell or shed rooms, flanking the hall to the front or rear.

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The breezeway through the center of the house is a unique feature, with rooms of the house opening into the breezeway. The breezeway provided a cooler covered area for sitting. The combination of the breezeway and open windows in the rooms of the house created air currents which pulled cooler outside air into the living quarters efficiently in the pre-air conditioning era. Most dogtrots had full-width porches to the front and/or rear, which could be used as sleeping porches with beds – a great place to spend a summer night.

The breezeway also was the place where the lady of the house sat to string beans, peel apples and perform all manner of chores that could be performed while sitting.

Credit: JediCreations.com

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Other coping devices for surviving the hot days and nights were attic and window fans, naps during the heat of the day, carrying hand-held fans around, wide-brimmed hats, drinking lots of cool well water, and of course, the old swimming hole.

It also should be noted that food for the mid-day and evening meal was cooked early in the day -- right after breakfast. The purpose of this was to allow the heat from the stove to get out of the house before nightfall and allow a cooler house for sleeping. The food prepared prepared early in the day was consumed for both "dinner" at mid-day and "supper" in the evening.

Before air conditioning was common, retail outlets posted signs in windows, inviting patrons to “Come inside; it’s air conditioned!” Movie theaters were popular gathering places, as they were typically air conditioned.

It has been pointed out that air conditioning was responsible for transforming the economies of the U.S. South and Southwest, making formerly inhospitable regions a great place to live and do business. 

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I enjoy my air conditioning as much as anyone. But I surely miss those summer evenings of front porch, when people gathered to tell family stories and to make simple comments like, “the Four O’Clocks sure do smell good tonight, don’t they?”