History | July 26, 2024

Six Innovative Ways Humans Have Kept Cool Throughout History

From sleeping porches to coastal escapes, these tips and tricks helped people deal with extreme heat before the advent of air-conditioning

Shade-protecting overhangs known as awnings line a street in New York City in the 1850s. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Laura Kiniry

Travel Correspondent

With record-breaking temperatures scorching towns across the United States this month, Smithsonian magazine is looking to history to uncover innovative methods that people of the past used to beat the heat. As it turns out, prior to the rise of home air-conditioning units in the mid-20th century, humans were quite resourceful when it came to keeping cool. Here are six of our favorite historical methods for warding off summer’s climate extremes.

Sleeping porches

View of a sleeping porch at the Gamble House in Pasadena, California Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

When indoor temperatures became too stifling, families often headed outdoors—at least partially. At the turn of the 20th century, many homes were built with sleeping porches, a type of screened-in deck, typically perched on the second or third floor of a residence, where families would sleep to take advantage of the open air. Sleeping porches were usually positioned at a corner or along the back of the house to catch any cross breezes.

This was an era when fresh-air sleeping was hailed as a major health boon. Sanatoriums incorporated sleeping porches into their designs, relying on the gentle winds filtering through windows to keep diseases like tuberculosis (a leading cause of deaths in the U.S. at the time) at bay. Residential builders soon caught on, and by the early 1900s, sleeping porches were appearing in homes from Minneapolis to Brooklyn, New York.

A 1920 photograph of the White House sleeping porch Library of Congress

Historic examples of sleeping porches include the multiple ones that adorn the iconic Gamble House in Pasadena, California, and one at Brucemore, a Queen Anne-style mansion in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The Brucemore porch is the work of Grant Wood, the same artist who would go on to paint American Gothic, one of the most famous paintings of 20th-century American art.

Even U.S. President William Howard Taft got in on the action. In 1910, the commander in chief had a standalone sleeping porch built on the rooftop of the White House, where it’s said to have stood for at least another decade.

Summerhouses

A summerhouse at Mohonk Mountain House in New York Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

These rustic structures were modeled after the summerhouses of 18th-century English and French estates. Small, free-standing roofed shelters that offered shady respite from the summer heat, summerhouses were often found in gardens. Less polished than gazebos, they became especially popular in New York’s Hudson Valley in the late 19th century, thanks to landscape designers like Andrew Jackson Downing, whose influence led to the creation of summerhouses throughout Manhattan’s Central Park.

Unfortunately, the unmilled wood that’s synonymous with summerhouses requires constant upkeep, so most of the park’s original structures fell into disrepair by the mid-20th century. Its best remaining example stands at the center of the Ramble, a 36-acre woodland.

Just south of New York’s Catskill Mountains, the 1869 Mohonk Mountain House has about 125 summerhouses tucked away on its 40,000-acre property. Most of these vernacular beauties were built between the 1870s and 1917, and no two are exactly alike. Constructed mainly by hobbyist carpenters, they were crafted from found materials like American chestnut and later red and white cedar wood, then outfitted with thatched grass roofs that have since been largely replaced with cedar shakes.

Many of Mohonk’s summerhouses sit on rocky outcrops, while others overlook lakes and hiking trails. The bulk of them are outfitted with benches—but what they all do is provide relief from the sun’s relentless gaze.

Demerara windows

Demerara shutters along the exterior of the Walter Roth Museum of Anthropology — Demerara windows on the exterior of the Walter Roth Museum of Anthropology David Stanley via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY 2.0

Walk through the streets of Guyana’s capital, Georgetown, and you’ll notice a bevy of wooden colonial buildings from the city’s days under British and Dutch rule. Many of these structures sport a unique feature on their upper floors: windows specially created during the 18th and 19th centuries to help cool homes amid the region’s sweltering heat.

Named for a historic region of South America’s north coast, Demerara windows once decorated everything from cottages to department stores throughout Georgetown. Ingeniously designed to combat the area’s harsh sun and trade winds, they’re outfitted with perforated sides and louvers, individual horizontal flats angled to allow light and air to get through while filtering out any direct rays.

Demerara windows are traditionally made from imported pitch pine wood, which held up stronger than native timbers in Guyana’s intense humidity. They feature a top hinge so the window can be propped open from above, sloping outward. Occupants would often place a block of ice or some water on the windowsill, chilling warm air that passed through to help cool the building’s interior.

This distinctive window style later spread across the Caribbean to islands like Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados. Georgetown’s Walter Roth Museum of Anthropology, which houses a turn-of-the-20th-century, three-story colonial timber structure, features some great examples.

Evaporated water

The method of using evaporated water to keep cool dates back thousands of years. Ancient Egyptians fought the heat by dousing reed mats or curtains in water and then hanging them in their doorways and windows. As air passed through these surfaces, it became considerably cooler, adding a bit of humidity to the hot desert climate.

In Persia, many homes utilized a type of underground aqueduct called a qanat, in combination with a badgir (an Iranian wind-catcher), to keep their homes from overheating. According to the Tehran Times, “Water within the qanat cools incoming warm air entering through a shaft, subsequently released into basements and expelled through the badgir’s upper openings.” The result: bearable indoor temperatures during the region’s most heat-oppressive months.

When U.S. President James A. Garfield was mortally wounded by a gunshot in July 1881, the nation’s Navy engineers devised their own form of “evaporation A.C.” in an effort to save him. It consisted of a large, cast-iron box fitted with thin cotton screens; a tank filled with shaved ice, salt and water; and an electric fan. Although the device lowered the temperature of the president’s White House room by 20 degrees Fahrenheit, it consumed half a million pounds of ice in just two months—and it didn’t stop Garfield from succumbing to his injuries on September 19, 1881.

Heading to cooler climates

A bathing scene captured in 19th-century Cape May, New Jersey — A bathing scene photographed in 19th-century Cape May, New Jersey Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

It’s no surprise that coastlines and mountain areas are often cooler than cities packed with heat-retaining infrastructure (and massive populations to boot). When temperatures rise, people have historically headed out of town. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, some wealthy families along the East Coast spent their summers in the Adirondack Mountains, frequenting expansive wilderness retreats like Camp Pine Knot and Camp Uncas. These spots were tucked among shady forests and along bodies of water—natural elements that help mitigate unforgiving climates.

For Americans, the idea of heading to beach resorts for their fresh air and coastal breezes can be traced back to Europe, especially Great Britain, where “the notion of the ‘restorative sea’ was born,” wrote Smithsonian magazine in 2016. In the early 17th century, Scarborough became England’s first seaside resort, and with the advent of train travel, other coastal communities quickly followed.

Soon enough, resort communities started popping up across the U.S., too. The country’s oldest seaside resort is Cape May, New Jersey, which emerged as a vacation destination in the mid-18th century. Palm Beach, Florida, followed in the late 19th century.

Awnings

Velarium in the Roman Colosseum — A *velarium*, or awning, is visible in this painting of the Roman Colosseum. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Another tool for keeping cool that dates back to ancient times is the awning. These shade-providing overhangs can be traced back to the Egyptians and Syrians, who often stretched woven mats over their market stalls or the exteriors of their homes. This offered much-needed shelter from the sun’s beating rays.

Awnings were also a fixture during the Roman Empire, most notably at the Colosseum, which featured a retractable awning system called a velarium that kept its 50,000 or so spectators cool. The velarium was made up of long, connected fabric strips hanging from 240 masts placed in sockets at the top of the amphitheater. It took hundreds of sailors to raise and lower the awning.

Over the years, awnings grew to be more stylish and decorative, becoming popular additions to U.S. homes and businesses in the late 19th century. They were even used to cool the White House before the installation of a central air-conditioning system in 1930. But the rise of residential air-conditioning units after World War II meant that these protective coverings were no longer considered a necessity.

In a 2019 interview with Smithsonian, Peter Liebhold, a curator in the Division of Work and Industry at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, reflected on how the U.S. has long drawn on technology to adapt to changing climates. As he explained, “Americans have a predilection to be willing to change nature and make it work for them rather than to be one with it.”