Air conditioning arrived in Texas in the 1920s. One of the twentieth century’s most remarkable inventions is as Texan as Dr Pepper and Blue Bell ice cream. And just like an ice-cold Dr Pepper and Blue Bell ice cream, it makes Texas summers bearable. Without the luxury of air conditioning in our homes, cars, and workplaces, Texas would still be a vast, empty state today.
Before we began calling this technology “air conditioning,” it was known as “refrigeration” or “washed-air cooling.” The term “washed-air cooling” was most commonly used until the middle of the twentieth century. It was a godsend. Before the arrival of air conditioning, Texans had to find other ways to keep cool in the summer. The battle against the Texas heat was fought mainly with sleeping porches and slowly rotating ceiling fans. One of the main reasons for having a porch on a house was so that a person could put a bed there at night and catch whatever cooling breeze might arise. Ceiling fans were better at moving hot air around than actually cooling it. Before the air-conditioning era, the most modern buildings boasted steam heating, elevators, and hot and cold running water on every floor. The summer heat is also one reason why Southerners ate their main meal of the day during the cooler evening hours. The wealthy had slaves or servants who stood around the room with large fans and fanned the diners.
Conventions and assemblies in Fort Worth could be miserable in the summer. In 1916, when the state constables’ association came to the city for its annual convention in August, the delegates first met in the Chamber of Commerce auditorium. The next day, they moved their sessions from the Chamber of Commerce auditorium to the courthouse, “where it is cooler,” and even then adjourned their daily meetings from eleven in the morning until two in the afternoon “because of the heat.” We can only guess where the attendees went to seek relief during those three hours. At best, perhaps they found a quiet bar where they could have one or two ice-cold beers.
The wealthy enjoyed a simple precursor to air conditioning that kept their homes comfortable on all but the hottest days. It worked by forcing air over large blocks of ice through ducts that distributed the cooled air throughout the house. For this to work, of course, the house had to be built with the necessary ductwork, as was the case with Tom and Electra Waggoner’s stately mansion at 1200 Summit, built in 1913.
Things began looking up for ordinary people with the arrival of Willis Carrier. Carrier, a native of New York, invented the modern air-conditioning unit in 1902 by reversing the traditional heating process, in which air is forced over hot pipes, and instead passing air over pipes filled with cold water. By cooling the air, his invention could also regulate humidity, which is important in the South. Carrier’s air conditioner, originally invented as an industrial process, later completely transformed living conditions for the general public. To meet demand for his invention, he founded the Carrier Air Conditioning Company of America. It fell to Stuart W. Cramer of Charlotte, North Carolina, to introduce the term “air conditioning” when he patented a process for adding moisture to the air, but as far as Texans are concerned, Willis Carrier is the hero of this story.
Air conditioning first made its mark in the theater world. Whether in vaudeville theaters or movie houses, the challenge of keeping hundreds, if not a thousand or more people comfortable for two hours or longer forced most venues to close during the summer months, or at least to limit operations to evening hours. The waving of fans and handkerchiefs during performances was an all-too-familiar distraction for audiences. A stuffy theater was particularly unbearable at a time when both sexes routinely dressed in their Sunday best for a public outing—no shorts and T-shirts.
The history of air conditioning is usually dated to 1924, when Willis Carrier tested an improved air-conditioning system in three Texas theaters owned by Will Horowitz Jr., one in Dallas and two in Houston. Between June and August of that year, he installed his “centrifugal chiller” in Dallas’s Palace Theatre and proclaimed it the first theater in the country to have such a system. The Palace advertised that its indoor “weather” was “cool and clear,” terms that theatergoers had never encountered before. As another advantage, the system was supposedly so easy to operate that even a janitor could start it.
Although Carrier claimed the title of father of air conditioning, Texas theaters had already invested in other systems. In 1921, the new Pantages vaudeville theater in Fort Worth (on Tenth Street between Main and Commerce Streets) boasted that every seat was “upholstered in leather.” It was fortunate that the theater was also “cooled by an ingenious system of air washing, giving it an even temperature throughout the year,” because otherwise the prospect of sitting on leather seats among 2,599 other patrons in July and August would have been enough to reduce summer attendance to zero. In 1922, a “washed-air cooling system” was installed in the new Capitol Theatre in Dallas (1521 Elm). The installation was carried out by Hosch Rotary Air Conditioning Co. No record survives of how much it cost or how well it worked, but since the Capitol opened in December, it had several months to iron out any problems before summer arrived. The theater seated 1,200 people, a daunting challenge for untested technology. It must have lived up to expectations, because in June 1925 the Capitol could boast that the temperature inside was “constantly as cool and fresh as a mountaintop.” By then it had been joined by Dallas’s Majestic Theatre, which boasted of being “the coolest place in town,” with “cool, clean, healthful air constantly circulating.”
During the 1920s, the Interstate Theater vaudeville chain, owned by Karl Hoblitzell, pioneered the use of air conditioning in Texas to keep its theaters open year-round. Hoblitzelle was a forward-thinking theater operator in several respects. He was also the first in the Southwest to install sound systems in his theaters. He owned the Majestic Theatre in Fort Worth as well as the Majestic in Dallas, which explains why the same acts were booked into both houses in succession.
Another twenty years later, portable “washed-air cooling units” were available for home use for only about $120. The inclusion of central air conditioning in new-home plans was still several years away.
The new movie palaces naturally followed the example of their vaudeville predecessors. The Worth Theatre set the standard for luxurious entertainment when it opened in 1927 and boasted that it was “cooled by the finest refrigeration system in Fort Worth.” It was, in fact, the first building in Fort Worth designed with a central air-conditioning system. No wonder it was the most popular vaudeville stage and movie palace, more popular than the Majestic, Hollywood, or Palace theaters, since it was the first. The Hollywood opened a block away in April 1930 with central air conditioning. The Majestic and Palace had to be retrofitted to compete with the newer entertainment palaces.
Other Fort Worth buildings took inspiration from the theaters, but it took time to incorporate air conditioning into their designs and allocate money for it. The eighteen-story Medical Arts Building (1927) did not have air conditioning, nor did the nineteen-story Electric Building above the ground floor, which opened two years later. The ground floor of the Electric Building was occupied by the Hollywood Theatre. The office workers above it had to sweat. Even the twenty-one-story Blackstone “luxury hotel,” which opened in 1929, and the sixteen-story Aviation Building, which opened in 1930 (at the corner of Main and Seventh Streets), relied on ceiling fans and exterior windows. Buildings continued to be designed with windows that opened and closed for many years, even after central air conditioning became standard, showing that design lagged far behind technology. The beautiful Aviation Building, which stood until 1978, tried to keep up with the times in its later years by hanging window units in its windows, regardless of how they looked. A historic moment for Fort Worth office buildings and their perspiring employees came with the opening of the Sinclair Building in 1930. Its builders praised it as “the absolute pinnacle of the modern office building.” In addition to automatic, high-speed elevators and a marble lobby, it was “cooled by refrigeration,” at least on the first two floors. On the third through sixteenth floors, employees of Sinclair Oil, the law firm Cantey & Hanger, and others, all dressed in the standard business suits of the day, had to sweat. They also had to contend with dust and insects entering through the open windows.
After the “theater district” on Seventh Street set the standard, air conditioning became practically essential for any theater that wanted to compete. The New Isis Theatre, which opened on North Main Street in 1936, boasted that it was “cooled by refrigeration” and that it showed movies in color, another novelty at the time. It was the first neighborhood theater in Fort Worth to offer such a luxury. Demand for air conditioning only continued to grow. When the Motor Inn opened in 1941 on U.S. Highway 80 (5200 Camp Bowie), it boasted of being the city’s first “modern suburban hotel for tourists,” hoping to lure travelers away from the large downtown hotels. It had air conditioning, as well as a restaurant and telephones in all fifty rooms, all for $2.50 per night based on double occupancy. The Motor Inn also fell victim to bad timing. World War II and rationing came only a few months after it opened and dealt a severe blow to the tourist trade it had hoped to attract.
In 1934, under Governor Miriam “Ma” Ferguson, Texas launched a publicly funded “campaign” to introduce air conditioning throughout the state. The state was reeling from the Depression, and officials were desperate to attract convention business. The campaign was more than just a publicity stunt. The new air-conditioning industry was eager to install expensive equipment and regarded Texas as a prime market for its product. Industry-sponsored surveys showed that theaters, hotels, restaurants, barbershops, banks, and stores would see large increases in revenue. Officials still shuddered when they recalled the 1928 Democratic National Convention in Houston, where delegates had to swelter in the Gulf Coast heat and humidity. Industry promoters claimed that restaurants were installing the equipment at such a pace that even businesses with no shortage of customers were being forced to acquire air conditioning simply to keep up with their competitors. Air conditioning was both practical and the latest craze, just as automobiles and household appliances had been before it.
Nevertheless, central air conditioning remained a luxury for a select few for many years, long after the technology’s mechanical shortcomings had been eliminated. Koslow’s in Fort Worth, where fashionable ladies stored their furs during the warmer months of the year, acquired “subzero storage vaults” in 1945. It also promoted its retail business by boasting, “Our salesrooms are cooled by refrigerated air conditioning,” confusing redundancy with repetition. Elected officials had to pay closer attention to costs when constructing public buildings. Fort Worth City Hall did not have air conditioning when it was built in 1938. Even decades later, those who worked there had to make do with exterior window units for some relief from the summer heat. Likewise, county employees working in the 1895 courthouse had to rely on small units until central air conditioning was installed as part of the building’s renovation in 1982–1983. The noisy units were an incongruous sight hanging from exterior windows and in the transoms of interior corridors. Fortunately for those dealing with the county and district courts, the courtrooms received central air conditioning as early as 1959, when Porter Engineering Co. placed condensers on the roof and “air-handling units” in each courtroom. Fort Worth’s public schools remained sweatboxes for their students and teachers until the 1960s, while principals and their office staff were blessed with air conditioning. Being sent to the principal’s office was almost a pleasure. When the Fort Worth Country Day and Trinity Valley preparatory schools opened in 1963 and 1959, respectively, one of their major attractions, besides their all-white student bodies and first-rate instruction, was their air-conditioned classrooms.
Air conditioning fundamentally changed everyday life in Texas, although it took decades. Like other new technologies, it was introduced from the top down, first adopted by first-class businesses and wealthy homeowners before eventually becoming available to the general public. The author remembers growing up in the Oakhurst neighborhood in the 1950s. We got air conditioning when my father installed a window unit in the master bedroom. When our parents were not home, my sister and I would sneak into their bedroom and settle down in front of the stream of cool air. It ranked right alongside television as one of the greatest inventions of all time.
