Air-Conditioning in Modern American Architecture, 1890–1970 9780271089256

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Air- ​C onditioning in Modern A merican Architec ture, 1890 –1970

Air-​Conditioning in Modern American Architecture, 1890–1970

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T he P enns y lva ni a S tat e Uni v er si t y P re ss Uni v er si t y Pa rk , P enns y lva ni a

Joseph M. Siry

Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Title: Air-​conditioning in modern American architecture, 1890–1970 / Joseph M. Siry. Other titles: Buildings, landscapes, and societies. Description: University Park, Pennsylvania : The Pennsylvania State University Press, [2021] | Series: Buildings, landscapes, and societies | Includes bibliographical references and index. Summary: “Traces the history of air conditioning as an environmental technology and its integration into American architecture from the turn of the twentieth century to the 1970s”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: lccn 2020034369 | isbn 9780271086941 (cloth) Subjects: lcsh: Air conditioning—United States— History—20th century. | Architecture—United States—History—20th century. Classification: lcc th7687 .s55 2021 | ddc 697​.9​/309730904—dc23 lc record available at https://​lccn​.loc​.gov​/2020034369 Frank Lloyd Wright drawings Copyright © 2021 Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Scottsdale, AZ. All rights reserved. Photos © Ezra Stoller/Esto and © Wayne Andrews/Esto. All rights reserved and are not transferable. Images of NYSE Group, Inc., including the images of the New York Stock Exchange Trading Floor and the Facade of the New York Stock Exchange, the design of each of which is a federally registered service mark of NYSE Group, Inc., are used with permission of NYSE Group, Inc., and its affiliated companies. Neither NYSE Group, Inc., nor its affiliated companies sponsor, approve of, or endorse the contents of this publication.

Neither NYSE Group, Inc., nor its affiliated companies recommend or make any representation as to possible benefits from any securities or investments. Investors should undertake their own due diligence regarding their securities and investment practices. An earlier version of chapter 4 was published as “Air-​ Conditioning Comes to the Nation’s Capital, 1928–60,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 77, no. 4 (December 2018): 448–72. An earlier version of chapter 6 was published as “Frank Lloyd Wright’s Innovative Approach to Environmental Control in His Buildings for the SC Johnson Company,” Construction History 28, no. 1 (2013): 141–64. A version of part of chapter 7 was published as “The United Nations Secretariat: Its Glass Facades and Air Conditioning, 1947–1950,” in Clifton Fordham, ed., Constructing Building Enclosures: History, Poetics and Technology in the Post-War Era (London: Routledge, 2020), chap. 3, pp. 64–83. Copyright © 2021 Joseph M. Siry All rights reserved Printed in China Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA 16802–1003 The Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of the Association of University Presses. It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-​free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Material, ansi z39.48–1992.

to Susanne

Contents



List of Illustrations

ix

Acknowledgments xvii List of Abbreviations

xx

Notes on Terminology

xxi





Introduction: Air-​Conditioning and



the Historiography of Modern Architecture

1

Chapter 1. . . . . . . . . . . . . Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin Building



and Mechanical Cooling, 1890–1910

12

Chapter 2. . . . . Industrial Air-​Conditioning from the Daylight



Factory to the Windowless Factory, 1905–40

40

Chapter 3. . . . . . . . . . . . . The Architecture of Air-​Conditioning



in Movie Theaters, 1917–40

62

Chapter 4. . . . Air-​Conditioning Comes to the Nation’s Capital



and the South, 1928–60

83

Chapter 5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The First Air-​Conditioned



Tall Buildings, 1928–32

113

Chapter 6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Windowless”



Buildings for SC Johnson Company and



the Air-​Conditioned Tower

133

vii

Chapter 7. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Air-​Conditioned Glass Buildings



in the Mid-​Twentieth Century

159

Chapter 8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Louis I. Kahn’s Architecture and 193



Air-​Conditioning to the 1970s



Coda: Air-​Conditioning and the New Consciousness



of Energy in Architecture Since the 1970s

235



Appendix: Compressive Refrigeration and the Heat Pump

237

Notes 241 Selected Bibliography

269

Index 275

viii

Con t en t s

Il lus tr ations

Figure 1

William Le Baron Jenney and William Bryce Mundie, Chicago National Bank Building, Chicago, 1899–1902   13

Figure 2

William Le Baron Jenney and William Bryce Mundie, Chicago National Bank Building, first-​floor plan and longitudinal section   14

Figure 3

William Le Baron Jenney and William Bryce Mundie, Chicago National Bank Building, main banking hall   15

Figure 4

Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan, Chicago Auditorium Theater, 1886–89, interior  16

Figure 5

Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan, Wainwright Building, St. Louis, Missouri, 1890–92  19

Figure 6

Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan, Wainwright Building, basement floor plan and typical floor plan   20

Figure 7

Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan, Chicago Stock Exchange Building, trading room, 1893–94, as reconstructed at the Art Institute of Chicago, 1974   21

Figure 8

George B. Post, New York Stock Exchange Building, trading room (earlier called the board room), 1903   22

Figure 9

C. H. P. Gilbert, Sackett and Wilhelms Lithographing and Printing Company, Brooklyn, New York, 1904   26

Figure 10

Frank Lloyd Wright, Larkin Company Administration Building, Buffalo, New York, 1902–6, view from the southeast   29

Figure 11

Frank Lloyd Wright, Larkin Company Administration Building, first-​floor plan and third-​floor plan   31

Figure 12

Frank Lloyd Wright, Larkin Company Administration Building, basement mechanical plan  33

Figure 13

Frank Lloyd Wright, Larkin Company Administration Building, plan and sections through one blast-​and-​exhaust unit   34

Figure 14

Frank Lloyd Wright, Larkin Company Administration Building, early photograph of office-​floor interior   35

Figure 15

Graham, Anderson, Probst, and White, William Wrigley Jr. Building, Chicago, south section, 1919–22; north section, 1922–24   41

Figure 16

Wrapping room, Wrigley Chewing Gum factory, Chicago, 1924   42

Figure 17

Edward Gray, Ford Motor Company’s new six-​story building with skylighted craneways, Highland Park, Michigan, 1913–14, cross section looking west   44

ix

x

Figure 18

Edward Gray, Ford Motor Company’s new six-​story building with skylighted craneways, Highland Park, Michigan, 1913–14, west end of fifth floor, looking north  45

Figure 19

Edward Gray, Ford Motor Company’s new six-​story building with skylighted craneways, Highland Park, Michigan, 1913–14, rooftop   46

Figure 20

Albert Kahn, Ford Motor Company Engineering Laboratory, Dearborn, Michigan, 1922–23  47

Figure 21

Albert Kahn, Ford Motor Company motor-​assembly building, River Rouge Plant, Dearborn, Michigan, 1923–25   48

Figure 22

Nimmons, Carr, and Wright, Sears, Roebuck & Company store, Englewood, Chicago, 1934  52

Figure 23

Reinhard and Hofmeister, Carrier Corporation “Igloo of Tomorrow,” New York World’s Fair, 1939   55

Figure 24

Austin Company, Simonds Saw and Steel Company factory, Fitchburg, Massachusetts, designed and partly built in 1930–31, completed in 1939   56

Figure 25

Austin Company, Simonds Saw and Steel Company factory, interior   57

Figure 26

Austin Company, Owens-​Illinois Glass Company Building, Gas City, Indiana, opened 1936  58

Figure 27

Philip L. Goodwin and Edward Durell Stone, Museum of Modern Art, New York City, 1936–39  60

Figure 28

Philip L. Goodwin and Edward Durell Stone, Museum of Modern Art, second floor, looking west   61

Figure 29

William Lee Wollett, Grauman’s Metropolitan (later Paramount) Theater, Los Angeles, 1922–23 (demolished 1961), interior   67

Figure 30

William Lee Wollett, Grauman’s Metropolitan (later Paramount) Theater, Los Angeles, 1922–23, longitudinal section   68

Figure 31

Outdoor temperature and attendance records of a theater having no cooling system and a theater artificially cooled, 1925   70

Figure 32

Animation Building, Walt Disney Productions, Burbank, California, 1940, aerial view and fan room, showing air-​conditioning ducts   72

Figure 33

Reinhard and Hofmeister; Corbett, Harrison, and MacMurray; and Hood, Godley, and Fouilhoux—Rockefeller Center, rendering by John Wenrich, 1935   73

Figure 34

Wallace Harrison, Edward Durell Stone, and Donald Deskey, Radio City Music Hall, New York City, 1932   76

Figure 35

Wallace Harrison, Edward Durell Stone, and Donald Deskey, Radio City Music Hall, longitudinal-​section diagram showing HVAC System A   77

Figure 36

Wallace Harrison, Edward Durell Stone, and Donald Deskey, Radio City Music Hall, cooling towers on the roof   78

Il l us t r at ions

Figure 37

Wallace Harrison, Edward Durell Stone, and Donald Deskey, Radio City Music Hall, under construction   79

Figure 38

Reinhard and Hofmeister; Corbett, Harrison, and MacMurray; and Hood, Godley, and Fouilhoux—RCA Building West, Rockefeller Center, NBC Broadcasting Studio 8H  80

Figure 39

Reinhard and Hofmeister; Corbett, Harrison, and MacMurray; and Hood, Godley, and Fouilhoux—Rockefeller Center Plaza, with ice rink opened in 1937  81

Figure 40

Thomas U. Walter et al., US Capitol, as expanded in 1851–67, view from the northwest, ca. 1929  84

Figure 41

Thomas U. Walter et al., US Capitol, main-​floor plan, as expanded in 1851–67  85

Figure 42

Thomas U. Walter, US Capitol, House of Representatives, interior, looking southeast  86

Figure 43

US Capitol, House of Representatives, transverse section showing downward scheme of ventilation adopted for air-​conditioning, 1928   87

Figure 44

US Capitol, House of Representatives, south wing, floor plan of the western half of the basement   87

Figure 45

US Capitol, House of Representatives, air handler   88

Figure 46

US Capitol, House of Representatives, attic, showing air-​conditioning ducts, 1929  88

Figure 47

US Capitol, Senate, looking southeast to air ducts over the roof   89

Figure 48

US Capitol, Senate, refrigerating machine installed in the basement in 1929  89

Figure 49

Capitol Power Plant (1910) from the north, with eastern extension (1937); chilled-​ water circuit from the refrigeration plant to Capitol Hill   93

Figure 50

Advertisement for York Air Conditioning and Refrigeration   95

Figure 51

Federal Triangle, Washington, DC, aerial view, looking northwest, December 1937  97

Figure 52

District Heating Plant, Washington, DC, original distribution system, 1934   98

Figure 53

Paul Philippe Cret, Central Heating Plant, Washington, DC, March 1934   98

Figure 54

“7,000 Tons of ‘Freon’ Air Conditioning in Government Buildings in Washington, D.C.,” advertisement, 1937   99

Figure 55

Zantzinger, Borie, and Medary, Department of Justice Building (now the Robert F. Kennedy Federal Building), Washington, DC, August 1934, under construction  100

Figure 56

Zantzinger, Borie, and Medary, Department of Justice Building, December 1934, attic with condenser pumps, piping, and chilled-​water lines   100

Il l us t r at ions

xi

xii

Figure 57

G. Edwin Bergstrom and David J. Witmer, Pentagon, Arlington, Virginia, 1941– 43, cutaway aerial view, 1943   101

Figure 58

G. Edwin Bergstrom and David J. Witmer, Pentagon, rooftop photoelectric cells, 1943  102

Figure 59

G. Edwin Bergstrom and David J. Witmer, Pentagon, Weathermaster unit, 1943  103

Figure 60

Layout of the Capitol Hill buildings’ cooling system built 1955–57   105

Figure 61

George Rodney Willis, Milam Building, San Antonio, Texas, 1926–28   114

Figure 62

George Rodney Willis, Milam Building, one of the Carrier air-​handling units  116

Figure 63

George Rodney Willis, Milam Building, office floor plan and section showing air distribution and return   117

Figure 64

George Rodney Willis, Milam Building, under construction, view showing air ducts  118

Figure 65

George Rodney Willis, Milam Building, office interior   119

Figure 66

George Howe and William Lescaze, Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building, Philadelphia, 1925–32  122

Figure 67

George Howe and William Lescaze, Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building, floor plans  123

Figure 68

George Howe and William Lescaze, Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building, east-​west cross section   125

Figure 69

George Howe and William Lescaze, Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building, plan of air distribution for a typical rental floor   127

Figure 70

George Howe and William Lescaze, Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building, view from the northeast   128

Figure 71

George Howe and William Lescaze, Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building, view of the tower midsection from the east   128

Figure 72

George Howe and William Lescaze, Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building, main banking hall   129

Figure 73

George Howe and William Lescaze, Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building, recording thermometer in ground-​floor show window   130

Figure 74

George Howe and William Lescaze, Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building, interior of main banking hall, showing lensed down lights installed in 1949  132

Figure 75

Frank Lloyd Wright, SC Johnson Company Administration Building, 1936–39, and Research Tower, 1943–50, Racine, Wisconsin   134

Figure 76

Frank Lloyd Wright, SC Johnson Company Administration Building, interior of the main workroom, 1939   134

Il l us t r at ions

Figure 77

Ambrose C. Cramer, headquarters of the National Aluminate Corporation, Chicago, 1935–37  135

Figure 78

Ambrose C. Cramer, headquarters of the National Aluminate Corporation, laboratory interior  136

Figure 79

Ambrose C. Cramer, headquarters of the National Aluminate Corporation, basement plan  137

Figure 80

Ambrose C. Cramer, headquarters of the National Aluminate Corporation, basement mechanical room   138

Figure 81

Frank Lloyd Wright, SC Johnson Company Administration Building, sectional perspective by Vernon Swaback   140

Figure 82

Frank Lloyd Wright, SC Johnson Company Administration Building, plan of “nostril”  143

Figure 83

Frank Lloyd Wright, SC Johnson Company Administration Building, plan at the level of the mezzanine (upper half ) and ground floor (lower half ), and section through the great workroom   144

Figure 84

Frank Lloyd Wright, SC Johnson Company Administration Building, compressor on the ground level   145

Figure 85

Frank Lloyd Wright, SC Johnson Company Administration Building, entrance lobby  146

Figure 86

Frank Lloyd Wright, SC Johnson Company Research Tower, section   150

Figure 87

Frank Lloyd Wright, SC Johnson Company Research Tower, partial section  151

Figure 88

Frank Lloyd Wright, SC Johnson Company Research Tower, structural diagram of a typical tower floor   153

Figure 89

Frank Lloyd Wright, SC Johnson Company Research Tower, construction, June 1948  154

Figure 90

Frank Lloyd Wright, SC Johnson Company Research Tower, view of laboratory floor  155

Figure 91

Frank Lloyd Wright, Rogers Lacy Hotel project, Dallas, Texas, perspective,  1946  157

Figure 92

Pietro Belluschi, Equitable Building, Portland, Oregon, 1945–48   160

Figure 93

Heat pump for summer cooling and winter heating   162

Figure 94

Pietro Belluschi, Equitable Building, typical office floor plan and air-​duct scheme  164

Figure 95

Pietro Belluschi, Equitable Building, typical office interior   165

Figure 96

Wallace Harrison and Max Abramovitz, United Nations Secretariat Building, New York City, 1947–50   166

Figure 97

Wallace Harrison and Max Abramovitz, United Nations Secretariat Building, alternative orientations and peak air-​conditioning loads   167 Il l us t r at ions

xiii

xiv

Figure 98

Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, Lever House, New York, 1950–52, section through a Carrier Conduit Weathermaster window unit   168

Figure 99

Wallace Harrison and Max Abramovitz, United Nations Secretariat Building, outside wall of typical office, view and section   169

Figure 100

Wallace Harrison and Max Abramovitz, United Nations Secretariat Building, half plan showing ducts   170

Figure 101

Wallace Harrison and Max Abramovitz, United Nations Secretariat Building, under construction, showing piping for the Weathermaster window units  170

Figure 102

Wallace Harrison and Max Abramovitz, United Nations Secretariat Building, diagram showing intermediate floors for distribution of air-​conditioning   171

Figure 103

Wallace Harrison and Max Abramovitz, United Nations Secretariat Building, view from the north   172

Figure 104

Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, Lever House   175

Figure 105

Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, Lever House, typical upper-​floor plan   177

Figure 106

Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, Lever House, bird’s-eye view of the roof   178

Figure 107

Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, Lever House, office interior, looking east, 1952  179

Figure 108

Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, Lever House, view of the air intake facing Fifty-​ Fourth Street  180

Figure 109

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 860–880 North Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, 1949–51, original apartment, and Esplanade Apartments, Chicago, 1957, interior view  181

Figure 110

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Seagram Building, New York City, 1954–58, night view  183

Figure 111

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Seagram Building, plans of the ground level (below) and a typical upper tower floor (above)  184

Figure 112

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Seagram Building, lifting of centrifugal-​compressor components, 1957  186

Figure 113

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Seagram Building, section through an air-​ conditioning unit  187

Figure 114

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Seagram Building, office interior, 1958   188

Figure 115

Eero Saarinen, General Motors Technical Center, Warren, Michigan, 1948–56, cross section through the Engineering Building   189

Figure 116

Eero Saarinen, General Motors Technical Center, Engineering Building, drafting room  190

Figure 117

Eero Saarinen, General Motors Technical Center, Dynamometer Building, opened 1951 191

Il l us t r at ions

Figure 118

Eero Saarinen, General Motors Technical Center, Dynamometer Building, sectional perspective  192

Figure 119

Louis I. Kahn, Yale University Art Gallery addition, New Haven, Connecticut, 1951–53, ceiling plan   196

Figure 120

Louis I. Kahn, Yale University Art Gallery addition, gallery interior, showing tetrahedral ceiling  197

Figure 121

Louis I. Kahn, Yale University Art Gallery addition, isometric drawing of the tetrahedral floor system   198

Figure 122

Louis I. Kahn, Yale University Art Gallery addition, night view from Weir Courtyard  199

Figure 123

Louis I. Kahn, Alfred Newton Richards Medical Research Building, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1957–60   200

Figure 124

Louis I. Kahn, Alfred Newton Richards Medical Research Building, floor  plan  202

Figure 125

Louis I. Kahn, Alfred Newton Richards Medical Research Building, under construction  204

Figure 126

Louis I. Kahn, Alfred Newton Richards Medical Research Building, laboratory interior  205

Figure 127

Louis I. Kahn, Alfred Newton Richards Medical Research Building, from the southeast 206

Figure 128

Louis I. Kahn, Alfred Newton Richards Medical Research Building, plan and sections showing supply and exhaust air ducts   207

Figure 129

Louis I. Kahn, Alfred Newton Richards Medical Research Building, view of Koolshade screens  208

Figure 130

Louis I. Kahn, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California,  1959–65  211

Figure 131

Louis I. Kahn, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, plan of laboratory buildings  212

Figure 132

Louis I. Kahn, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, sectional perspective looking east through the north laboratory building   213

Figure 133

Louis I. Kahn, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, aerial view   214

Figure 134

Louis I. Kahn, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, views from the north mechanical-​wing roof and of the north mechanical-​room light well   216

Figure 135

Louis I. Kahn, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, laboratory mechanical floor  217

Figure 136

Louis I. Kahn, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, air-​duct and piping system for mechanical floors, 1965   219

Figure 137

Louis I. Kahn, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, laboratory floor, ca. 1965  220 Il l us t r at ions

xv

xvi

Figure 138

Louis I. Kahn, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, eastern mechanical wing, 1967  221

Figure 139

Louis I. Kahn, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, 1966–72, cycloidal concrete vault  222

Figure 140

Louis I. Kahn, Kimbell Art Museum, aerial view from the northeast, 1976   223

Figure 141

Louis I. Kahn, Kimbell Art Museum, main floor plan   224

Figure 142

Louis I. Kahn, Kimbell Art Museum, diagram of cycloidal geometry and section through cycloidal vault   225

Figure 143

Louis I. Kahn, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, 1969–77  227

Figure 144

Louis I. Kahn, Yale Center for British Art, plan of street level and fourth level  228

Figure 145

Louis I. Kahn, Yale Center for British Art, east-​west section looking south  229

Figure 146

Louis I. Kahn, Yale Center for British Art, second-​floor reference library   231

Figure 147

Louis I. Kahn, Yale Center for British Art, fourth-​floor gallery   232

Figure 148

Louis I. Kahn, Yale Center for British Art, section through typical fourth-​floor roof bay  233

Figure 149

Louis I. Kahn, Yale Center for British Art, mechanical room   234

Figure 150

Compressive refrigeration cycle   238

Il l us t r at ions

Acknowl edgments

Since this project began, in 2011, it has been sustained by two semester sabbaticals from Wesleyan University, which has also provided annual project grants for travel to relevant sites and archives around the United States, in addition to funds to help defray costs of illustrations and permissions. Wesleyan students in a recurring seminar on energy and modern architecture have immeasurably enriched this project through their responses and discussion. My colleagues throughout the Department of Art and Art History, including emeritus professors, have been encouraging throughout the process. Especially stimulating was a year-​long faculty fellowship at Wesleyan’s College of the Environment in 2015–16. The college’s former director, Professor Barry Chernoff, was critically helpful in offering financial assistance with this book’s production costs. I also appreciated collegial interest and feedback from several invited lectures at Wesleyan on topics in this book for the College of the Environment (2016), the Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences (2016), and President Michael Roth’s faculty lecture series (2019). The support of Professor Joyce Jacobsen, former vice president for academic affairs and provost, was ever a source of encouragement. A version of chapter 4 was previously published in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, and a version of chapter 6 appeared in the journal Construction History. The editorial feedback and anonymous reader reports on those articles were most helpful. My ideas developed through presentations and exchange at a range of venues, including a lecture to the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences in April 2015 and another at the School of Architecture at McGill University in September 2015, at the invitation of its director, Professor Martin Bressani. I learned a great deal from fellow panelists at sessions on related topics at the Society of Architectural Historians annual meetings in Chicago (2015) and Providence, Rhode Island (2019), and similar panels at meetings of the Construction History Society of America at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2012) and the University of Texas at Austin (2016). At these events I came to know xvii

a number of scholars with similar interests. Among them is Professor Thomas Leslie of Iowa State University, whose work has been an inspiration. I have been cheered along by Nicholas Adams, professor emeritus, Vassar College, whose superb scholarship and colleagueship over many years have meant a great deal. The Reverend John Hall, senior minister, emeritus, First Church of Christ, Congregational, United Church of Christ, Middletown, and founding director of the Jonah Center for Earth and Art, has been an inspiration in his commitment to and advocacy for human stewardship of the natural world. The welcoming support of archivists has been vital to this project, including Dianne Hagan and her colleagues Eric Richter and Peter Brush at the Carrier Corporation, Syracuse, New York, who helped me navigate a vast trove of documents; Dr. Barbara Wolanin and Dr. Michele Cohen, Office of the Architect of the Capitol, Curator Division, Records Management and Archives Branch, Washington, DC; Margo Stipe of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Scottsdale, Arizona; Margaret Smithglass and her colleagues at the Frank Lloyd Wright Archives, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University; Terri Boesel, archivist, SC Johnson & Son, Inc., Racine, Wisconsin; Peter Asch, New York Stock Exchange Archives; Bill Offhaus, who helped me with the Darwin Martin Papers, University Archives of the University Libraries, University of Buffalo, the State University of New York; Paul Galloway, who helped me with the Mies van der Rohe Archive at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Angela Schad and Margaret McNinch at the Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, Delaware; Elerina Aldamar and Matthew Cowan at the Oregon Historical Society, Portland; William Whitaker, director, and his colleagues Heather Schumacher and Allison Olsen at the Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; Tim Ball, senior director of facilities services, and his colleagues at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California; Lynda Claassen, director, Special Collections and Archives, University of California at San Diego, and her colleague Heather Smedberg; Michael Frost and his colleagues at Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, New Haven; and Timothy Horning, University Archives, University of Pennsylvania. I also thank Maureen A. Ward, AIA, senior director, Facilities Planning and Space Management, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. Most of all, I am continually indebted to Susanne Javorski, art librarian and xviii

Ac k no w l ed gmen t s

interim director of Research Services, and Kate Wolfe and Lisa Pinette, Interlibrary Loan, Olin Memorial Library, Wesleyan; and to Susan Passman, manager, Marijane Ceruti, digital media specialist, and Nara Giannella, former digital media specialist, Visual Resource Center, Wesleyan. As I have told these colleagues many times, I am profoundly dependent on their help in procuring materials and creating images. At the Pennsylvania State University Press, this project was welcomed by Professor Jesús Escobar, Northwestern University, editor of the Buildings, Landscapes, and Societies series. This book benefited from his comments and those of the series advisory board: Professors David Friedman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, emeritus; Cammy Brothers, Northeastern University; D. Fairchild Ruggles, University of Illinois at Urbana-​Champaign; Diane Ghirardo, University of Southern California; and Volker Welter, University of California, Santa Barbara. Eleanor H. Goodman, executive editor, has been wonderfully supportive and helpful from the start, as have been her assistants, Hannah Hebert and Maddie Caso. I thank the anonymous peer reviewers of the manuscript, whose ideas much improved this book, and Keith Monley for his astute copyediting. I much appreciate the work of Lisa Tremaine who designed the Buildings, Landscapes, and Societies series, and Matthew Williams who did the layout for this book. I am ever profoundly indebted to my late father, Dr. Joseph W. Siry, who retired as senior scientist, Goddard Space Flight Center, National Aeronautics and Space Administration. His career-​long dedication to the scientific use of satellites to study earth’s atmosphere, oceans, and ice long predated the current interest in climate change. His beloved wife, my late mother, Jennie D. Siry, enabled and supported his career, as my father always gratefully acknowledged, just as she so selflessly supported my own for so long. My late sister, JoAnne Michaele Siry, was most lovingly helpful in every way over the decades we shared. I also thank my dear cousin, Christine D. Abbott, for her kind interest in this project. My last and most profound acknowledgment is to my wife, Professor Susanne Grace Fusso, chair, Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, and the Marcus L. Taft Professor of Modern Languages at Wesleyan. She read the entire manuscript several times and provided many astute comments that improved it. More broadly, Susanne has most lovingly supported my efforts in every way for the life of this project. It would never have been finished without her. Ac k no w l edgmen t s

xix

Abbre v iations

Archives, Muse ums, L ib ra r ies, S ocie ties

AOCA ARC-​UPENN ASHRAE

Architect of the Capitol Archives, Washington, DC Archives and Records Center, University of Pennsylvania American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-​ Conditioning Engineers CCA Carrier Corporation Archives, Syracuse, New York FLWA Frank Lloyd Wright Archives, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York City LIK Louis I. Kahn Collection, Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission NYSE New York Stock Exchange Archives PSFS/HML Philadelphia Saving Fund Society (PSFS) Collection, Hagley Museum and Library, Greenfield, Delaware Seagram, HML Seagram Building Materials, Hagley Museum and Library UCSD University of California at San Diego YUMA Yale University, Manuscripts and Archives Periodica l s an d Ne wspape rs

AF AR BW HPAC JSAH NYT SAE xx

Architectural Forum Architectural Record Business Week Heating, Piping, and Air Conditioning Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians New York Times San Antonio Express

Notes on Terminology

Dry-​bulb temperature is the temperature of air measured by a thermometer freely exposed to the air but shielded from radiation and moisture. Wet-​bulb temperature is the temperature read by a thermometer covered in water-​soaked cloth over which air is passed. As the cloth’s moisture evaporates, the temperature drops down to the point where the air can absorb no more moisture, because it is saturated. That temperature is the wet-​bulb temperature, also called the dew-​point temperature, at which air with a particular moisture content would be saturated, or reach its dew point, meaning its humidity is 100 percent. The higher the wet-​ bulb temperature, the higher the relative humidity. The lower the wet-​bulb temperature, the lower the relative humidity. One ton of refrigeration is the amount of energy needed to freeze one ton of water at 32ºF into one ton of ice at 32ºF in a twenty-​four-​hour period. The British thermal unit (Btu) is the international standard unit of energy. A Btu is the amount of energy (heat) required to raise the temperature of one pound of water by 1ºF. A burning wooden match releases about 1 Btu. For people with little physical exertion, the total heat generation to maintain their own body temperature is about 400 Btu per person per hour. For purposes of calculating the air-​conditioning load, this heat is classified as latent heat, which is absorbed by moisture evaporation from occupants, as distinct from the heat absorbed from the atmosphere outside, which is classified as sensible heat. The proportion of latent heat from occupants to sensible heat from the atmosphere changes with the outdoor air temperature. Other abbreviations used in this book include cfm, cubic feet per minute; fpm, feet per minute, here referring to volumes of air moved through or out of a building; and gpm, gallons per minute, here referring to quantities of either condenser water or chilled water.

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Introduction

Air-​Conditioning and the Historiography of Modern Architecture

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odern architectural history has long been concerned with the collaboration of architects and structural engineers to create the iconic works of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Yet much less attention has been given to collaborations between architects and mechanical engineers in the realm of environmental controls as these developed from the mid-​nineteenth century. Technologies of heating, ventilating, and cooling are among the more poorly understood and neglected parts of the historiography of modernism, even though these technologies are essential for habitability and are an integral part of the development of modern construction. Only since the pioneering work of scholars like the late Reyner Banham, with his book The Architecture of the Well-​Tempered Environment (1969), have there been efforts to study the evolution of environmental controls as part of the broad history of modern architecture. As Banham implied, what is needed is “a bridge between the history of modern architecture as commonly written—the progress of structure and external form—and a history of modern architecture understood as the progress of creating human environments.”1 Since Banham wrote these words, this lacuna had, until recently, long persisted in spite of the rethinking of energy use in buildings that followed the first major oil crisis, of 1973–74, and the transformation

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of contemporary architecture in pursuit of ideas of sustainability, which has accelerated since the 1990s. Emerging priorities of green, or environmental, architecture have shifted contemporary thinking about the built environment so radically that a corresponding shift in modernist historiography is now emerging. Within the last decade, attention has newly been paid to the history of environmental concerns in modern architecture of the early to mid-twentieth century.2 This attention has often taken the form of either an extension or a critique of Banham’s approach, which is still much cited. A recent alternative to Banham’s emphasis on the evolution of specific environmental technologies is that of the sociologist of science Bruno Latour, who has argued that technical innovations are optimally understood as part of a collective system that includes the motivations of their users, makers, and those who maintain them.3 Both Banham’s and Latour’s analytical models are applicable to air-​ conditioning as a technology embedded within larger social networks of human actors who create and inhabit modern architecture. The chapters that follow seek to unearth significant parts of that history, in the course of tracing the development of air-​conditioning and its integration into modern American architecture. Among many issues of energy consumption in modern buildings, air-​conditioning 1

has occupied a central place in American built environments since the advent of mechanical cooling and dehumidifying of air just after 1900. Historically, more energy has been used for heating buildings, but air-​conditioning is a more intense use of energy to dehumidify as well as cool their interiors. For example, in 1934, in the early days of residential air-​ conditioning, experts estimated that to heat a house of fifteen thousand cubic feet to 70ºF, with an outdoor temperature of 0ºF, required about 100,000 Btu per hour. But to cool such a house only 10ºF below an outside temperature of 95ºF, 50,000 Btu of heat per hour must be removed. This included energy needed to remove water vapor from the air, heat generated inside the dwelling by people and other sources, and heat caused by the sun shining on the roof, walls, and windows.4 The widespread adoption of air-​conditioning and the intensity of energy use in the conditioning process meant that by 2000, of the total energy consumed by buildings in the United States, 48 percent (the largest single component) was used for comfort cooling and refrigeration.5 The release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere from fossil fuels involved directly or indirectly in powering air-​ conditioning has made air-​conditioning central to global warming and climate change. Different types of historical studies related to air-​conditioning have appeared in the last three decades. Prominent have been social histories of its impact as a new technology that had its origins in assisting manufacturing processes but quickly became central to environmental comfort in a wide variety of buildings. The history of the concept of comfort in the modern period now has its own literature. These histories tend to see air-​conditioning as a celebrated focus of bourgeois consumption and 2

popular culture associated with income-​based privilege, advertising, and corporate promotion. Refrigeration and industrial productivity were also long closely tied to air-​conditioning.6 Contemporaneous but different in their aims have been recent historical studies of air-​ conditioning that focus on technical invention and pioneering applications through the twentieth century. Like the more socially oriented histories, these accounts of science and engineering touch on how air-​conditioning became part of architectural design. But they tend to emphasize theoretical and experimental innovation in creating new devices and equipment for controlling the temperature, humidity, and movement of indoor air.7 While linking to both the technical history and the social history of air-​conditioning, this book focuses on how architects integrated it and related technologies of heating and ventilating into their understanding of their art’s total functional scope. In modernist historiography, structural engineering has long been accepted as a source of aesthetic invention and expression. This book is centrally about the ways in which mechanical engineering has been assimilated into the culture of architecture, as one facet of its broader modernist project. Thus these chapters seek to integrate the perspectives of art history, history of technology, and related social and cultural history. On one level, each chapter discusses a set of case studies that represent larger patterns of technical development. These studies explore how key modernists—Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, Albert Kahn, George Howe and William Lescaze, Wallace Harrison, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Pietro Belluschi, Gordon Bunshaft, Eero Saarinen, Louis Kahn, and others—grappled with the need to integrate mechanical systems into

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their aesthetic programs. For them, the modernist ideal of functionality was incompletely realized if it did not wholly assimilate heating, cooling, ventilating, and artificial lighting. The incorporation of mechanical systems into modernism’s discourse of functionality was a gradual process, and there were inconsistencies between what architects proposed to do aesthetically and how they accommodated air-​conditioning formally, spatially, and visually. But it profoundly shaped architects’ work, as they and their engineering collaborators and clients well knew but as most critics and later historians of their architecture, with some notable exceptions, have left unremarked.8 This range of issues has made limiting the scope of this monograph a challenge. On one level, the history of air-​conditioning’s relationship to modern architecture is so broad that it resists the long-​standing historiographic emphasis on individual master architects. The technical developments and their social origins and consequences are largely outside the intellectual space of art history, where historical studies of architecture have been rooted. At the same time, major modernist architects were outstanding in part because they took on the question of how to integrate mechanical systems into the spatial and structural forms of buildings as works of modern art. Thus, the following chapters include both necessary discussion of air-​conditioning’s technical and social history and case studies of buildings by master architects that brought that technology into the conceptual and formal project of modernism. This way of organizing the narrative carries an inherent tension. Indeed, one could imagine two books: one that is broadly concerned with air-​conditioning’s development as a relatively anonymous historical process, in the tradition of Sigfried Giedion’s Mechanization Takes

Command (1948),9 and another that is about how celebrated individual architects made this technology into a part of their creative agenda, a subject that Banham incorporated into his narrative. This book seeks to do both, in an effort to show how the history of this technology intersects with the history of art. The chapters proceed chronologically from about 1890, when comfort cooling for American public buildings began, to the early 1970s, when the environmental movement accelerated rethinking of air-​conditioning’s climatic impact. Given the vast scope of these developments, the coherence of the monograph requires that the case studies be selective. Most of the buildings chosen here have a canonical status in the historiography of American modernism, which is based on the evolution of visual style. But reading these buildings mechanically shows that their stylistic impetus was often at odds with their climatic control, so that we see these familiar works differently. Chapter 1 looks first at the baseline conditions of architectural practice for heating, cooling, and ventilating in the work of Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan in Chicago and elsewhere around 1890, before the advent of mechanically powered air-​conditioning. These developments provide a context for revisiting Frank Lloyd Wright’s approach to the integration of heating and cooling in his Larkin Building, in Buffalo, New York (1902–6). The beginning of air-​conditioning can be traced back to 1902, when the invention of mechanical cooling for industrial and commercial buildings by engineers such as Willis Carrier and Alfred Wolff entailed study of how to manage the humidity, temperature, and movement of circulated air. In the Larkin Building, Wright assimilated certain emerging technologies for environmental comfort into his design’s In t roduc t ion

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interior spatial and exterior sculptural form to give these systems a monumental presence. Chapter 2 focuses on the development of air-​conditioning in industrial buildings, especially those for the Ford Motor Company, which, in modernizing its production facilities, became perhaps the largest corporate investor in the new technology. As Banham has noted, this was the building type wherein the major inventions in cooling and humidity control were first developed in the 1900s, before their application to theaters, office buildings, and other types in the 1920s and to individual houses from the 1930s on. At companies like Ford, Taylorist methods for calculating efficiency as a means to increase profits embraced air-​conditioning, because it markedly increased worker productivity. At Ford, its scale of application effectively redefined the architecture of the factory as a building type, and architects such as Albert Kahn and lesser-known contributors like Ford’s construction engineer, Edward Gray, were at the center of this process. They began early in the twentieth century with the daylight factory, before the advent of air-​ conditioning. Then, after mechanical cooling became part of the program for new facilities by the 1920s, architects and their industrial clients explored the windowless factory as a wholly sealed interior environment to facilitate production. This concept pervaded the design of buildings at the Century of Progress Exposition, in Chicago, of 1933–34, and the New York World’s Fair of 1939. By the later 1930s, glass block, developed for insulating while daylighting air-​conditioned factories, became a signature material of modernism, notably in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, opened in 1939. Chapter 3 treats the development of heating, cooling, and air-​conditioning in movie 4

theaters, as the most prominent building type for introducing comfort air-​conditioning to a broad public. This development proceeded incrementally from the early years of the twentieth century on an ever-​larger scale, with both architects and engineers debating alternative methods of supplying cooled and dehumidified air to audiences numbering in the thousands. By the mid-1920s, air-​conditioning had come to movie houses in Chicago, Los Angeles, Texas, and New York, and architects had begun to consider its effects on their spatial form and the design of their surfaces. This early period of air-​conditioning theaters culminated in the interiors of Rockefeller Center, including Radio City Music Hall, which opened in December 1932. Rockefeller Center collectively had the world’s largest air-​conditioning system. In the Music Hall, its team of architects, led by Wallace Harrison, created an auditorium that integrated lighting and air-​conditioning into an Art Deco aesthetic adapted to new technology. Chapter 4 discusses how, beginning in the 1920s, Congress, after much debate, appropriated funds for the air-​conditioning of the US Capitol and nearby House and Senate office buildings. This case study represents the larger issue of retrofitting existing buildings to accommodate the new technology, which practice was then more pervasive nationally than the integration of air-​conditioning into new buildings. Through the era of the New Deal in the 1930s, offices in the Federal Triangle were also air-​conditioned. Air-​conditioning Capitol Hill affected the annual cycle of congressional activity going into World War II. It also transformed daily bureaucratic life in buildings like the Pentagon, which had the world’s largest air-​conditioning plant in a single structure when it was first occupied, in 1942. Overall, Washington, DC, was arguably the first major

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American city to embrace air-​conditioning, setting a model for the South and the Sunbelt, whose industrial and demographic transformation depended on this new technology. Chapter 5 focuses on the development of air-​conditioning for tall office buildings from the mid-1920s to the mid-1930s, as exemplified by the Milam Building, in San Antonio, Texas, opened in 1928, designed by George Rodney Willis, a former associate of Frank Lloyd Wright, and the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building, in Philadelphia, opened in 1932, designed by George Howe and William Lescaze. Both were early attempts at new tall buildings whose interior environments were thoroughly heated and cooled through their full height. In these earliest examples of totally, rather than partially, air-​conditioned office buildings, architects shaped interior spaces, material surfaces, and exterior masses partly in response to the novel technology. In the Milam Building, air-​conditioning helped counter Texas’s regional climatic disadvantages for capital investment in building and economic activity. In the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building, Howe and Lescaze adapted the European International Style, whose buildings often had extensive outer glass walls with operable windows and were conceived without air-​conditioning. Thus the style brought the challenge of elevated cooling loads to the building’s new mechanical apparatus. Chapter 6 returns to the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, who, in his SC Johnson Company Administration Building, in Racine, Wisconsin (1936–39), combined the idea of the windowless office building, which had developed by the mid-1930s, with stylistic models of streamlining. He developed these concepts further in his adjacent SC Johnson Research Tower (1943–50). Wright’s Johnson

Administration Building opened to much attention from the architectural press and has since held a canonical place in art-​historical narratives of American modernism. But the building’s mechanical systems, especially its air-​conditioning, although essential to the architecture, have held a lesser place in its historiography. The need is clear to bridge between the traditionally separate disciplinary cultures of modernist architecture and mechanical engineering in order to recover an understanding of how the latter was a kind of silent but powerful partner in the evolution of the former. In his SC Johnson buildings, Wright engaged with the contemporaneous aesthetic ideal of streamlining, originally associated with moving air. Although Wright wrote that he did not like air-​conditioning as a means of achieving comfort in houses, he consistently explored the architectural expression of mechanical systems in his series of projects for tall buildings, such as the Rogers Lacy Hotel in Dallas of 1947. Chapter 7 traces the assimilation of air-​ conditioning in iconic glass-​curtain-​wall buildings of the mid-​twentieth century. The glass front presented wholly new challenges to its architects and engineers. Major examples include Pietro Belluschi’s Equitable Building, in Portland, Oregon (1948); Wallace Harrison and Max Abramovitz’s United Nations Secretariat Building, in New York (1950); Lever House, in New York (1952), designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill; and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building, in New York (1958). Designers had conflicting ideals, in that their formal priorities for their buildings as works of art may or may not have included the visible display of mechanical systems. Sometimes systems became sources for novel forms, and sometimes they were visually suppressed. And In t roduc t ion

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certain interiors incorporated lighting and air-​conditioning into a comprehensive style, wherein equipment was integrated into a modernist aesthetic that reinvented the postwar office building as a workplace. Nowhere were such problems in design given more comprehensive attention than in Eero Saarinen’s General Motors Technical Center, in Warren, Michigan, dedicated in 1956. Chapter 8 focuses on major works of Louis Kahn, who took a famously different approach to the architectural management of mechanical systems in his Yale University Art Gallery addition (1953); Richards Medical Research Building, at the University of Pennsylvania (1960); Salk Institute for Biological Studies, in La Jolla, California (1965); Kimbell Art Museum, in Fort Worth, Texas (1972); and Yale Center for British Art, completed in 1977, after Kahn’s death. Perhaps he went the furthest in trying to bring the study of mechanical systems into architectural theory as well as practice, with his abiding interest in concepts like the distinction between “served” and “service” spaces. The latter included not only stairways and elevators but also rooms for air-​handling equipment and spaces for ducts. The richness and difficulty of his collaboration with mechanical and electrical as well as structural engineers resulted in new forms that had lasting influence on modernist architecture. Yet, like his contemporaries’ parallel efforts, Kahn’s integration of building systems into his aesthetic was not always formally seamless. In this long arc of American modernist architecture’s engagement with air-​conditioning from the 1890s to the 1970s, at least eight major themes recur. First, how individual modernist architects worked with heating, ventilating, and air-​conditioning in each project was 6

tied to functional issues specific to different building types, such as tall office buildings, factories, and theaters. The discourse of modern architecture has treated the ideal of functionality most often in terms of the relationship between a program of needs and a building’s spatial arrangement. But the history of air-​conditioning shows that the operational life of buildings grew increasingly elaborate as a central part of their functionality. Banham advocated for a corresponding historiography that embraces this aspect of design as a way of rethinking the whole of twentieth-​century architecture as its buildings’ environmental systems developed. Until recently, we have had relatively little historical consciousness of how standards of comfort and utility were developed for different types of buildings. Each of these had its own demands for optimal temperature, humidity, ventilation, and regulation of air freshness and air movement, the definitions of which were painstakingly worked out by a range of collaborative specialists over the decades since air-​conditioning’s advent. Of particular important was the relationship of air systems to electric lighting, which had its own history that included its gradual integration with ventilation and cooling systems.10 Second, how each architect integrated the technology into their aesthetic depended on their theoretical outlook. In each case, an important part of that outlook was the architect’s approach to collaboration. To discuss individual architects reflects an art-​historical habit of mind that tends to occlude appreciation of their technical collaborators. Modernist architectural culture has long stressed creative genius, when in fact even the most celebrated architects increasingly worked in teams of architects, engineers, suppliers, contractors, and clients. Air-​conditioning is just one of

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many systems that tested the ideal of individual control, and histories of modern buildings need to consider the multilateral collaborations they entailed. As the critic Sara Hart has written: “In architecture and engineering, coordination and collaboration are essential functions, but the terms are not interchangeable. Coordination is quantifiable and rational. Collaboration, on the other hand, is creative and often daring. Collaborators are allies, committed to a single vision. Successful collaboration can raise a building’s stature to that of an icon.”11 The case studies in this book illuminate the vital collaborative role of mechanical engineers in the process of architectural design. The history of this critically important profession has been given little attention in the literature on modern architecture. Studies that have examined the relationship of architects and engineers have typically concentrated almost solely on the contributions of structural engineers.12 But since its origins as a distinct field in the mid-​nineteenth century, mechanical engineering has gradually assimilated an ever-​ broader portfolio of responsibilities that came to include not only heating and ventilating but all manner of issues related to building equipment. Often key technical contributions were made by mechanical engineers working within the companies that supplied air-​conditioning equipment. Of these, the Carrier Corporation is the most well known, but a number of others shaped the field. We think of electrification in modern architecture since its advent in the 1880s as mainly focused on lighting. But the integration of electricity into buildings also completely transformed their mechanical potential in relation to heating, ventilating, and eventually air-​conditioning. As to this second theme, it is often assumed that architects develop their designs for

buildings and then consult engineers. What the following case studies illuminate is the essential role of their collaboration with both mechanical and structural engineers from the early phases of the design process. What is more, and what is largely unrecognized, is that the input of mechanical engineers can help architects to develop their designs not only technically but conceptually. In this regard, analogies of modern buildings to organisms or machines have repeatedly been invoked to convey how integral technical, spatial, and formal systems had become. As architects worked to gain conceptual and formal control over air-​ conditioning and related technologies, those systems were reciprocally redefining architecture’s disciplinary boundaries and professional concerns. Shared visions of a project’s potential brought together teams of collaborators to create iconic modernist buildings, such as the mechanical engineer Alfred Jaros in his work with both Gordon Bunshaft on Lever House and Mies van der Rohe on the Seagram Building. Also, Samuel R. Lewis of Chicago, a prolific author on air-​conditioning and a president of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-​Conditioning Engineers, helped Frank Lloyd Wright design the systems of the SC Johnson Research Tower. Third, with a few exceptions, like Wright and Louis Kahn, modernist architects did not speak or write professionally or publicly on what they were doing mechanically. Their dialogues with engineers, suppliers, clients, and contractors about air-​conditioning could be intense but usually were not included in architectural discourse or journalism. Architecture, after all, did not develop a theorization of its mechanical systems analogous to its long disciplinary history of theorizing structure. Engineers’ theoretical discourse of In t roduc t ion

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air-​conditioning, meanwhile, was almost purely scientific. In case after case, the key accounts of environmental systems for buildings were to be found largely in engineering literature, whose editorial program and audiences were less architectural. This book is the first among architectural histories to make extensive use of these primary sources. These articles also contained key explanatory drawings and photographs of mechanical equipment in place and discussions of economy in the uses of energy and its supporting utilities. Such images were notably absent from architectural journalism, so that the same building would often be documented and published differently for different professional readerships, almost as if it were two different buildings. Unpublished, archival sources about the architecture, such as correspondence, preliminary drawings, and specifications, can be helpful for deciphering a building’s mechanical life, but these are usually less clarifying than the published explanations by the engineers involved. However, these published accounts prepared by engineers, clients, and architects tend to be uncritically descriptive, so other evidence is needed to shape a fully analytical picture. A fourth recurrent theme in the adaptation of air-​conditioning to modern building types is the ideal of productivity. From this perspective, air-​conditioning is subject to analysis from a Marxist viewpoint as a technology that enabled increased returns on capital investment in buildings. The decision to develop and employ air-​conditioning almost always related to larger concerns about the environmental definition of people’s well-​being inside buildings and how that related to the financial return on their activities. A factory owner would decide to air-​condition if they perceived that the system would measurably benefit productivity and/or 8

product quality and thereby provide a demonstrable and rapid return on the initial investment. A movie-​theater owner would similarly decide to air-​condition if the enhanced comfort to audiences would increase attendance in warm weather, which it almost invariably did. Owners of hotels, department stores, and other public facilities of all kinds, including art museums, had analogous concerns to ponder. An office-​building owner would calculate the efficacy of air-​conditioning for attracting and holding desirable tenants, in competition with nearby owners. Congress weighed the question of expenditures for air-​conditioning in terms of its value for members’ comfort as a means to efficiency in transacting legislative business. Scientific laboratories were among the most complex environments to manage in terms of air-​conditioning, which was essential to their productivity as sites for research and development. The emergence of this technology in buildings was related to the performance of the buildings’ occupants as economic actors, whether they were producers or consumers. It quickly redefined how modern society might function. Thus the more specifically architectural issues discussed in the following chapters relate to broader questions of how productivity is measured and how environments are regulated in capitalist economies. A fifth important theme concerns the methods by which air-​conditioning was inserted into buildings, what might be called the search for interstitial space, meaning those volumes in a building that were planned as places for necessary equipment such as refrigeration machines, air handlers, fans, pipes, and ductwork of different kinds. As these elements grew dramatically in their spatial demands, architects from George Howe to Frank Lloyd Wright to Eero Saarinen to Louis Kahn, among others,

A ir - ​C ondi t ioning in Modern A merica n A rc hi t ec t ure

all embraced the need to think anew about the three-​dimensional volume of a building not just in terms of habitable rooms but their ceiling depths, wall cavities, mechanical floors and penthouses, and often multiple basements that made up a new realm of interstitial space. Over time, this concept became part of the theory as well as the practice of modern architecture, especially in terms of the integration of its mechanical and structural systems.13 A sixth recurring theme is the major shift in thinking about built form attendant to air-​ conditioning that had to do with the concept of the building envelope as a layered system of materials and openings that manages the relationship of interior conditions and exterior climate, especially in terms of heat gain. Earlier ideas of cladding in architecture, which had been a preoccupation of nineteenth-​century theory, now expanded to include ever more sophisticated analyses of wall assemblies, including evolving types of glass, as thermal barriers that had to be considered in relationship to the capacities of air-​conditioning. These concerns brought together mechanical and material issues in a new way that began before 1900 and remains central to contemporary architecture. A seventh theme, most prominent in the first decades of air-​conditioning’s development and proliferation, is the apparent lack of concern for the issues of sustainability that have become central to architectural culture worldwide since the 1990s. Perceived not as a technology that consumed inordinate quantities of energy, air-​conditioning was instead seen as an engine of economic development, especially during the Great Depression. Yet while there was, through the mid-​twentieth century, less reference to the broader ideal of sustainability or ecological (or green) architecture,

there was a continuous and ever more sophisticated search for economy in the use of fuels and efficiency in the operation of systems. The term “energy conservation” was not broadly used until the 1970s, but the concept was a central aim of mechanical engineers, since air-​conditioning began to make a new order of demands on buildings’ electrical and water systems. The conservation ideal was there, even if it was framed in financial, rather than environmental, terms. Thus the historical study of attempted efficiencies in air-​conditioning up to the energy crises of the 1970s reveals what might be termed the prehistory of sustainability. An eighth issue in air-​conditioning’s history is most visible in larger-​scaled developments beyond individual buildings. Sites like Rockefeller Center and the US Capitol’s district highlight how architectural solutions to air-​ conditioning relate to urban utility systems— notably water supplies but also electrical power and steam-​tunnel district networks. While focused on individual architects and buildings, these chapters show how designers’ choices were rooted in larger urban issues of energy production and distribution and in questions of private appropriation of collective resources, such as ground water in San Antonio, Texas, whose climate made water a precious commodity. At first, condenser water, which is necessary to remove heat from many large air-​conditioning systems, was thrown away into rivers or elsewhere, until cooling towers were developed to recycle it. The heating, ventilating, and cooling systems for buildings were related to the local urban infrastructure that they tied into, such as municipal steam supplies. Air-​conditioning for larger buildings caused clients, architects, engineers, and local governments to reassess architecture’s In t roduc t ion

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relationship to the utility systems that supported this new technology, including electricity and water for cooling equipment. In addition to the thematic issues that appear in the following chapters are other noteworthy concerns that lie beyond the scope of this study. As Gail Cooper and other historians of technology have revealed, air-​conditioning had its own discourse among heating, ventilating, and cooling engineers, and their collaborations with architects were presented in their professional periodicals. Yet equally compelling, if more elusive, is the social history of how air-​conditioning effected changes in the lives of those who experienced it in a variety of settings, from factories, offices, laboratories, and other workplaces, to theaters, department stores, art museums, and other public or commercial buildings, not to mention domestic environs from apartment towers to tract houses. Air cooling’s capacity to shape behaviors, create expectations, and alter perceptions of the built environment has been an important facet of modernity. Its differential availability based on class, gender, race, locale, and conditions of production and consumption was often a telling measure of spatial privilege or deprivation. Air-​conditioning’s adaptation to houses, both with central systems and window units, which evolved rapidly after World War II, is its own monographic topic. At its advent for domestic use in the 1930s, in New York City, air-​conditioning appeared in high-​ income apartment buildings on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, whose mechanical systems were quite different from those of the first large low-​income housing projects of the era, such as Parkchester, in the Bronx.14 Thus, in addition to the voices of architects, engineers, and clients, we need to recover not only popular embrace 10

of the technology but also ambivalence about and occasionally resistance to the inequalities it represented. Histories of refrigeration and air-​ conditioning as transformative technologies for architecture could systematically consider the effects of air-​conditioning on the US South and Southwest during the decisive decades from its adoption in the 1930s through the 1970s. Good initial work has been done in this area, as discussed toward the end of chapter 4, on Washington, DC. But changes wrought by air-​conditioning throughout the southern states and the Sunbelt were so central to the economic, social, and political development of these regions that a study of them would be worthy of a monograph in itself. The technology’s adoption was essential for the South and Southwest to become preferred locations for many types of industries and their collateral urban residential and commercial development. Each of the larger cities adapted air-​ conditioning to its particular climate and way of life, from Miami and Atlanta to New Orleans and Houston, Phoenix and Los Angeles, to name a few major centers, apart from more-​ rural areas. Since the mid-​twentieth century, air-​ conditioning has transformed many parts of the world outside the United States, which was the main producer of air-​conditioning machinery before World War II, although the science of mechanical cooling was also developing in Germany, Switzerland, and England. In 1936 Argentina was by far the largest importer of American equipment, purchasing more than twice as much as England and France combined.15 The technology was appropriated at different times and rates, but by 1939, installations could be found in 115 countries and colonies, with applications across seventy-​five

A ir - ​C ondi t ioning in Modern A merica n A rc hi t ec t ure

different fields.16 Today air-​conditioning is still much less widespread in Europe than it is in the United States, but it continues to grow, especially in Greece, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Japan adopted air-​conditioning in commercial buildings in Tokyo in the 1930s, and the technology made a rapid advance in that country, including in homes, from 1960 to 1990. Yet in southern India there was very little air-​conditioning of any kind until the mid-1990s. In China in 1999, air-​conditioning units could be found in about 20 percent of individual urban households, whereas by 2007 that figure had risen to 80 percent.17 For an equatorial nation like Singapore, air-​conditioning has been crucial for economic development. Total energy consumption of buildings there takes up about a third of total electricity production. Singapore’s first and longtime prime minister, Lee Kwon Yew (in office 1959–90), regarded air-​conditioning as the most important invention of the twentieth century.18 The growth of regions like the Persian Gulf is similarly unthinkable without air-​conditioning.19 It would take an enormous amount of energy to cool the indoor environments of the world’s fifty largest metropolitan areas to levels comparable to those in the United States. For metropolitan Mumbai, an estimate of 2009 is that the potential energy demand for cooling in that city alone would be about one quarter of the current demand for the entire United States.20 Thus the technology’s adoption worldwide would be a valuable focus for multiple studies.

But this book is about both the broad development of air-​conditioning as it emerged in nonresidential building types and the ways in which US architects and mechanical engineers collaborated to integrate air-​conditioning into buildings that are canonical in histories of twentieth-​century modernism. What follows is the story of the cooling systems central to modern architecture and of the integration of these new technologies into architects’ concepts of their art. The thematic argument is that air-​ conditioning and related mechanical systems of heating and ventilating were sufficiently transformative as new technologies that they compelled architects to rethink their approach to modern functionality as a basis for the holistic design of their buildings. To the abiding issues of structure, space, and form, they had to add moving air into the logic of their solutions. The evolving relationship between air-​conditioning and architectural forms was neither linear nor consistent. Over the span of the decades treated in the following chapters, there was a broad spectrum of responses. But regardless of how architects chose to align, or not to align, the mechanical and the aesthetic, air-​ conditioning impressed itself on their vision for their art. The building as an air-​cooling and air-​moving machine became a modern fact, but the architectural interpretation of that condition was open to imagination. In notable cases, this mechanical novelty went from being an alien importation into designers’ thinking to being an expressive resource for expanding the possibilities of twentieth-​century architecture.

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Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin Building and Mechanical Cooling, 1890–1910 Chap ter 1

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rank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin Building, in Buffalo, New York, designed from late 1902 and opened in the spring of 1906, has long held an important place in accounts of both his early work and the history of air-​conditioning. This chapter revisits its position in each of these histories. What emerges is an understanding of the building, which, on one level, was part of Wright’s broader search for aesthetic expression embracing new technologies of heating, ventilating, and air-​conditioning and, on another level, was inextricable from the broader story of how these technologies developed around 1900, when many architects and engineers were first engaging with the question of how to integrate mechanical cooling into their art.

Energy in Office Buildings and the Chicago National Bank Building, 1902 From their origins in the mid-1880s to New York City’s zoning law of 1916 that shaped the second generation of much taller setback skyscrapers, the first generation of tall office buildings required relatively little operational energy. Before air-​conditioning and fluorescent lighting, energy was mainly consumed in heating occupied spaces and in powering elevators. Ventilation was mostly natural, and artificial light levels were low due to inefficiencies in 12

lighting technology. Windows occupied from 20 to 40 percent of facades, as opposed to facade transparencies of 50–75 percent in mid-​ twentieth century high-​rise buildings. The earliest tall office buildings typically lacked thermal insulation, with single-​pane glazing and high infiltration. Yet their iron and steel structural frames, fireproofed with terra-​cotta and externally clad in brick and stone, did provide a large thermal mass that helped keep interiors warm in the winter and absorb heat gains in the summer. Contemporary research shows that in cold winters with little sunlight, the energy consumption in buildings is inversely proportional to their compactness. Early tall buildings were bulky and compact, meaning that their proportionally small surface areas housed large spatial volumes. This allowed them to retain a relatively large amount of heat in winter even though their offices were shallow in order to ensure ample penetration of natural light.1 For office buildings, mechanically powered ventilation in winter or summer was a rarity, and there was no dehumidification or cooling of air like that later done by air-​conditioning. At the start of the twentieth century, an advanced system of forced ventilation (yet without air cooling) appeared in the Chicago National Bank Building (1899–1902), designed by architects William Le Baron Jenney and William Bryce Mundie at 148–154 West Monroe

Street, on the south side, east of La Salle Street, the city’s main north-​south banking street (fig. 1). This building was actually the home of four banks under common ownership that uniquely held deposits of four local governing bodies, including most of those of the city of Chicago.2 In the city it was only the second bank building to be built as an entirely isolated facility; most other banks were quartered in offices in larger structures not specifically devoted to banking. Upon its completion, Chicago’s leading architectural journal described it as “a building which, without exaggeration, may be characterized as the perfection of bank architecture. . . . The plan of this bank provides protection against all the elements of spoliation or decay—moral, physical, natural.”3 As Jack Quinan has shown, the Chicago National Bank Building’s air-​circulation system was one point of departure for Wright’s Larkin Building.4 Jenney and Mundie’s structure combined an internal iron and steel frame, like that of Jenney’s earlier work at the heart of the protomodern Chicago School of the 1880s, with a neoclassical exterior typical of the period after the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. Before it was demolished in the 1950s, the Chicago National Bank, though mechanically modern, had a facade like a Roman temple’s front, with four fifty-​foot-​tall Corinthian columns on monumental pedestals at the sidewalk and upholding an entablature below a triangular pediment, with a recessed attic. It was such inconsistency between modern mechanical systems and a historical architectural style that Wright sought to resolve. Indeed, Wright’s main mentor, Louis Sullivan, had disparaged the Chicago National Bank for presenting its modern commercial functions in the guise of a Roman temple.5 As the main-​floor plan shows, the bank building was about 90 feet wide east-​west and

Figure 1 William Le Baron Jenney and William Bryce Mundie, Chicago National Bank Building, 148–154 West Monroe Street, east of La Salle Street, Chicago, 1899–1902; remodeled in 1938 and demolished by 1956. From Architectural Review 12, no. 3 (March 1905): 90.

182 feet deep north-​south (fig. 2, top). A longitudinal section shows that the front portion, facing Monroe Street, held four stories, extending back 44 feet (fig. 2, bottom). In this frontal block were bank offices. Behind was the one-​story main banking room, which was the full 87-foot width of the interior, 133 feet deep, and 44 feet high. The building had no interior columns; the roof above the main banking room was carried on steel trusses spanning the room and resting on columns embedded in the sidewalls. The publicly accessible portion of this rectangular hall was entered from the north and enclosed on three sides by working counters. The ceiling was nearly all crystal glass in ornamental panels. Above was an attic below gabled skylights of wire glass. The entire interior was devoted to La rk in Buil ding a nd Mec h a nica l Co ol ing

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Figure 2 William Le Baron Jenney and William Bryce Mundie, Chicago National Bank Building. Top: first-​floor plan, showing fresh-​air intake (a) and exhaust stacks (b) magnified at lower left. From “Ventilating and Heating the Chicago National Bank,” Engineering Record 44, no. 21 (23 November 1901): 502. Bottom: longitudinal section, showing gabled skylights over main banking hall, and exhaust stack (c) magnified. From “The Chicago National Bank,” Engineering Record 44, no. 9 (31 August 1901): 205; magnifications and graphic additions by author.

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banking purposes, and “throughout the building considerable attention was paid to providing for all the daylight possible.”6 Fresh air was admitted through louvered openings several feet above the roof. There was only one intake point, located at a distance from sources of smoke from surrounding buildings (fig. 2, top, a). In the basement, fans drew fresh air 14

down into a chamber where it passed through a bank of tempering coils (steam pipes) to remove its chill, then through air-​washing sprinklers, followed by a water eliminator to extract excess moisture. Then heating coils raised the temperature to the desired indoor level (72ºF), which yielded a lower relative humidity.7

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The Chicago National Bank Building had steam and electricity from the outside, so no fuel was burned inside, thus reducing the risk of fire. In the context of Chicago’s notoriously smoky atmosphere in this era, the cleanliness of the air inside was important not only for human comfort but also for the artwork and material surfaces of the banking hall.8 Air was supplied at high velocity from four main ducts whose bronze registers were set in the faces of marble-​clad piers just above the teller’s grilles (fig. 3, a). Each of the four ducts was linked to a separate thermostat operating a set of dampers that were to adjust the air temperature in one quadrant of the banking hall, just as the Larkin Building’s floors were divided into four quadrants for ventilation. The bank claimed that “[b]y the use of this perfect system of heating and ventilation the temperature is always equably maintained, and the employees and patrons of the institutions occupying the building escape the danger and discomfort of a varying temperature, and there is no necessity for opening windows in summer or tampering with steam coils at any season.”9 In the attic between the art-​glass ceiling and the sawtooth skylight was a damper through which warm exhaust air served to keep the skylight “clear of snow and ice in the Winter so that the room [was] always as light as day.”10 Interior air was changed at a rate of 6,500 cfm, or once every fifteen minutes. The building had no actual air-​cooling equipment, but air could be exhausted through the attic space, so that “in the summer, by having the air entering at one end of the attic and leaving at the other end, the temperature in the banking room [was] reduced about eight degrees.”11 By 1902 Jenney and Mundie, with heating and ventilating contractors, had created for one of Chicago’s key organizations an advanced system

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that brought these mechanical arts to the cusp of air-​conditioning.12 The Heating and Cooling of the Chicago Auditorium Theater Before Wright designed for the Larkin Company, he had been employed in the office of Adler and Sullivan from perhaps the winter of 1887 until the spring of 1893, when the firm was designing mechanically complex tall office buildings as well as theaters. It was also in this period that Adler and Sullivan published their writings on a nonhistorically derived modern architecture that developed from all the conditions of its time and place—programmatic, structural, mechanical, and others—so that, as Sullivan famously wrote, “form ever follows function.”13 Or, as Adler phrased it, “function and environment determine form.”14 Both Adler and Sullivan saw the tall office building in terms of the metaphor of a living organism, which connoted not only its structural and spatial form but also its mechanical systems La rk in Buil ding a nd Mec h a nica l Co ol ing

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Figure 3 William Le Baron Jenney and William Bryce Mundie, Chicago National Bank Building, main banking hall looking south, showing air-​supply grilles (a) on the side walls. From Architectural Review 12, no. 3 (March 1905): 91; graphic additions by author.

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Figure 4 Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan (architects) and Eugene F. Osborne (consulting mechanical engineer), Chicago Auditorium Theater, Chicago, 1886–89, interior, looking northeast, after partial restoration in 1967, showing grilles for supplying conditioned air set between incandescent lights in the vertical faces of semiellip­ tical arches. Chicago History Museum, HB-31105-C. Photo: Hedrich-​Blessing.

for heating and ventilating. Wright’s approach to architectural integration of mechanical systems, in turn, derived from that of his mentors and their buildings on which he worked. Adler and Sullivan hired Wright to assist in designing the Chicago Auditorium Building, the largest structure in the city’s history.15 When its theater opened, in December 1889, its modernity was identified as much with its mechanical innovations as with its architectural style. As a contemporary wrote: “This is in all respects a modern structure, for every improvement in the building line possessing any merit has been introduced.”16 The heating, ventilating, and cooling of the large theater, 16

the building’s main public space, set new standards and were closely studied as part of the visible architecture (fig. 4). Seating more than 4,200, the Auditorium Theater was too large to depend on natural air currents for ventilation, so a mechanical system furnished fresh air and removed vitiated air, with apparatus capable of moving more than twenty-​five million cubic feet of air per hour. The Auditorium Theater had a broad range of projected functions, including national political conventions, which were always held in summer. To accommodate its varied programs, the hall’s seats were mostly on the main floor, or parquet, and a large main balcony, with additional seating

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on two upper balconies and in tiers of boxes. For the theater, fresh air was taken in through a shaft to the south, or right, of the stage front, with an outlet at the sixth floor. Air was forced into the shaft by a fan having a wheel ten feet in diameter. The fresh air came down through the shaft, in which it was subjected to a heavy spray that washed away much of the dust and soot. In winter, the air was washed clean with another water spray in the basement, then heated by banks of steam-​radiator coils “so subdivided and provided with valves that very minute gradations of temperature [could] be effected.”17 Air was humidified before it was forced through the structure’s many levels and chambers. In summer, the bank of radiators was bypassed and the air was blown through a spray of water cooled by beds of crushed ice, without the use of mechanical refrigeration. Adler said in 1898, “[W]e have succeeded in the Auditorium in lowering the temperature three or four degrees and under favorable conditions even five degrees.”18 The hall’s topmost levels were thus unlike the sweltering galleries of some Chicago theaters, whose lack of ventilation marked them as socially undesirable. The Auditorium Building’s system applied advanced cooling technology to this multipurpose theater’s democratic ideal, such that every seat was well ventilated.19 In 1894, likely thinking of the Auditorium Theater, Adler noted that in summer the shower of water used to wash incoming air could be cooled with ice or brine, “by which means quite a reduction in temperature [could] be effected.” Raising humidity was easily accomplished when desired, “as in winter.” But “to reduce the atmospheric humidity,” as would be the goal of later air-​conditioning, was “a very difficult and expensive matter, and, except to the slight degree possible of accomplishment

by the agency of a very cold shower, [required] a system of pipes in which a circulation of some freezing fluid [was] maintained.”20 Here Adler foresaw the need for a refrigerant other than water. He recalled his experience of the Auditorium Theater, about which he said in 1898: “At the beginning we planned a system of mechanical refrigeration intending to use our heating pipes, the coils which in winter are used for circulating steam for heating, using them in the summer for circulating cold brine or ammonia for cooling. But we found the cost too great, and a great many difficulties in the way.” In other words, air-​conditioning was not yet practicable. He added: “[A]ir can be cooled, deprived of its moisture and then sent on its way to a room, but all those things involve complications that increase cost so much that they are impracticable. Probably the cooling of air by passing a shower of cold water through it is the nearest approach we will make toward any material cooling of the rooms. . . . [I]n my opinion if there is to be any control of humidity, it should be in the matter of removing moisture from the air, not adding moisture to it. . . . [O]ne of the great advantages that would be derived from cooling the air to a very considerable extent before sending it to the room and then warming it again and then cooling it, is that much of the contained moisture would be precipitated and it would be sent into the room dry.”21 Adler died in 1900, but here he touched on the idea of air-​conditioning as mechanical dehumidification that soon would be addressed by engineers like Alfred Wolff and Willis Carrier. In the Auditorium Theater, as Adler wrote, “the fresh air is chiefly introduced at and from the top and in greatest volume on or near the stage.”22 Thus the four main semielliptical ceiling arches “are hollow, and serve as ventilating La rk in Buil ding a nd Mec h a nica l Co ol ing

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tubes and as supports for electric lights.”23 On the vertical face of each arch are nineteen circular supply vents, whose domed perforated ornamental wrought-​iron covers supply air to the main mass of the audience above their heads, mechanically forcing the air outward from the front stage (fig. 4). Between the perforated domical grilles integrated into the arches were originally 25-watt incandescent lights with transparent bulbs. Along the arches, Sullivan also designed a series of foliate reliefs in cast plaster as settings for the projecting lightbulbs. Such decorative plasterwork was considered optimal fireproofing for structural elements in theaters. When the room was illuminated, the ceiling arches, with their light, ornament, and color, presented an almost magical setting, as they transcended their material planar form to become an encompassing luminous vault in space. The bulbs’ warm glow was reflected in Sullivan’s foliate white-​and-​gilt ornamental reliefs. Thus he integrated the novelties of electric lighting and forced air into a unified design. Wright pursued this idea for air-​conditioned interiors into the twentieth century. Mechanical Systems in Adler and Sullivan’s Tall Office Buildings, 1890–95 When the Chicago Auditorium opened, it embodied the idea of a large building whose mechanical and electrical systems were so essential and complex that they evoked the metaphor of a living organism. As Edward Garczynski wrote in 1890 in his commemorative book on the building: “A most important part of the internal economy of the Auditorium Building is that which furnishes the power, the sources of lighting and heating, and many other matters which are to this great building what nerves are to the human body.”24 This 18

concept informed Adler and Sullivan’s work on their later tall steel-​framed office buildings: the Wainwright, St. Louis (designed 1890, built 1890–92); the Schiller Building, Chicago (designed 1891, built 1892–93); the Union Trust Building, St. Louis (designed 1892, built 1893); the Chicago Stock Exchange Building (designed 1892–93, built 1894); and the Guaranty Building, Buffalo (designed 1893–94, built 1895–96). Wright worked with Sullivan on all but the last of these. He recalled: “[T]he Guarantee [sic] Building, Buffalo, had just come into the office when I left.”25 By May 1893 Wright was identified as an architect practicing independently.26 In discussing tall office buildings, Adler notes that the desire for economy in their metal frames had led to the adoption of large units of subdivision, yielding greater freedom in using space. As listed by Adler, other factors affecting the choice of the units included the position and size of light courts, elevator shafts, stairwells, smokestacks, and ventilating shafts. A unit’s well-​considered selection “will as surely and safely lead and guide the architect and engineer in determining the main features of general artistic and structural design as the bone of an extinct animal inspires the naturalist with knowledge of the muscles, viscera and skin of its former owner.”27 Sullivan also conceived of the tall building as analogous to a living form, but whereas Adler thought of this in terms of bodily parts, Sullivan wrote of living processes. In a letter of 1897 to the critic Russell Sturgis about the Guaranty Building, opened in March 1896, he writes, “I presume you are aware how deeply I am committed to the reality of a creative, responsive architectural art, an art productive of organisms, not ‘compositions.’ ”28 What is less frequently noted is that Sullivan extended the organic analogy to buildings’ mechanical systems, whose

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operations were comparable to the physiology of circulation. As he writes in his essay of 1896, “The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered,” its program included, “1st, a story below-​ ground, containing boilers, engines of various sorts, etc.,—in short, the plant for power, heating, lighting, etc. . . . and last, at the top of this pile . . . a space or story that, as related to the life and usefulness of the structure, is purely physiological in its nature,—namely, the attic. In this the circulatory system completes itself and makes its grand turn, ascending and descending. The space is filled with tanks, pipes, valves, sheaves, and mechanical etcetera that supplement and complement the force-​ originating plant hidden below-​ground in the cellar.”29 Wright surely knew both Adler’s and Sullivan’s perspectives on the mechanical systems of tall buildings like the Wainwright (fig. 5), the first of their iron-​and-​steel-​framed tall office buildings, which Sullivan designed in 1890, while Wright was working with him. The Wainwright, like its successors, had a mechanical plant that followed Adler’s model. The building was heated with steam passing up insulated risers in closed ducts to horizontal pipes and radiators on its ten aboveground floors.30 Fan-​driven ventilation with air ducts was limited to the basement boiler and engine rooms and toilet rooms. Otherwise, there was no forced air in the building for heating, ventilating, or cooling. The basement plan (fig. 6, bottom) shows the boiler room, the cylinder and pump room (for steam and water), and the dynamo room (for generating electricity). The latter was set beneath the light court so its noise would not be bothersome. A typical floor plan (fig. 6, top) shows the boilers’ smokestack, on the north, but no space for air ducts, presumably because the office floors

Figure 5 Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan (architects) and Charles Ramsey (associated architect), Wainwright Building, 709 Chestnut Street, on the northwest corner of the intersection with Seventh Street, St. Louis, Missouri, 1890–92. Photograph by Emil Boehl, ca. 1907. Missouri History Museum, St. Louis, image no. N10484.

were naturally ventilated through their exterior windows and corridor transom windows. The financial logic of a tall office building dictated that all available floor area be rentable space; the space needed for riser and return air ducts was long deemed too valuable to be sacrificed. Adler writes, “However desirable a system of indirect radiation with forced draught may be, there is never room in a high structure for all the necessary air ducts, though there may be enough for the service of a few of the lower stories.”31 The Wainwright Building was not air-​ conditioned, and because it did not have external shading beyond window awnings, it would overheat. In the winter, exterior walls allowed minimal heat loss. Ample daylight decreased dependence on incandescent light, lowering the electrical load. Study of Adler and Sullivan’s subsequent tall buildings shows them to be largely consistent in this respect: they had ample mechanical plants to generate steam to power engines and La rk in Buil ding a nd Mec h a nica l Co ol ing

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Figure 6 Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan (architects) and Charles Ramsey (associated architect), Wainwright Building, basement floor plan (bottom) and typical floor plan (top), showing smokestack toward the northwest corner of the light court. From Wainwright Building (St. Louis, 1891); magnification and graphic additions by author.

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dynamos, as well as exhaust steam for direct heating through radiators. In this, they were much like their counterparts in New York City. Only one (the Chicago Stock Exchange Building) had a forced-​air system for heating and ventilating, and none were air-​conditioned. Sullivan’s discussion of the attic story as where “the circulatory system completes itself and makes its grand turn, ascending and descending,” would likely have referred not to ducted air but to steam for heating, which circulated from the basement to the building’s top and then down into its radiators on each floor. One is tempted to interpret the rounded or arched window forms that recur in the topmost office floors in all his tall office buildings (except the Chicago Stock Exchange Building) as representations of the circularity of the mechanical systems whose vertical circulation turned at the top. The Wainwright’s circular windows could be seen as wheels set in their surrounding interlaced circles of ornamental terra-​cotta.32 If, for Sullivan, representation embraced mechanical systems, and the Chicago Stock Exchange Building was exceptional among Adler and Sullivan’s tall office buildings in its powered ventilation, then one would expect some evidence of functional differences in its architectural form. Indeed there was.33 A typical floor had riser ducts for hot air on the inner faces of structural columns along the front wall. The decision to provide equipment, space, and power for forced-​air heating and ventilation for

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the more than four hundred offices may have followed from the need similarly to serve the trading room on the second floor’s south side (fig. 7). In this large two-​story room, seventy-​ nine feet deep by sixty-​four feet wide, brokers gathered every morning to exchange views on local securities, make quotations, and give each other some idea of their orders in various stocks and bonds. Such dense occupancy would have demanded high levels of ventilation. In the ceiling between the beams spanning the room’s core were ornamental warm-​ air supply registers, the design of which was integrated with the surrounding stenciling. This last major interior designed while Wright worked for Adler and Sullivan was a model of how space, structure, light, color, ornament, and powered air could be brought together in an aesthetically harmonious room. It was the idea of mechanical ventilation as integral to architecture that Wright brought to the Larkin Building. Yet the intervening decade saw the advent of air-​conditioning, and it was that which Wright integrated into the Larkin’s interior. The Origins of Modern Air-​ Conditioning in the United States, 1902–3 As Wright developed the Larkin Building’s design in 1903–4, other buildings were setting precedents for comfort air-​conditioning, including the New York Stock Exchange, whose new building opened on the old exchange’s site on Broad Street, south of Wall Street, in April 1903. The new building was deemed “the first great commercial edifice to be built in New York in the twentieth century.”34 Like its predecessor, it fronted east on Broad Street, with its west wall facing New Street (later Exchange Place). Having won the design competition in

November 1899, architect George B. Post submitted initial plans and cost estimates in late October of 1900, and construction of the new exchange began in May of 1901. Behind the exchange’s temple front, seven great windows towered over the vast skylighted trading room, first called the board room (fig. 8). The building committee stipulated to Post: “[I]n addition to providing the largest possible board room, he should arrange for the greatest amount of light.”35 This room was 138 feet long by 112 feet wide and had a 72-foot-​ high skylighted ceiling with front tall windows facing east and rear tall windows facing west. Post designed “one immense glass screen from base to entablature and extending the entire width of the facade, thus making practically one window of the whole front of the Board Room on each street.”36 The room’s 1.2 million cubic feet of space had almost 11,000 square

Figure 7 Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan, Chicago Stock Exchange Building, trading room looking northwest (1893–94, demolished 1972), as reconstructed by Vinci-​ Kenny, Architects, at the Art Institute of Chicago, 1974, showing ornamental ceiling grilles for forced-​air ventilation (circled). Reconstruction and reinstallation of the trading room was made possible through a grant from the Walter E. Heller Foundation and its president, Mrs. Edwin J. DeCosta, with additional gifts from the city of Chicago, Mrs. Eugene A. Davidson, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, and Three Oaks Wrecking Company. The Art Institute of Chicago. Gift of Three Oaks Wrecking Company, RX23310/0002. Photo: The Art Institute of Chicago / Art Resource, New York; graphic addition by author.

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Figure 8 George B. Post (architect) and Alfred Wolff (mechanical engineer), New York Stock Exchange Building, trading room (earlier called the board room), looking southeast, on opening day, 22 April 1903, showing ceiling coffers as ventilation-​supply openings, and exhaust-​register openings at the sixteen trading posts distributed over the floor. New York Stock Exchange Archives. Used with permission of the NYSE Group, Inc. © 2000 NYSE Group, Inc.

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feet of outside glass walls out of a total of more than 18,000 square feet of exposed wall surface. The building’s air-​cooling system was to ease the work of brokers in the summer months, when, though average outdoor temperature was not much above 70ºF, humidity was as high as 93 to 97 percent.37 With its completion in 1903, “what might almost be called a new era in refrigeration began. It mark[ed] the practical beginning of a branch of the business that [had] been almost entirely neglected, the cooling of buildings purely for the physical comfort of occupants; in other words, refrigeration as a luxury—it might well be added as a necessity, in this case, when the truly strenuous lives of the brokers are considered.” More than a thousand busy people were expected to mill about trading posts in activity involving considerable physical exertion, augmenting the cooling load. Anticipating an argument that was invoked in the 1920s for air-​conditioning the

US Capitol, this editor continues: “Undoubtedly the lives of many of them have been shortened by the excess heat on the floor of the Exchange on the hot days of summer. But now they may look forward in equanimity to the time they used to dread, for from the ceiling of the lofty board room will descend cooling air waves, keeping the temperature of the room and their tempers even.”38 In the decade before the opening of Post’s exchange, sudden deaths of traders on the floor tended to occur in midsummer.39 Mechanical engineer Alfred Wolff (1859– 1909) oversaw the heating, ventilating, and innovative cooling systems. By then he had been employed on many major buildings in New York City and was likely the leading ventilating engineer in the country. Among his several notable earlier works was a system using ice to cool Carnegie Hall, designed by architect William B. Tuthill and opened in 1891. Originally the stock exchange’s building committee had charged Wolff with designing the system of ventilation without mechanical cooling. Yet Wolff consulted Henry Torrance Jr., of the Carbondale Machine Company, in Carbondale, Illinois, whose wide experience with problems of air cooling and moisture extraction enabled him to collaborate in designing the refrigeration system. His company was known for creating cold-​storage systems for meat and other foods, so its involvement meant the adaptation of such technologies to comfort cooling.40 As one observer had remarked in 1893, “If they can cool dead hogs in Chicago, why not live ‘bulls and bears’ in the New York Stock Exchange?”41 In November 1900 Post gave plans to Wolff, who developed an initial scheme of heating and ventilating. After the design developed, Post assured the building committee, on meeting with them on 2 October 1901: “All the air brought into the Stock Exchange [will]

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be cooled.” He had consulted with Wolff as “one of the foremost men in his line,” and read Wolff ’s report of 1 October advocating a refrigerating plant. Post told the committee: “I think if we use the refrigerating plant it would be [the] greatest step in [hygienics] that has been made in modern times.”42 Wolff observed that, for the purposes of light, the Board Room is provided with an extraordinary amount of glass surface, but that during the summer months this glass surface also represents [a] rather effective heating surface as far as the rays of the sun are concerned. Again the number of people in the room, as well as the nature of their occupation, causes the giving out of much animal heat and moisture, while certain lights in use will further contribute to the heat. The result is that it will be difficult to maintain a satisfactory temperature in this room, however pure the air and however much air is supplied and exhausted, except the entering air be cooled. Wolff then articulated the key point about air-​ conditioning as dehumidification: The chief advantage of the cooling of the air, however, is that the degree of moisture in the air will be so considerably reduced. We suffer in New York City during the summer months with a high degree of moisture, often as high as 85 to 90 per cent. The refrigerating plant as designed, will not only lower the air entering the room 8% to 10%, when the external temperature is say 85º, but if the humidity of the entering air is say 85 per cent, it will be lowered at the same time to about 55 per cent. What this means in comfort, in ability to transact

business, in the health and well-​being of the members, can scarcely be realized by a mere recital of the above figures, but must be experienced to be thoroughly appreciated. . . . I am certain that the members of the Stock Exchange will think more than kindly of all concerned who have contributed to this result. If the refrigerating plant is instituted for the Board Room and the entering air is cooled, in accordance with the plant specified, and the percentage of moisture lowered, the result will be that this room will be superior in atmospheric conditions to anything that exists elsewhere. It will mark a new era in the comforts of habitation.43 Wolff himself first appeared before the committee on 31 January 1902, when the question of the ventilating plant had still not been settled. The committee’s questions to Wolff conveyed their concern about its first cost. His estimate for a heating and ventilating plant alone was $235,000, but a refrigerating plant for both the underground floors and the board room would cost about an additional $130,000. He explained: “In dealing with very large volumes of air, the reason why large machinery is required is not only for the cooling of the air, but the abstracting of the moisture from the air. . . . [T]he importance of this plan to the upper portion and to the Board Room is in the abstraction of the moisture and the reduction of the humidity. I attach less importance to the reduction of the temperature than to the abstraction of the moisture.” Wolff pleaded for a refrigeration plant, “[b]ecause you would add above five years to a member’s usefulness. . . . [I]t seems to me a great advantage to the New York Stock Exchange in the amount of business to be done within a day—it would be a personal La rk in Buil ding a nd Mec h a nica l Co ol ing

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advantage to the members that are on the floor of the Exchange during the Summer months if it is introduced there.”44 Wolff went on to explain the state of practice, telling the committee: “You see, this cooling of the air is something that has not been done to any great extent before. It is the coming thing to my mind, and people have not done it because it is expensive to do—it costs a good deal, as to the first cost, and adds to the operating expense to cool the air.”45 A cooling system required a power capacity of several hundred horsepower in the summer months, otherwise not used. Wolff explained: “[I]t costs money to cool air. It costs more to cool the air ten degrees than to heat it ten degrees. It involves not only lowering the temperature, but the abstraction of the moisture. I have felt deeply on what this means to the Stock Exchange. No plant is so important for the doing of business as this: To do more business, adds a good interest to his investment, for a man to live in proper and decent atmospheric conditions. That is why I advocate it.”46 Wolff persuaded the committee to add cooling to the heating and ventilating plant. His associate Werner Nygren supervised the installation.47 The big challenge for the cooling system was the trading room, which, “with the sun shining through a very large area of glass windows, would be something like a greenhouse.”48 The system was designed to supply air under a slight pressure and to exhaust it at a slightly lower rate in order “to provide that a positive outflow may take place from the spaces requiring ventilation without creating a tendency for an inflow of cold air through such openings as the building may possess.”49 The room was ventilated on the downward system, with an elaborate arrangement of ducts by which air could be admitted at a large number of points 24

spread over the ceiling. The air traveled laterally through the main north-​south ducts across the ceiling, which read as deep crossbeams from inside the room. These fed air through branch ducts to the ceiling openings, seen as ornamental coffers from below (fig. 8). After the building opened, one observer concluded, “The air cooling system, however, is the most important feature of the mechanical installation, as it marks the introduction of a provision of comfort during hot weather that is the leading example of its kind in existence both from its magnitude and the exacting conditions of its service.”50 At first, only the trading room was air-​ conditioned, although the whole building was thoroughly equipped for ventilation. This was because air-​conditioning required a much more intensive use of energy. The New York Stock Exchange’s system illustrated the larger truth that the amount of energy needed for air-​conditioning is proportionally greater than that used for heating. One might assume that to cool interior air by one degree would take the same amount of energy as to heat it by one degree. Yet, as one writer on the stock exchange’s system noted, “[a]ir cooling is seldom merely a case of air warming reversed. In air warming the vapor present is heated along with the air, but it has so little weight in comparison with the air that it is neglected in heating calculations. In air cooling, however, portions of the vapor must be extracted step by step, and this process requires the absorption of the heat of vaporization necessary to reduce the vapor to water,” so the water vapor is condensed out of the air in order to dehumidify it. It is this energy required to condense water vapor, in addition to the energy needed to cool the air, that makes air-​conditioning (cooling plus dehumidification) more energy

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intensive than heating. Around 1900 it was estimated that the energy “involved in cooling air may be two or three times as much as that involved in warming the same amount of air through an equal range of temperature.”51 This abiding fact shaped the extraordinary energy cost of air-​conditioning through the twentieth century. As the first large system, the New York Stock Exchange’s had a three-​hundred-​ ton refrigeration plant comprising three one-​ hundred-​ton chillers sufficient to cool air at 85ºF and 85 percent humidity to 75°F and an average of 55 percent humidity in the trading room. In New York City’s summer, the cool air had to offset heat transmitted through the walls from the outside and radiant solar energy through the windows and skylight, plus that given off by the estimated one thousand occupants (each emitting upwards of 400 Btu per capita per hour) and by the sixty-​two arc lamps in the ceiling (250 Btu each per hour). The building’s equipment was “unquestionably the largest installation of its class in existence.”52 The New York Stock Exchange’s cooling and dehumidification system became operational in the summer of 1903. For the installation, Wolff and Torrance had selected components available on the market and then combined them. At about the same time, the American mechanical engineer Willis Haviland Carrier (1876–1950) was at work to design, test, patent, and manufacture new types of air-​conditioning devices for industrial interiors. Although Carrier declined to take credit for having individually invented air-​conditioning, he made a major contribution in developing its science, engineering, manufacturing, and installation into an industry. In 1902–3 he devised one of the first systems that integrated the earlier technologies of steam heating, refrigeration, and mechanically powered ventilation

to control the temperature and humidity of a building’s interior air. After Carrier graduated from Cornell University, in 1896, with a degree in mechanical engineering, his first job was with the Buffalo Forge Company, which manufactured blowers, exhausters, and heaters.53 In 1902 the company’s New York City office sent Carrier an inquiry from a consulting engineer who had been asked by the Sackett and Wilhelms Lithographing and Printing Company, located in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, to devise a mechanism for controlling the humidity of its new workplace year-​ round. Sackett and Wilhelms was one of the largest firms of its kind in the country.54 Architect C. H. P. Gilbert of New York designed their building, along the north side of Morgan Avenue between Metropolitan Avenue on the west and Grand Street on the east. Walter S. Timmis of Brooklyn was the consulting engineer.55 The first floor held the printing department, while the second floor housed the lithography department (fig. 9). The company had long experience in both publishing periodicals and doing job printing. Its plant was exceptionally well equipped for every type of presswork from stone, aluminum plates, and type and engraved blocks and was also equipped for making such blocks. “The plumbing, ventilation and lighting [were] given careful attention. By day, even though the rooms [were] deep and wide, they [were] remarkably bright. This [was] the result of a generous distribution of windows, the upper sashes of which [were] fitted with refracting glass.”56 Partitions were avoided wherever possible, and walls, posts, and ceilings were painted white. Artificial light from 900 incandescent lamps and 150 arc lights was needed for only a small part of the day. In the extremely hot summers of 1900 and 1901, highly variable heat and humidity had La rk in Buil ding a nd Mec h a nica l Co ol ing

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Figure 9 C. H. P. Gilbert (architect) and Walter S. Timmis (engineer), Sackett and Wilhelms Lithographing and Printing Company, Brooklyn, New York, interior views. Top: a two-​revolution press and an underfeed aluminum press driven by semi­ enclosed motors. Bottom: four aluminum presses with fly delivery and six-​color presses driven by electric motors. From Engineering Record 49, no. 7 (6 February 1904): 200.

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caused paper to expand and contract so much that it disrupted precise color printing over multiple runs. Sackett and Wilhelms then printed Judge, the leading humor magazine of the day, and other publications, whose printing entailed fine multicolor reproductions. Each page of the magazine was run through the press once for each color on the page. Sometimes one color was printed one day, and another the next. On humid summer days, the paper varied in size each time it was run through the press for a new color. With the expansion and contraction of the paper stock, it was difficult to get the colors of a picture into exact printing position, and so different colors might misalign with one another. Sometimes the colors hit in the right places, but often they did not. Also, ink often did not dry quickly enough. All in all, the variable interior humidity was wreaking havoc with the color register

of what was supposed to be fine multicolor printing. This poor-​quality printing yielded scrap waste and production delays—all dreaded difficulties in the printing business—making a solution operationally urgent. When many sheets were “off register,” the printer shut down the presses.57 To solve this problem, Sackett and Wilhelms retained Timmis for the mechanical and electrical features, and he eventually stayed on as a consultant for the company. Timmis knew of systems such as Wolff ’s for comfort cooling in the New York Stock Exchange.58 Sackett and Wilhelms needed a system that dehumidified the air to a specified moisture content and held it there through every workday. In the New York Stock Exchange, the target 55 percent humidity was an average value, and tests showed that the trading room’s humidity could rise to between 65 and 70 percent.59 For Sackett and Wilhelms, relative humidity had to be constant the year round, even though the indoor temperature could fluctuate.60 The Sackett and Wilhelms installation would also be challenging as a mechanical retrofitting of an existing building, whereas the New York Stock Exchange’s equipment was designed along with the new building. Timmis took the key humidity problem to the Buffalo Forge Company’s New York City representative, Irving Lyle, who turned the problem over to Carrier’s research group. Lyle saw the difficulties but also saw the importance of finding a working method of controlling high humidity, which disrupted the production schedules of many industries. The creation of dehumidifying systems that could hold the air at a desired degree of dryness meant the sale of vastly more fans, coils, and other equipment to those industries.61 Carrier responded by testing methods of holding the air’s moisture

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content constant by passing it over coils carrying chilled water instead of steam for heating. The aim was to cool the air to the dew point where the air held the right amount of moisture for the printing process. Sackett and Wilhelms specified that the system should maintain a relative humidity of 55 percent the year round, with an indoor temperature of 70ºF in winter and 80ºF in summer. In warm weather, air blown over chilled water coils was both cooled and dehumidified until it reached the dew point that would correspond to 55 percent humidity at 80ºF. Then the cold, saturated air could be reheated to 80ºF and would have the correct humidity. Such dehumidification, known as the condensation-​control method, or dew-​point-​control method, became the core technique of modern air-​conditioning, perhaps first applied for this industrial client. In winter, the target relative humidity was reached by passing the air, heated by steam coils to 70ºF, through a humidifier. Carrier and his colleagues completed drawings for this system in July 1902, and it was installed for its first full summer of operation in 1903. It was designed for the lithography department, on the second floor. In the basement was the equipment, using compressive refrigeration, that chilled water.62 The chilled water was then sent through coils over which air was blown to cool the air to the proper dew point. As Adler had envisioned for cooling theater interiors just a few years earlier, what Carrier effectively did was to replace steam with chilled water flowing through heating coils and so transform the coils’ function to become cooling devices. The dehumidified air was then reheated to the temperature that would yield the correct relative humidity, and then the air was blown through ducts to the building’s interiors.

Unfortunately, records of the Sackett and Wilhelms installation are scant. At a Buffalo Forge Company sales meeting in January 1903, Lyle read a paper on its heating, ventilating, and cooling plant. He noted that during the summer months, in the press rooms, with sixty presses operating, moisture would be given off by about one hundred human operators, by the ink used, and by leakage of outside air into the room—all of which had to be mechanically removed from the air.63 In October 1903 he reported to his colleagues at Buffalo Forge that “the cooling coils . . . sold this company have given excellent results during the past summer. With water at a temperature of 55 deg. they have been able to cool the air, approximately 20,000 cu. ft. of air per minute from a temperature of 70 to 60 deg., the water leaving the coils at 56 deg.” Yet, the cooling coils “seem never to have properly circulated the water.”64 In 1943 the then president of Sackett and Wilhelms wrote: “My own recollection, however, which is rather clear, was that the installation referred to was never considered a success, and its operation was discontinued within a comparatively short time after the completion of that plant,” evidently by 1910. Yet, he continued, “I think you would not be justified in taking this statement as a criticism of the installation itself, rather to the fact that the chances are that the whole plant itself was so constructed that the installation did not have much of a chance.”65 Carrier’s biographer, Margaret Ingels, recalled from discussions with him that “the water for the refrigerating system was either not adequate in supply, or its temperature was too high” to cool and dehumidify air inside the plant adequately.66 Accounts of the installation credited Carrier with having designed the world’s first scientific air-​conditioning. Yet, in retrospect, he La rk in Buil ding a nd Mec h a nica l Co ol ing

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felt that its importance was that its process of design served to define key problems and led to an improved later solution. For Sackett and Wilhelms, to cool and dehumidify air, it was blown past coils filled with chilled water. Carrier recalled that this project suggested another approach—that air could be reliably cooled and dehumidified by having it come directly into contact with sprays of chilled water. These would cause the air’s temperature to drop, and the suddenly cooler air would reach its saturation point, and moisture would precipitate out of it, leaving it cooler and drier. He discovered that spraying chilled water into the air stream was more efficient than blowing air over chilled water pipes because (1) the surface contact between the chilled water and the air would be greater and (2) the spray would offer less resistance to air flow than banks of coils. As he wrote, “These early experiments, prompted by a problem based upon a comparatively small printing establishment, started the trend of investigation through which many of the fundamental laws of evaporation, of humidity control and of heat transfer were established.”67 Carrier continued to theorize about, experiment on, and improve his air washer for industrial applications, such as the textile industry, where control of humidity was crucial for spinning operations.68 He conducted experiments both at his laboratory at Buffalo Forge and at the facilities of clients where his equipment had been installed. In 1905 a textile engineer, Stuart W. Cramer of Charlotte, North Carolina, first used the term “air conditioning” in a patent application for a superior atomizer as a humidifying device. In May 1906 he spoke to cotton manufacturers: “I have used the term ‘air conditioning’ to include humidifying and air cleaning and heating and ventilation.” In that year Carrier sold his apparatus 28

for treating air to the Chronicle Cotton Mills in Belmont, North Carolina. The heat from the mills’ spindles raised temperatures, and to keep a constant relative humidity that would be optimal for working with cotton without its breaking, Carrier’s humidifier had a large capacity. The result was the first “central-​station” humidifying system for an industrial facility.69 In November 1907 the success of such projects led Buffalo Forge to establish the Carrier Air Conditioning Company of America as a subsidiary to manufacture Carrier equipment, along with an engineering staff to design systems for specific clients. This put the term “air conditioning” into wider circulation. The company was evidently the first of its kind in US, if not world, history, and its contributions to industrial and comfort cooling and dehumidification were foundational through the mid-​twentieth century. Frank Lloyd Wright’s L arkin Building: Heating, Ventil ating, and Air-​Conditioning Air washing was central to Frank Lloyd Wright’s solution for heating, ventilating, and cooling the Larkin Building, of 1902–6, in which he synthesized ideas from his earlier work with Adler and Sullivan with developments around 1900 in ventilating larger office buildings for human comfort. As Wright noted at the time of the Larkin Building’s completion, and as Reyner Banham and Jack Quinan have described, this structure was to provide an interior whose air supply had a continuous freshness and purity, achieved at great cost in equipment and energy, to offset the pollution of its industrial district, with extensive railroad yards, east of Buffalo’s downtown (fig. 10). In 1943 Wright called it “a simple cliff of brick hermetically sealed (one of the first

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Figure 10 Frank Lloyd Wright, Larkin Company Administration Building, Buffalo, New York, 1902–6, view from the southeast, along Seneca Street, showing (a) the sculptural panel above a fountain to the right of the entrance, between the main block (left) and the annex (right). FLWA, photograph no. 0403.030; graphic addition by author. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York).

a

‘air-​conditioned’ buildings in the country) to keep the interior space clear of the poisonous gases in the smoke from the New York Central trains that puffed along beside it.”70 Wright had omitted the claim regarding air-​ conditioning from the first, 1932 edition of his autobiography.71 The difference between the accounts may reflect the fact that, between 1932 and 1943, Wright had designed his first wholly air-​conditioned structure, the SC Johnson Administration Building, in Racine, Wisconsin, of 1936–39, by which time air-​conditioning was more widespread for office buildings (see chapter 6). The Larkin Building is the earliest widely known example of modernist architecture

wherein the mechanical system received exterior articulation. Wright wrote that the sculptural expression of the mechanical systems took the form of the semidetached air-​intake and -exhaust towers near the four corners.72 In his analysis of the building’s systems, Banham noted that it was in Buffalo that Willis Carrier had developed the means of controlling both air temperature and humidity.73 While there is no evidence that Carrier’s work directly influenced the Larkin Building’s systems, the latter similarly depended on air washing as a cooling technique. In his list of “Office Building Requirements” for Wright’s structure, dated 18 December 1902, his main client contact, Darwin Martin, the company’s secretary and one La rk in Buil ding a nd Mec h a nica l Co ol ing

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of its directors, specified “complete mechanical ventilating system; windows all sealed; ventilator openings all concealed; pipes in walls.”74 Questioning Wright’s first set of plans after he began work in the fall of 1902, Martin wrote in January 1903 to the president, John Larkin: “In answer to my question on ventilation: ‘How do you know your ventilation will be ample?,’ [Wright] said: ‘Because I would consult and employ the best ventilating expert in America and would have to pay him well. The fees for this consultation will be no small part of my fees.’ ” At that point, Wright had not been officially hired and thus had “not yet—without any definite contract—engaged this counsel,” but he claimed to have “sufficient experience in ventilation to say authoritatively that he [had] made ample provision.”75 There is no known record of which ventilating experts Wright may have finally consulted, although he may have worked with engineers in companies that supplied equipment. The Larkin Building’s design evolved in a series of documented stages between early 1903 and the final plans of April 1904 (fig. 11). It was sited on the north side of Seneca Street. The main block was a rectangle 200 feet long, north-​south, and 100 feet wide, east-​west. Around its four sides were office floors 32 feet deep and 16 feet high floor to floor. These surrounded the central rectangular light court, which was 24 feet wide, 112 feet long, and 75 feet tall from the ground floor to its skylights. The interior was framed in steel, with columns encased in brick. Clerical employees (mostly women) processed more than five thousand customer letters that came to the building daily from around the country, for the company sold its soap and expanding array of related products directly to households and not to intermediary distributors.76 An attractive 30

environment was to help recruit and retain an optimal clerical staff in this industrial district. Wright’s architecture embodied the company’s long-​standing policy of welfare capitalism for its employees. As Wright noted, and as Quinan and Howard Stanger later revealed, the Larkin organization stressed a familial unity embracing managers, workers, and its national network of customers, all of whom were known as “Larkinites.” One aim of this corporate culture was to show consumers the relationship between good working conditions and product quality. Toward this end, the company ran public tours of its Buffalo factories, the popularity of which increased when the city hosted the Pan-​American Exposition, of 1901. By then the company had installed a new ventilation system in its production facilities, which circulated fresh air every fifteen minutes.77 Thus air systems in Wright’s later office building were an extension of existing practices rooted in a broad corporate program of employee benefits meant to enhance operations. As Quinan has noted, Wright and his collaborators developed the heating, ventilating, and cooling system based partly on that of the Chicago National Bank Building. On 17 March 1903, perhaps on Wright’s suggestion, Martin, on his trip to Chicago to see Wright, also visited this structure. In his requirements, Martin noted both a complete system of mechanical ventilation and “an open light court 30 × 90’ through 2nd, 3rd, and 4th floors with 4’ bridge across center.”78 High peripheral double plate-​ glass windows and the central court’s skylight provided daylight, but since the windows were mostly sealed, habitability depended on mechanical ventilation. Like the bank, the Larkin Building’s light court was a large central space that rose to a ceiling almost all of crystal glass in ornamental panels to provide as much

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c

b a

Figure 11 Frank Lloyd Wright, Larkin Company Administration Building, first-​floor plan (bottom) and third-​floor plan (top), showing (a) the southeast stair tower, (b) the air-​supply plenum, and (c) the exhaust stack. FLWA, drawing nos. 0403.065 (bottom) and 0403.069 (top); graphic additions by author. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York).

daylight as possible. Both structures had steam and electricity supplied from the outside, so no fuel was burned inside. As in the bank, each of the Larkin Building’s quadrants was linked to a separate thermostat controlling a set of mixing dampers that adjusted interior air temperatures. In the attic between the art-​glass ceiling and the skylight of each was a damper, operable from the basement, to supply warm exhaust air to keep the skylight clear of snow and ice so as to light the room in winter. Yet in the smaller Chicago National Bank, which was also less densely occupied by employees, the air change rate of 6,500 cfm was just 6 percent of the Larkin Building’s 112,000 cfm. And Wright’s structure had air-​cooling equipment for the summer months, which Jenney and Mundie’s building did not. As Quinan has clarified, Wright detailed the Larkin Building’s system of heating and ventilation in a set of “Skeleton Specifications” datable to early 1903 and in the final master specifications drafted late in that year.79 And Banham has showed that these documents, read in relation to surviving drawings, allow a reasonably full reconstruction of the original mechanism.80 As noted above, Wright writes in the second edition of An Autobiography (1943) that the Larkin Building was “one of the first ‘air-​conditioned’ buildings in the country.”81 The system is described in item 91 of the final specifications and shown on the basement mechanical plan (fig. 12): “The apparatus is to be divided into four units, both on the blast and exhaust systems. There are also to be four separate air purifying and cooling devices, one for each blast heating apparatus. The fresh air is to be taken from the top of the building through fresh air shafts to the basement where it is exhausted over the tempering coils, passed through water sprays, thence through the eliminator fans, 32

discharged through the re-​heating coils into plenum chambers and expanded through the ducts to the different floors.”82 In the following item, 92, “Guarantees,” Wright specifies how the system was to perform: The contractor will guarantee to thoroughly heat the building uniformly to 70 degrees in –10º Fahr. weather, and that each of the blast fans will move 28,000 cu. ft. of air per minute. He will also guarantee that the air delivered into the building through the airpurifying system shall be freed of 98 percent of all dust and dirt or foreign matter afloat in the air, and that the average humidity in the building will be 70 percent with a variation of 3 degrees either way in extreme cases. The apparatus is to be capable of reducing the temperature of the air passing through it to within four (4) degrees of the water temperature, when natural or city water is used.83 Item 102 notes that the air-​conditioning equipment would be an “Acme Air Purifying and Cooling Apparatus, manufactured by Thomas and Smith of Chicago.” The Acme Air Washers, like other heating and ventilating equipment, would be “divided into four units and placed in connection with the blast heating and ventilation apparatus, occupying in each case a position between the tempering coils and the fans or heating stacks, as indicated on the plans.”84 Fresh air taken in through louvered openings a few feet above the roofline would be drawn down to the basement through unlined brick flues, as shown in a plan of the mechanical plant at the base of the northeastern stair tower (fig. 13). Near the base of each flue, steam coils (fig. 13, a) had the capacity to

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a

raise the air’s temperature above the freezing point. Once so tempered, the fresh air passed to chambers with water sprays (fig. 13, b). Even more than the Chicago National Bank Building’s surroundings, the Larkin Building’s industrial environment was laden with coal smoke, from trains on the rail lines on three sides. Hence the importance of cleaning intake air to prevent daily accumulation of soot inside the office floors, where correspondence was handled. As Wright wrote of the newly completed building in 1906:

outward character from this circumstance perhaps more than from any other. So the structure is hermetically sealed with double glass at all window openings. By mechanical means the fresh air is taken in at the roof levels, drawn to the basement, washed by passing through a sheet of water sprays (which in summer reduces its temperature two or three degrees), heated (in winter), circulated and finally exhausted from beneath the great skylight where the winter’s snow will melt as it falls.85

Smoke, noise, and dirt of railroads were round about, which made it seem wise to depend upon pleasantness within, shutting out the environment completely so far as requirements of light and air would permit. The design of the building derives its

Once washed, the tempered, saturated air was then drawn through “eliminators” (fig. 13, c) to remove excess humidity. Air was then forced by a blast fan (fig. 13, d) to “suction chambers.” These had two levels. In the upper one (fig. 13, f high), blast fans in winter forced La rk in Buil ding a nd Mec h a nica l Co ol ing

Figure 12 Frank Lloyd Wright, Larkin Company Administration Building, basement mechanical plan, showing the northeast quadrant’s mechanical plant (circled), an “exhaust trench” (a) for vitiated air returned from vertical plenums in outer walls, and an unlined brick flue (b) for air exhaust, along with, lower left, a table of air quantities supplied (blast), exhausted, and recirculated from openings in the basement, five aboveground floors, and the conservatory. FLWA, drawing no. 0403.081; magnification and graphic additions by author. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York).

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Figure 13 Frank Lloyd Wright, Larkin Company Administration Building, plan and sections through one blast-​and-​exhaust unit, showing (a) steam coils to raise the temperature of incoming air; (b) water-​spray chambers; (c) eliminator plates; (d) a blast fan or blower; (e) hot-​ water heating coils; (f low) a tempered air chamber; (f high) a bank of pipes to heat air to the correct indoor temperature; (g) dampers to regulate the flow of tempered air, heated air, or a mixture; and (h) distributing ducts. FLWA, drawing no. 0403.082; graphic additions by author. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York).

a b c

g d

e

h

g

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e

f high g

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f low

air over a bank of “heating pipes” (fig. 13, e), which heated air to a correct temperature. The lower level (fig. 13, f low) held the tempered, moderately warmed air coming straight from the eliminator via the blast fans, bypassing the heating pipe coils. Beyond the coils were dampers (fig. 13, g) between the upper and lower chambers. The dampers, controlled by thermostats, regulated the flow of tempered air, heated air, or a mixture from the two-​level blast chamber into the distributing ducts (fig. 13, h). As the temperature in each quadrant varied through the day, due to the sun’s movement, the thermostats controlled mixing dampers in the four corner blast chambers automatically, “so the right mixture of hot and tempered air [was] admitted to the ducts to maintain the desired temperature” in each quadrant.86 34

Wright noted that in summer the water sprays brought air temperature down two or three degrees. Yet another account in 1907 claimed that in the spray chamber (fig. 13, b) “the temperature of the fresh air coming in contact with these pipes [was] lowered sufficiently to make the building comfortable during the hottest weather.”87 This meant a much greater reduction in the temperature of incoming air. In summer, in each quadrant, thermostats regulated the cooling effect of the water sprays, allowing for variable air cooling in each quadrant, depending on its temperature, which fluctuated due to solar gain and other factors. Ducts were closely integrated with the structural system throughout the interior. As Banham has described and as the basement plan shows, conditioned air was subdivided

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b c

d

among many horizontal ducts that led to vertical riser “blast” ducts. Most of these were set on the outer sides of the interior steel columns around the central light court, visible in an early photograph of an office floor (fig. 14, a). Air from these vertical ducts was divided among horizontal east-​west ceiling “blast ducts” between the twin steel I-​beams that spanned from the central light court’s columns to the brick columns on the outer walls (fig. 14, b). Air was also supplied from horizontal north-​south “blast ducts” below the ceiling along the central light court, with registers facing the work areas (fig. 14, c), as well as by horizontal blast ducts near the floor in the low north-​south parapets along the court (fig. 14, e). Vertical exhaust ducts ran along the inner faces of the columns on the outer walls

e

a

Figure 14 Frank Lloyd Wright, Larkin Company Administration Building, early photograph of office-​floor interior, showing (a) vertical riser ducts on the outer sides of interior steel columns around the central light court; (b) horizontal east-​west ceiling “blast ducts” between the twin steel I-​beams that spanned east-​west from the central light court’s columns to those on the outer walls; (c) horizontal north-​south “blast ducts” below the ceiling along the central light court, with registers facing the work areas; (d) return air grilles of gapped brickwork near the bases of column plenums on the outside walls; (e) blast ducts in the low north-​south parapets along the central court. Collection of The Buffalo History Museum. Larkin Company photograph collection, picture .L37, OVS #19; graphic additions by author.

(fig. 14, d). These exhaust ducts did not have metal grilles but instead “gapped brickwork,” or hollow bricks that formed a pattern of openings. An account of the finished building’s fresh-​ air system from 1907 notes: “In cold weather the warm air is admitted near the floors and exhausted from near the ceiling. In hot weather the order is reversed.”88 Thus, in winter, warm air entered from the blast ducts along the parapet walls near the floors (fig. 14, e) and exhausted through the ceiling ducts (fig. 14, b) and the vertical exhaust ducts (fig. 14, d). This scheme of ventilation would be consistent with warm air rising through the space. In summer, cool air would be admitted via the blast ducts spanning between the inner light court and the outer wall (fig. 14, b) and the blast ducts La rk in Buil ding a nd Mec h a nica l Co ol ing

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near the ceiling above the parapet (fig. 14, c). The vitiated warmed air would be exhausted through gapped brickwork into the vertical ducts near the bases of the outside columns (fig. 14, d). This would be consistent with the tendency of cooler, heavier air to fall through the space. From the vertical exhaust ducts along the outer columns, air was returned to an “exhaust trench” in the basement floor (fig. 12, a). This trench linked the bases of the exhaust ducts in the outer vertical columns in the main building and the eastern annex. From the trench, which served to balance different partial loads, exhaust air passed to the four corner risers (fig. 12, b), whose extract fans blew the air up to and out of the space beneath the skylight. This was the “attic space” above the light court’s ceiling, made of pressed plate prismatic glass set seventy-​four feet above the main floor and below the hipped copper-​framed skylight roof. Heat from exhaust air was not recovered for reuse in the ventilating system, as it would be in energy-​conserving systems today. But it was used to keep the skylight free of snow and ice.89 This ensured natural light during the darker winter months and so reduced dependence on energy-​consuming artificial light. Effectively, what Wright did was to adapt existing technologies to a new context. For the Larkin Building’s heating-​and-​cooling system to function effectively in its sooty vicinity, as Wright noted, the building was enclosed in double-​glazed windows. These “ordinarily . . . never opened,” and “close-​fitting doors practically hermetically seal[ed] the building.”90 The ventilating system was to keep the temperature in all parts of the building at 70ºF–72ºF throughout the year. The building’s entire air volume, including that of the basement, was about two million cubic feet. The system 36

supplied a constant 112,000 cfm of pure, washed, and tempered air, distributed without drafts. This, coupled with an exhaust volume of 100,000 cfm, kept the building’s interior under a slight positive pressure to minimize infiltration of untreated air the year round. The system could completely change the air every twenty minutes, without creating drafts. Echoing Wright’s organic ideal, one contemporary wrote, “[T]he building fairly breathes.”91 Basic to the scheme was that “the main building [be] systematically quartered in arrangement and [be] wired, heated and ventilated in quadruple insuring easy distribution and positive operation throughout the appurtenance systems.” Each quadrant had a doorless, skylighted corner staircase next to vertical air plenums: “The stair chambers, air intakes and exhausts with their necessary machinery, pipe shafts and plumbing [were] grouped at all the outer corners of the main rectangle where light [was] least obstructed.”92 Concentration of services at the corners left “all floor areas . . . wholly free for business purposes.”93 Histories of modern architecture present the open floor as a consequence of new structural systems of either steel or steel-​reinforced concrete. But in the Larkin Building, open floors also served the mechanical systems. The distribution of air was aided by the lack of partitions in the main building and almost no enclosed private offices, even for the company’s executives and their subordinates on the main floor. As one observer wrote, “The interior is practically one single room from floor to skylight, with no partitions higher than office screens. . . . There seem to be no inside doors of consequence.”94 Absence of partitions aided diffusion of natural light and facilitated distribution of expensively conditioned air, and spatial openness also reinforced and signified the company’s ideals of

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familial unity and organizational solidarity. Yet the large open work floors also enabled supervision, and lack of spatial privacy created stress over monotonous eight-​and-​a-​half-​hour workdays with intense pressures for productivity.95 In Larkin corporate culture, air-​conditioning was thus both an amenity and a tool of control. When the Larkin Building was opened in November 1906, the first feature that Wright listed as meriting its costs was the ventilating system. For the building’s 1,800 workers, he argued that if “clean, pure, properly tempered air for them to breathe whatever the season or weather or however enervating the environment may be is worth ‘money’ to young lungs and old ones, we have that,—the best in the world.”96 Wright concluded that the Larkin Building included “possibly the most complete heating and ventilating system in the country.”97 William R. Heath, the company’s office manager, similarly told the office force that the building would supply them “with an abundance of pure air at the right temperature without drafts.”98 As Quinan notes, the fountains adjacent to the entrances (fig. 10, a) signified an association between the air-​washing system and workers’ well-​being. These also suggested Niagara Falls, whose magnificence the company invoked as an analogy to its factories.99 One visitor saw the fountain as “a sheet of pure running water, typical of the activities within the edifice, and the purity of everything made in the adjacent factories.”100 Yet of all the operations in Wright’s building, the water, although like a miniature falls, would have most resembled the water sprays for humidifying and cooling fresh air. Above the flowing fountain water, in an ornamental stone panel designed by Wright and sculpted in intaglio relief by his collaborator of the period, Richard Bock, was the following inscription: “Honest

labor needs no master. Simple justice needs no slaves.” The words echo the company’s ongoing rhetoric about its treatment of its employees. Paired with the sheets of water below, they bring to mind the interior’s air system as one of the many costly investments in Wright’s building to make it optimal for its clerical workers. The L arkin Building’s Mechanical Systems and Wright’s Architectural Expression The responses to the Larkin Building voiced by other architects and critics were sharply different from those accounts written by Wright, officials of the company, and business writers. While the latter detailed the importance of the heating and ventilating, architects made almost no mention of them. Of these, only one noted the air system.101 In 1912 Hendrik Berlage praised the building highly, especially its main interior work hall, but he made no mention of its mechanical systems.102 Russell Sturgis, writing for the Architectural Record in 1906, noted the lack of exterior features related to heating. Apparently unaware of Wright’s effort to express the air plenums at the corners, Sturgis asked: “[Why are there] no chimneys, giving an opportunity for an agreeable breaking of the masonry into the sky and the sky into the masonry? It is because there are no separate fires, each fire requiring its own flue, and that flue carried well above all obstructions. There is probably one fire, and one only, in the building; moreover, that one fire is driven by a forced draught and requires no tall chimney shaft to make it burn.”103 The relation of internal mechanical systems and exterior sculptural expression that Wright prized as an aesthetic innovation was beyond Sturgis’s frame of reference, rooted as his thinking was in historic styles of architecture. Wright La rk in Buil ding a nd Mec h a nica l Co ol ing

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refuted this criticism: “Of course, there are no fires in the building; the fire is in the power house across the street”—steam and electricity were produced in Larkin factories and brought into his building. “But there are aggregations of powerful ventilating machinery at the base of the shafts which Mr. Sturgis says mask the main structure. I prefer to take the view, equally consistent I believe, that they emphasize it and at the same time advertise the nature of the whole arrangement. . . . The taller shafts seen here are in reality ‘chimneys,’ except that the currents of air within them are drawn down instead of up.”104 If Wright was expressing modern mechanical functions in sculpturally articulated masses, then he was going beyond Sullivan’s ornamental approach in the Chicago Auditorium and Wainwright buildings. Sullivan noted that the tall office building’s mechanical systems made their grand turn on the crowning floor. His ornament along the Wainwright’s attic was perhaps a decorative sign whose modern foliate motifs corresponded to the novelty of the machines inside that served to circulate steam for heating. To Wright, Sullivan’s ornament was indistinguishable from the material surface onto which it was inscribed. He wrote that “Louis Sullivan had eliminated background in his ornament in favor of an integral sense of the whole.”105 Wright sought an analogous integration of the volumetric parts in the Larkin Building, where the articulated corners emerged organically from the overall sculptural form. As he later wrote: “[A] modern building may reasonably be a plastic whole—an integral matter in three dimensions.”106 Sullivan thought of the architectural expression of mechanical systems in ornamental surfaces, whereas Wright presented those systems in differentiated three-​dimensional masses. 38

As Quinan has shown, transforming the corners from their simpler beginnings to their fully articulated forms continued as the design evolved from early 1903 to the final shape as documented in contract drawings dated 1 April 1904.107 In the final design’s exterior massing, the key step was to separate the staircase on each corner’s end and the adjacent air intake plenum (fig. 11, top, a and b) from the taller projecting side tower, which contained three vertical plenums, including a central one for air exhaust (fig. 11, top, c). In the built exterior, the mechanical plenums thus had a sculptural distinction (fig. 10). The Larkin Building was perhaps the first major work of modernist architecture to treat mechanical systems representationally. Wright recalled: [N]ot until the contract had been let to Paul Mueller and the plaster-​model of the building stood completed on the big detail board at the center of the Oak Park draughting room did I get the articulation I finally wanted. It came to me in a flash. And I took the next train to Buffalo to try and get the Larkin Company to see that it was worth thirty thousand dollars more to build the stair towers free of the central block, not only as independent stair towers for communication and escape, but also as air intakes for the ventilating system. Mr. Larkin, a kind and generous man, granted the appropriation and the building as architecture, I felt, was saved.108 Wright’s account, for dramatic narrative effect, compresses his actual protracted effort. And he would also use projecting corner blocks in other buildings, notably his Unity Temple, designed from 1905, with its corner stair blocks, though these housed no mechanical

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functions. In sum, the Larkin Building was not the first air-​conditioned building; both Alfred Wolff and Willis Carrier had created earlier systems for other interiors. Yet Wright’s work gave mechanical systems an iconic character that influenced later architects for more than

half a century afterward. And he would return to the problem in his buildings for the SC Johnson Company from the 1930s (chapter 6). But before those later works, air-​conditioning proliferated in myriad settings.

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Industrial Air-​Conditioning from the Daylight Factory to the Windowless Factory, 1905–40 Ch ap ter 2

q

A

s noted in the previous chapter, air-​ conditioning first developed for industrial facilities. After 1900 work halls were conceived, designed, and built as well-​ventilated enclosures whose environmental desiderata came to include air-​conditioning. This artificial climatic modernization of factories has gone largely unremarked. These plants’ often unprecedented spatial form, seen as prototypically modern, was designed as much with moving air in mind as with daylight, for both were means of transforming the industrial workplace. Arguments for air-​conditioning in factories included its capacity to increase production and improve product quality. It added to the efficiency of machines and their workers, in part by increasing their comfort. But also, as in the case of Sackett and Wilhelms, industrial-​process air-​conditioning could increase productive efficiency in working with materials sensitive to temperature and humidity. As A. Warren Canney, Rockefeller Center’s air-​conditioning engineer, recalled in 1934, “Air conditioning work, in the past before the public had heard of it, was far more intricate and exacting in industrial practice. Even before air conditioning had reached the commercial comfort producing stage, problems dealing with control of air under pressure were solved.”1 After its founding in 1907, the Carrier Air Conditioning Company of America mainly

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pursued opportunities with industrial clients. To 1914 its sales of air-​conditioning systems rose rapidly for a wide variety of facilities, including paper and textile mills (notably cotton, silk, and later rayon plants); malt houses; pharmaceutical plants; soap, rubber, and tobacco factories; candy and processed-​food plants; film studios; breweries; bakeries; and meat-​packing houses. Its benefits enabled firms to recoup equipment costs in a short time. In 1915 Carrier and six other engineers formed the Carrier Engineering Corporation separate from Buffalo Forge.2 One report of 1928 notes, “For the last twenty years spinners, weavers, candy factories, woodworking companies—in fact about 200 industries—have been regulating weather indoors, to make it possible to fabricate their wares under ideal conditions.”3 Industrial firms saw the direct return to be obtained from air-​conditioning in particular processes of manufacturing, which led to higher profits.4 In 1929, reflecting on a quarter century of air-​conditioning, Willis Carrier noted that, once industrial facilities were air-​conditioned, production was not interrupted due to unfavorable weather and “that air conditioning . . . decreased greatly the labor as well as the capital required per unit of production in such industries. Air conditioning’s critically important benefits to manufacturing and human comfort and health had led to a

doubling of the industry’s volume about every five years,” up to the Great Depression.5 The industry’s exponential growth often had surprising implications for architecture. William Wrigley Jr. and the Wrigley Building, Chicago The growth of air-​conditioning to enhance industrial processes had consequences for architecture even in buildings that were not air-​conditioned but whose financing and construction depended on the new technology. An outstanding case was the William Wrigley Jr. Building in Chicago, at 400–410 North Michigan Avenue, northwest of its crossing of the Chicago River (fig. 15). Created in a south section (1919–21) and a north section (1922–24) by architects Graham, Anderson, Probst, and White, the building had as its chief designer the Beaux-​Arts-​trained Charles G. Beersman. He developed the exterior as an essay in ornamental terra-​cotta, from the profusely decorated arched doorway to the monumental clock tower directly above. The Wrigley Building’s tall, broadly visible southeast front was among Chicago’s most characteristic urban images of its period. It was the city’s tallest building and the first large one to be floodlighted at night. The landmark has been critiqued as “consumerist theatricality,” inconsistent with the social and aesthetic goals of the later modern movement, and also celebrated by preservationists enamored of its ornamental effects and its visually pivotal location, where Michigan Avenue jogs eastward north of its bridge over the river.6 The Wrigley Building was, in part, an extension of the global marketing effort of William Wrigley Jr., whose chewing gum was advertised and sold worldwide with annual revenues of more than $30 million in 1923.7 The margin of profit on the sale of a package of gum was

minute, so every laborsaving and cost-​reducing mechanism was employed in manufacturing a food product that had to be pure and clean. The quality and proportion of the ingredients had to be strictly consistent, since the slightest variation, especially in the essential oils used in the flavoring, would have a ruinous effect upon the finished gum. The product was made of chicle. In the Chicago plant, special processes of boiling and cleansing yielded silvery-​gray masses of pure chicle, which were dried to remove excess

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Figure 15 Graham, Anderson, Probst, and White (architects) and Charles G. Beersman (chief designer), William Wrigley Jr. Building, 400–410 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, northwest of its crossing of the Chicago River; south section, 1919–21; north section, 1922–24. Historic Architecture and Landscape Image Collection, Ryerson and Burnham Archives, The Art Institute of Chicago, digital file #M525179.

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Figure 16 Wrapping room, Wrigley Chewing Gum factory, Chicago. From Carrier Corporation, Weather Vein 4, no. 2 (February 1924): 16, reproduced by permission.

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moisture . To ensure the shortest possible time, perfect uniformity, and minimum cost, the drying was done in kilns provided with Carrierconditioned air . The chicle was then melted and mixed with syrup, sugar, and flavoring . The finished gum was fed into machines that rolled it into sheets and scored these in the form of single sticks . While the scored sheets awaited delivery to the wrapping department, air-conditioning kept them in wholly clean air at an exact desired temperature and relative humidity . Without these properly controlled air conditions, the gum would be contaminated or would deteriorate . The automatic wrapping machines also depended on optimal air-conditioning to prepare upwards of three hundred thousand sticks per day, all to be perfectly uniform (fig . 16) . The plant’s operation depended on running the wrapping machines at maximum capacity without loss of time due to stoppages caused by improperly conditioned gum . The Carrier Corporation noted that the

installation of air-​conditioning increased the capacity of the wrapping machines by more than 300 percent, nearly eliminating stoppages due to faulty gum. More than eight hundred workers were employed at the plant, whose nonprofit cafeteria, rest rooms, and hospital rooms were also air-​conditioned to aid health, comfort, and productivity.8 The technology’s creators presented it as a new means to industrial utopia. The fabrication of the Wrigley Building’s terra-​cotta cladding also depended on air-​ conditioning, whose centrality in the manufacture of modern architectural terra-​cotta has gone unremarked. The material was dried in the facilities of the Northwestern Terra Cotta Company of Chicago, which supplied all 2,700 tons of the material used in the building. The lower two stories were clad in gray terra-​ cotta, the third story in a dark cream color, and the upper stories in a lighter cream tint, while the crowning clock tower was in a white enameled terra-​cotta. When completed, the Wrigley Building’s terra-​cotta represented the highest development in this branch of ceramic art. Practically all of the pieces that made up the building’s beautiful friezes, entablatures, cornices, and other ornamental details were hand modeled in soft clay. Each complete element was then divided into sections of suitable size, and from these, plaster-​of-​Paris casts were made. Casts were then assembled as molds, and into these molds was pressed the moist, plastic clay. When a mold was carefully pressed or filled, the casts were removed. The molded piece then went to the finisher, who smoothed out any rough spots and removed the fins left by the cracks between the sections of the casts. From the finisher, the piece (called “green ware” at this stage) went to the drying room, where it was dried hard. Then it moved to sprayers

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for the application of various colors and glazes, before being placed in a kiln for firing for ten days to two weeks at a temperature of about 1,800ºF.9 The drying process had to reduce the molded clay’s moisture content from 20 or 25 percent water to about 3 percent of its dry weight prior to its final glazing and/or finishing, and firing in the kiln. The drying operation, which had to be done immediately after molding, was the most difficult and important step in the entire manufacturing process. It controlled the production schedule, since pieces could not be molded faster than they could be dried; nor could they proceed to final glazing and firing before they were dried. Each piece had to be dried from the inside out. If the outer surfaces were exposed to very dry air, they would quickly harden and shrink at a rate far greater than the piece’s interior, causing the surface to crack and thus ruining the piece. Experience showed that faulty drying could produce losses as high as 50 percent of molded pieces. Drying was slow, requiring much floor space, and it depended on the vagaries of outdoor weather, which often compromised delivery schedules. At Northwestern’s plant, older methods of drying varied from fourteen to fifty days, depending on the size of the piece and outdoor weather conditions. Incomplete drying often meant that pieces had to be reloaded into the dryer, causing further delays. But Carrier developed a ceramic dryer based on accurate control of temperature and relative humidity, with uniform vigorous circulation of conditioned air within the drying kiln to dry each piece evenly and thoroughly, free from internal drying stresses. Pieces weighing up to 125 pounds were dried in eighteen hours, while pieces under 70 pounds were dried in fourteen to sixteen hours. Northwestern

realized “a saving of at least 50% in the floor space required to dry a given amount of terra cotta, due to the more rapid turnover and to the less floor space required for green storage.” The technology permitted a “closer adherence to schedules” with “a decided reduction in the number of cracked and warped pieces.”10 These efficiencies also would reduce construction time for a large structure like the Wrigley Building, thereby reducing the delay in generating rental income, which necessarily followed completion and occupancy. Thus, while its offices were not initially air-​conditioned, the Wrigley Building’s origins depended on air-​conditioning of industrial processes both for making the gum that created the profits to finance its construction and for making the terra-​cotta for its exterior.11 The structure’s importance therefore rested not only on its style and siting but also on its place in the period’s uncritical discourse about the role of air-​conditioning as transformative for modern production. Ventil ation and Air-​Conditioning for Early Ford Automobile Factories Among outstanding new works of industrial architecture in the early twentieth century, those of architect Albert Kahn and engineers for the Ford Motor Company have held a canonical place in histories of modernism almost since their completion.12 But these factories were also designed for operational comfort on a scale such that by 1937, “although no detailed records [were] available,” one observer reckoned “that the Ford Motor Company [was] the largest single user of modern air conditioning in the industrial world.”13 Ford had founded his company in 1903 and had bought a majority ownership from other stockholders in 1906. After sales had nearly quadrupled

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from almost $1.5 million in 1906 to nearly $5.8 million in 1907, Ford commissioned Kahn for his large new factory in Highland Park, Michigan, northwest of Detroit, designed from mid-1908 and completed by the end of 1909. The new plant was the production facility for the Model T automobile announced in March 1908, which was initially manufactured at another location. Production of the Model T at the Highland Park facility roughly doubled each year from its opening on New Year’s Day 1910 through 1913, and the plant thus grew continually. In these years the company was reorganizing automobile production away from hand-​crafted processes using unionized skilled workers and toward repetitive operations by nonunionized employees, with individual work contributions simplified and speeded up in continuous assembly lines.14 A major step in this reorganization was the design and construction of large new factories designed for powered moving assembly lines for which the earlier buildings at Highland Park were not planned. These new buildings included air-​conditioning as a tool for

facilitating this rationalization of production. These two six-​story structures (the first of seven planned) were built from July 1913 and were completed in August 1914. Designed by Edward Gray, Ford’s construction engineer, they were the first Highland Park facilities to include an air-​cooling system. In earlier four-​ story factories there, ventilation and light were better on the topmost floor.15 The new units had every floor equally well served. To accommodate a powered moving assembly line, there were two steel-​framed skylighted craneways. These rose through the full six stories, providing a continuous light well along the building’s length (fig. 17). Galleries along either side had cantilevered balconies at intervals to enable workers to unload cars of materials.16 The new Highland Park buildings served an ideal of productivity. By 1914 Ford aimed to produce three hundred thousand cars per year and proclaimed: “Efficiency is the watch-​ word and war-​cry of modern industrial equipment and organization.” In addition to having the fullest admission of daylight, artificial light good enough so that the setting sun did not

Figure 17 Edward Gray (designing engineer), Ford Motor Company’s new six-​story building with skylighted craneways, Highland Park, Michigan, 1913–14, cross section looking west, showing hollow structural columns as air ducts with openings on each floor. From Horace Lucien Arnold and Fay Leone Faurote, Ford Methods and Ford Shops (New York: Engineering Magazine, 1915), between 410 and 411.

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darken the factory, and access to pure drinking water for every worker, the factory building, as the “last and most important of all efficiency demands, must supply workrooms with an abundance of pure air, heated or cooled as the temperature of the changing seasons of the year may require; and . . . this abundant pure-​ air supply, warmed or cooled as may be needful, must be in constant circulation and must always be in the process of purification and renewal, if the maximum efficiency of the factory workers is to be obtained—and without maximum labor efficiency, no factory of today can hope for marked commercial success.”17 Large workrooms with a great volume of air needed new mechanical systems for constant air circulation, admission of fresh air, and efficient washing of all fresh and recirculated air, which would have to be heated and cooled. Toward this end, interior structural concrete columns for the new buildings were made hollow in order to carry ductwork for air distribution. The columns were spaced relatively close together (twenty feet on center) both so that a flat floor slab could be supported without beams and so that each column could deliver air most suitably to the work space around it, to ensure air circulation in every part of the factory and get the most out of the air system’s costs. A cross section looking west (fig. 17) shows a ventilation system that channeled conditioned air down through thin sheet-​metal air pipes inside the hollow cores of all interior floor-​supporting columns. In each column were either one or two openings near the ceiling, each opening covered by an individual damper to regulate the volume of air blown into the space (fig. 18). The hollow columns took pressurized air from eight Sirocco “air-​conditioning” fan units on the roof. Named for hot humid winds over southern Italy and

made by the American Blower Company, these electrically powered turbine-​like units supplied warm air for heating, but they also had air washers to dehumidify and cool air.18 Horizontal ducts ran along the rooftop from the fan units to the column plenums (fig. 19). Eight units, one per penthouse, were equally spaced about a hundred feet apart on the roofs. One observer wrote: “The value of this hollow-​column air distribution cannot be over-​estimated, since a separate system of air pipes capable of furnishing equivalent air-​distribution facilities would entail such added cost, such waste of floor space, and such architectural disfigurement as to prohibit its installation.” An alternative would have been to cast air ducts into the floors and walls, an idea Frank Lloyd Wright would later adopt (see chapter 6). Yet at Ford in 1913, this would have entailed “impossible requirements for the preservation of needful structural strength, so [the] novel conception of hollow-​pillar air passages seem[ed] to be really the only

from t he Day l igh t Fac tor y to t he W indo w l e ss Fac tor y

Figure 18 Edward Gray (designing engineer), Ford Motor Company’s new six-​story building with skylighted craneways, Highland Park, Michigan, 1913–14, west end of fifth floor, looking north, showing hollow-​column air distribution. From Horace Lucien Arnold and Fay Leone Faurote, Ford Methods and Ford Shops (New York: Engineering Magazine, 1915), 389.

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Figure 19 Edward Gray (designing engineer), Ford Motor Company’s new six-story building with skylighted craneways, Highland Park, Michigan, 1913–14, (top) rooftop view looking west between craneways of the north building, showing skylights, air ducts, penthouses, and glass roof; (bottom) rooftop view looking east on south building roof. From Horace Lucien Arnold and Fay Leone Faurote, Ford Methods and Ford Shops (New York: Engineering Magazine, 1915), 390.

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practicable method by which a large factory building [could] be ideally cooled, warmed and ventilated.”19 Although mass production on assembly lines was introduced into the Highland Park buildings of 1914–15, the process there was inefficient because partially assembled vehicles had to be moved between multiple floors. This led Ford to contemplate a new facility on the expansive site along the River Rouge southwest of Detroit as early as 1915. From 1918, when the Ford operations were shifted to the River

Rouge plant, this facility grew as a series of very large structures, including ten buildings housing a range of processes related to automobile production, before the Great Depression began, in 1929. Worldwide, River Rouge was the most important industrial complex of its time.20 All the buildings had excellent lighting, and consistent with Ford’s announced concern for cleanliness, a staff of hundreds continuously kept the buildings scrubbed and painted. Yet while the River Rouge buildings erected through the 1920s were also well ventilated, they did not have air-​conditioning in the sense of mechanically powered cooling and dehumidifying. Among major structures in Ford’s vast pre-​ Depression construction program, only one entire building, the Engineering Laboratory (1922–23), nearby at Dearborn, had a mechanically powered air system (fig. 20).21 Designed by Albert Kahn, this structure was sited within what would become an administrative district developed by Ford, to the east of the earlier and ongoing expansions at River Rouge.22 The laboratory was a one-​story building about eight hundred feet long and two hundred feet deep, housing machine shops, testing rooms, executive offices and meeting rooms, and other departments engaged in research and development not only for Ford automobiles but for many other mechanical problems that interested Ford.23 Air-​conditioning was provided throughout the building for precision metalworking of engine blocks and other parts, measured to one millionth of an inch, in an atmosphere whose consistency would prevent distortions of measurements due to temperature variations. Comfort was also important, since “it was clearly demonstrated that the engineers and executives housed here worked much more smoothly in times of climatic

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extremes than they previously had, and that absence due to illness—particularly respiratory illness—decreased substantially.”24 Kahn was instructed to provide a building that would have an abundance of daylight, wide column spacing, and a total absence of exposed pipes or overhead obstructions.25 In the work halls, hollow concrete columns and beams supported a steel frame with continuous sloping clerestory monitor windows beneath an opaque ceiling equipped with electric lights. Above, the monitors were slanted in order to light the space using less glass and less building height and were to be easily cleaned. As a rule, for top lighting of one-​story structures, Kahn preferred full clerestory monitors to saw-​ toothed windows because of the difficulty in gaining cross ventilation with the latter: “In the monitor type,” by contrast, “with sash opening on opposite sides, this is more readily accomplished.” But, he noted, “where plants are air-​ conditioned or mechanically ventilated, cross ventilation is naturally of less importance.”26 To keep the interior free of visible utilities, all piping and conduits for electric lighting were installed in the main girders running longitudinally through the building. For the system of air distribution, heated air was supplied from below the floor to the hollow columns and then to the hollow girders, somewhat as in the six-​story Highland Park factories of 1913–14. This accounts for the relatively large size of the columns and girders. Supply registers are on interior faces of alternating columns, eight feet above the hardwood floor. Thus, in the main work hall, while the structural system is visible, the mechanical system is nearly unnoticeable. The thicker girders and columns hold air ducts, but one’s eye can interpret their proportions as structurally necessary rather than mechanically inclusive. Both the architect and the

client intended this effect. A visitor was to be “impressed [not only] with the cool refreshing atmosphere” but also with “the complete concealment of the entire air conditioning apparatus and duct work.”27 Air-​conditioning developed for newer Ford factories in the mid-1930s. US automobile production declined from its high of 5.4 million units in 1929 to 1.4 million units in 1932, but it rose again continually from 1933 to 1938, and new plants of updated design were needed. In the 1930s Ford lost its dominant market share of the previous decade, and Albert Kahn’s firm was hired by a greater diversity of corporate clients, including General Motors and Chrysler. Yet Ford invested in air-​conditioning its work places more than its competitors did. In designing most of these, Kahn presided over a large organization of four hundred to six hundred employees, who collaborated from the start of each project as a team of specialists

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Figure 20 Albert Kahn Associates (architects and engineers), Ford Motor Company Engineering Laboratory, Dearborn, Michigan, 1922–23, interior of work hall. Box 115, Albert Kahn Associates Records, 1825–2014 (bulk 1900–1945). Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

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Figure 21 Albert Kahn Associates (architects and engineers), Ford Motor Company motor-​ assembly building, River Rouge Plant, Dearborn, Michigan, 1923–25, machine shop and foundry department, air-​ conditioned in 1935. From Machinery 42, no. 11 (July 1936): 697; photograph not attributed.

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that could “deal with the structural problems, the sanitary, power, sprinkler, heating and ventilation, and cooling problems. . . . It [was] imperative that groups of men conversant with these fields join in the handling of an industrial plant.”28 By 1935 air-​conditioning had long been applied in other factories to provide special atmospheric conditions, but not to meet the specific demands of making automobiles. Yet in that year Ford air-​conditioned a machine shop and a foundry department in the motor-​ assembly building (1924–25) at the River Rouge plant to ensure accuracy of fine machine operation, protection from dust and dirt, and increased comfort for workers.29 In the machine shop, a key requirement was to finish the cylinders of V-8 engine blocks within close tolerances for diameter, straightness, roundness, and smoothness. Cylinders had to be within +/–0.0005 inch of the specified diameter. To achieve this, Ford finished the cylinders on precision diamond boring and honing

machines (fig. 21). Gang boring machines bored all cylinders in a block at once. Such machines operated at a high speed, and power was required to drive the tools into the metal. Much of this electrical energy reached the room’s air as heat. Without air-​conditioning, the temperature in a shop when it started in the morning—when the machines, tools, and engine blocks were cold—might be 20ºF–30ºF lower than at midday or in the afternoon. Soon the motors of the boring and honing machines would throw off a large amount of heat. Due to expansion of the tools and blocks, cylinders crafted at different times of day were therefore not the same size, so that when the blocks reached the end of the assembly lines, pistons had to be painstakingly selected to suit individual cylinders.30 In order to ensure uniform machining of cylinders and to create more comfortable conditions for the workers, the department was air-​conditioned, with fresh conditioned air for ventilation introduced into the room and diffused horizontally near the ceiling. Conditioned air was supplied to this sealed room from a central refrigerating plant. Temperatures in the winter months were maintained at 70ºF–75ºF, whereas in the summer, they were kept about 15ºF lower than the outdoors. To reach these goals, it was necessary to continuously recirculate all of the room’s air through ten cooling units equally spaced around the upper part of the room. Key goals were soon achieved: cylinders were sufficiently uniform that pistons could be selected for them interchangeably when assembling the engines, and in the cylinder department, “the men [did] not become tired and hot, as they did formerly, with the result that they now [kept] up a faster pace and turn[ed] out considerably more work.”31 Air-​conditioning filtered cooled air,

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so that dirt and soot did not settle on machines or their bearings; thus, it was said, these surfaces remained accurate much longer than before, saving a great deal in repair costs. Dramatic results obtained in production facilities like the foundry “convinced Ford executives that air conditioning is profitable in a great many kinds of plant area where it [had] seldom or never been tried by other manufacturing concerns.”32 The trend was to condition air in more and more production departments and in almost all office, engineering, and laboratory spaces, for “increased production, steadier output, better work, better health.” Comfort air-​conditioning in nonmanufacturing work environments enhanced their efficacy as sites of primarily mental labor. By 1937 the company’s River Rouge plant had “probably more air conditioning and related forms of atmospheric treatment than [one visitor there had] ever seen before under a single ownership.”33 Air-​conditioning at River Rouge and the nearby Ford properties totaled more than two thousand tons of refrigeration.34 The company’s engineers had embraced air-​conditioning as a complete process of filtering or otherwise cleaning the air, humidifying or dehumidifying it, cooling or warming it, and circulating it. In an era of severe labor disputes at Ford through the mid-1930s, air-​conditioning helped, even when disputes were not centered on working conditions but on wages and hiring.35 By 1937 unionized workers in other fields were demanding air-​conditioning in manufacturing plants and retail stores.36 When it was used in enclosures solely for the increased comfort of the occupants, “returns [could not] be measured directly, but [had to] be evaluated from the increased efficiency, more accurate work, better health, and last, but not necessarily least, the increased good will which

[was] established between the worker and his employer. It seems certain that this last factor alone account[ed] for many of Ford’s human comfort installations.”37 Effectively, such rhetoric in journals of factory management and air-​ conditioning engineering was an advertisement for the equipment and services that Ford had adopted, so that corporate approval legitimated what was then still a largely new and highly expensive technology. The Windowless Ideal at the Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago, 1933–34 The audiences for published information about and images of Ford’s air-​conditioned factories included the automobile industry, the HVAC engineering community, Ford’s workers, and the buying public. Yet the Highland Park and River Rouge facilities did not contain exhibition halls. Instead, like other automakers, Ford exhibited its cars at venues such as Madison Square Garden.38 Its first corporate exhibition halls were the pavilions that Ford, along with other large US automakers, commissioned for both Chicago’s Century of Progress Exposition, of 1933–34, and the New York World’s Fair of 1939–40. At both sites, the air-​conditioning industry invested heavily in presenting itself for the first time in the long history of world’s fairs. Chicago’s Century of Progress Exposition was conceived and named before the stock-​market crash of October 1929. Although development of the exposition proceeded as the Great Depression deepened, it was highly successful commercially after it opened, on 27 May 1933, on its distended site along central Chicago’s lakefront.39 With nearly thirty-​nine million paid admissions over its two seasons, it was the best-​attended American fair up to that time and, unlike most world’s fairs, returned

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a dividend to its investors. The exposition celebrated progress over the century since Chicago’s founding in 1833, so some exhibits had a retrospective theme. Yet the fair was also a showcase for science and the presumed benefits of its applications for humanity’s future. Thus the fair’s motto was “Science Finds— Industry Applies—Man Conforms.”40 Air-​conditioning fit this theme perfectly, as it was then an industry, with great potential for growth, that would ideally help end the Depression. It embodied the utopian quest for the perfectly controlled environment. Earlier this vision had been associated with large glass-​ enclosed pavilions, beginning with London’s Crystal Palace of 1851.41 Yet at the Century of Progress the pursuit of total control led to a decision to make the main pavilions windowless. In explaining this decision in 1932, one of its architects wrote: “Practical considerations dictated this windowless feature. Everyone familiar with exhibition buildings knows that sunlight for day-​time illumination is a variable quantity. By eliminating windows, artificial light must be used. Thus the architects and exhibitor have constant control over the volume and intensity of light.”42 He noted savings from omitting sashes and glazing, the cost of which was hard to justify in temporary buildings. At the Century of Progress Exposition, 750 tons of refrigeration brought cooling to either the whole or parts of many of its 140 structures.43 Official guidebooks stressed the prevalence of windowless exhibition halls, which focused attention on the exhibits through the depth of interior spaces that were not dependent on variable daylight but instead “[permitted] constant artificial control over the interior illumination.”44 Having no windows, the most prominent buildings used “healthful, 50

controlled, filtered ventilation.”45 Since the fair, like other seasonal lakeside entertainments, opened in late May and closed at the end of October, attendance varied with the weather. On very hot days, when lakeside temperatures reached 100ºF, air-​conditioned exhibits provided temporary relief for attendees, much as air-​conditioned movie theaters had done locally for more than a decade (see chapter 3). The air-​conditioning of fair buildings proved highly attractive during a heat wave in June 1933, a phenomenon announced in trade journals tracking the event.46 Visitors may have encountered comfort air-​conditioning earlier, in department stores and hotels (such as the ones where they stayed while visiting Chicago), as well as movie theaters. Yet the exposition’s scale, with the opportunity to experience artificial cooling in its major pavilions and the thirteen single-​family model homes along the lakeshore, helped establish air-​conditioning as potentially normative rather than exceptional for a broad public audience.47 Air-​conditioning engineers believed that after the fair’s first season closed, some of the millions who attended had “experienced perhaps for the first time the advantages of air-​conditioning for comfort.”48 In 1938, four years after the Century of Progress Exposition closed, the editor of HPAC opined in retrospect was that the fair “did more to familiarize the general public with the comforts of air conditioning than any other single event in the history of the industry.”49 The prevalence of air-​conditioning at the fair’s major pavilions and its model homes aligned with the growing presence of cooling in Chicago. Up until 1935 air-​conditioning installations were almost exclusively powered by electricity, and electric utilities were allies of the

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manufacturers, since every installation boosted local electrical loads.50 In 1935 a national survey of fifty-​eight of the more important utility companies revealed an increase in the total air-​conditioning load of nearly 25 percent over 1934.51 By August 1934, apart from the forty air-​conditioning installations at the Century of Progress, Commonwealth Edison Company recorded a total of 440 units in the city, with a record number of 44 units installed in July, attributed to the extreme hot weather. The largest number of units (114) were in private offices, then restaurants (87), theaters (68), general offices and buildings (43), clothing and shoe stores (22), hotels (18), bakeries (17), and printing plants (11).52 The fair’s display of air-​conditioning coincided with its installation in Chicago’s major commercial buildings, such as the Merchandise Mart (1930; Graham, Anderson, Probst, and White), then the world’s largest building, and the Chicago Board of Trade (1930; Holabird and Root). In 1934 and 1935 Chicago led the nation’s cities in new air-​ conditioning installations, with almost twice as many as New York.53 By 1936 the Palmer House, a premier downtown hotel, reported that “its air-​conditioned dining and meeting rooms, as well as rooms cooled by conditioning units when desired, [were] proving to be particularly attractive to guests during the hot weather.”54 As the hot summer of 1933 wore on, the Chicago Tribune proclaimed in an editorial, “There is no doubt that the public wants artificial cooling in summer,” and the editors announced that the paper planned to air-​ condition its own tall office building on North Michigan Avenue, built in 1923.55 By November 1934, four hundred individual units, accounting for just one among the 239 new installations in Chicago in that year, had been installed in the

neo-​Gothic Tribune Tower, with chilled water piped throughout the building from a refrigerating system in the basement.56 The Tribune surveyed employee health from May 1933, twelve months before air-​conditioning was installed, through 1936, when influenza was rampant in Chicago and elsewhere. In the year before air-​conditioning the tower, 475 of the paper’s average monthly total of 2,150 employees stayed home because of illness, missing a total of 2,228 days of work. But in the twelve months after air-​conditioning was installed, only 345 out of an average monthly total of 2,500 employees stayed home because of colds, flu, or related infections, and they missed only 1,290 days of work. It was a salient demonstration of a national trend wherein air-​ conditioning in office buildings was credited with reducing colds and employee absences due to them.57 The rapidity with which air-​conditioning was adopted for commercial interiors extended to department stores. In November 1934 Sears, Roebuck & Company opened a nearly windowless, air-​conditioned four-​story store at Sixty-​Third and Halsted Streets, at the center of the Englewood district of Chicago’s South Side (fig. 22). This corner was then “probably the busiest and largest of Chicago’s outlying or ‘neighborhood’ shopping centers,” situated six miles south and one mile west of the downtown, where a movie theater and a restaurant had recently been air-​conditioned.58 Sears proposed windowless construction to reduce the air-​conditioning load, ensure the cleanliness of merchandise, and banish street noise.59 This first “windowless” department store had six hundred feet of frontage, with windows only for ground-​floor sidewalk displays, top-​floor executive offices, and four columns of glass above its entrances.

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The permanent Englewood store would “be the first direct result on a large scale of the example set the world by a Century of Progress, where windows [were] conspicuous by their absence.”60 Sears’s chief designer, Les Janes, and architect George C. Nimmons, of Nimmons, Carr, and Wright, had collaborated on Sears’s windowless pavilion at the exposition, and they worked together again on this store as an entirely new type of facility to present products with optimal effect.61 Janes and the architects pointed out that “air conditioning and lighting systems would work more efficiently with corresponding economies in operating costs; that deterioration of merchandise from sunlight, smoke, and grime could be materially lessened; that disturbing noises could be better excluded; and finally that the linear feet of wall space available for shelving and display might be increased by approximately 10 percent of the total sales area, making for a much more compact and convenient arrangement of merchandise.”62 Some six thousand square feet of floor space along the walls of upper floors would be saved for display and storage. There was concern that customers might regard the interior as a warehouse rather than as a retail store. Executives insisted on some natural light, to enable inspection of fabrics and colors, so four fifty-​eight-​foot vertical windows of translucent glass rose over the entrances.63 Other than these, the exterior was clad in limestone edged at the top and bottom in black granite.64 Glass enclosed less than 4 percent of the building’s surface, compared to 20 to 30 percent for the average store.65 The architects claimed: “this will be the world’s first department store to be entirely air-​conditioned from sub-​basement to roof. . . . [It also] will probably be the first ever equipped mechanically at the time of its erection in such a way 52

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as to insulate its interior from its physical environment. Its air conditioning plant will control temperature, humidity, air purification and movement.”66 Janes noted: “There will be very little variation in the store’s temperature in summer and winter. The air will be much purer than in the ordinary window lighted and window ventilated store, for it will be changed from four to ten times per hour.”67 Designed by engineer M. G. Harbula, the air-​conditioning system provided a total of 501 tons of refrigeration for the four sales floors and the basement. Of the 501 tons in all, only 46 tons were required to cool the empty structure. The balance was needed to cool fresh air for ventilation and to balance the lighting load and the heat load from people, estimated at five thousand persons. In early and late summer, cool city water was used instead of mechanically chilled water, saving an estimated 27 percent in operating costs. Business was good, with 160,000 visitors from the opening, on 22 November 1934 for Christmas shopping, to March 1935. Sealed construction also meant “that the building retained its heat at night, even in the coldest weather, for a much longer than normal time. The natural corollary [was] that it [would] retain cool night temperatures much longer in hot weather. In either case savings [were] indicated in operating costs even greater than those expected.”68 Following the Englewood store, Sears preferred windowless construction for its new department stores nationally through the 1940s. This was among the first demonstrations of air-​conditioning’s having transformed a building type that, from its origins in the mid-​nineteenth century, had prized daylight through the spatial depth of sales floors. By 1935 department stores had become big buyers of air-​conditioning, with nearly 150 of

the country’s leading department stores or specialty shops adopting the technology not only on sales floors but also in operating departments such as receiving and shipping. Among them were Bloomingdale’s, Lord & Taylor, and R. H. Macy of New York; Marshall Field and Carson Pirie Scott in Chicago; Hudson’s of Detroit; Filene’s of Boston; Kaufmann’s of Pittsburgh; Wanamaker’s of Philadelphia; May of San Francisco; and the Broadway Department Store in Los Angeles. In addition to Sears, large national chains like A & P, Kroger, Woolworth, Kresge, and Walgreen installed equipment. They had the funds to make the needed investment to air-​condition some or all of their stores.69 The aftermath of the Englewood Sears store’s opening shows the rapidity with which air-​conditioning was adopted by local businesses. In 1935 two more installations were made: in a nearby five-​and-​ten-​cent store and in a shoe store. In 1936 air-​conditioning was added to two theaters and a candy store. During the first eleven months of 1937 nineteen new installations appeared in the few blocks of this compact business zone, or 70 percent of the district’s total of twenty-​seven. The 1937 increase in this locale was about 200 percent, compared to about 35 percent for the whole city. Those at the air-​conditioning division of Commonwealth Edison who tracked developments thus concluded: “[T]he competitive advantages of air conditioning in Englewood had arrived at such a point in 1937 that many commercial operators suddenly recognized that they couldn’t afford not to have air conditioning.”70 This shift in air-​conditioning from exceptional to essential paralleled its rising importance between Chicago’s Century of Progress, in 1933, and the New York World’s Fair of 1939.

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Figure 22 (opposite) Nimmons, Carr, and Wright, Sears, Roebuck & Company store, Sixty-​Third and Halsted Streets, Englewood, Chicago, 1934; demolished. From AF 62, no. 1 (March 1935): 292; photograph and drawing not attributed.

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Air-​Conditioning at the New York World’s Fair, 1939 The competition between ideas surrounding daylighted versus windowless air-​conditioned interiors continued to the New York World’s Fair of 1939–40. This fair actually had about half as many buildings as the Century of Progress, but among those, air-​conditioning was more pervasive. New York’s seventy-​two buildings and exhibit spaces used more than 5,400 tons of air-​conditioning, or more than seven times the Chicago fair’s 750-ton cooling capacity, which spread over 140 interiors. Thus, compared to Chicago’s, New York’s was “truly an air-​conditioned fair.”71 Engineers described it with religious zeal as “Refrigeration’s ‘Greatest Story Ever Told.’ ” The purpose was the comfort of visitors and employees, but a number of exhibitors employed air-​conditioning in model manufacturing and food-​processing plants. For air-​conditioning engineers and manufacturers, the fair was hugely successful because their technology advertised itself without the expense that other industries invested in advertising their products, whose effects were not readily appreciable. One editor noted: “Millions of people in a receptive holiday mood, in weather generally hot, find coolness available at every hand, and they love it.”72 While the theme of the Century of Progress had been partly retrospective, the New York fair was to showcase the “World of Tomorrow,” with special emphasis on the current accessibility of new technologies rather than on the distant future. At Chicago, air-​conditioning had been remarkable, whereas five years later, in New York, it was normal. At both fairs the windowless ideal prevailed for nondomestic pavilions slated to be cooled. Yet as at Chicago, the pavilions’ mechanical engineering was complicated by the temporary nature of their construction, 54

their unusual shapes, and high peak loads due to variable occupancy. Most interiors had systems designed to respond to maximal outside temperatures of 95ºF dry bulb and 75ºF wet bulb, meaning a high relative humidity, and, in these summer conditions, to create an inside temperature of 85ºF dry bulb and 65ºF wet bulb.73 For refrigerating machines that chilled water to cool air, condenser water was taken from the mains of the New York City Catskill reservoir system, which provided about nine million gallons per day. Water was sold to exhibitors at a rate calculated to produce as much revenue as possible, yet not so high as to discourage water’s plentiful use for air-​conditioning. To avoid purchasing water, many exhibitors resorted to other methods of condenser cooling, including evaporative cooling towers, fountains that functioned like cooling towers, and the use of lake water and deep wells.74 Among air-​conditioning manufacturers at the Chicago fair, only Frigidaire, a subsidiary of General Motors, had sponsored a whole building, the Frigidaire Air-​Conditioned House, for the exhibition of its wares. Other firms exhibited household refrigeration equipment. But in New York, Frigidaire, Westinghouse, Nash-​ Kelvinator, and Carrier all had their own pavilions housing displays of their equipment. Carrier also provided the comfort air-​conditioning for a number of the fair’s other pavilions.75 Its own pavilion was a five-​story cone-​shaped “Igloo of Tomorrow” designed by architects Reinhard and Hofmeister (fig. 23). They were best known as one of the collaborating firms that designed Rockefeller Center, whose buildings Carrier also air-​conditioned (as discussed in chapter 3). While other manufacturers shared their pavilions with other exhibitors, Carrier touted theirs as “the only exhibit at the Fair devoted exclusively to the modern magic

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of air conditioning.” There were displays of new Carrier equipment in operation, with explanations of its contribution to modern living conditions and industrial production. Its main interior exhibition space, the Hall of Weathermakers, was named after one of Carrier’s most renowned air-​conditioning machines.76 The Igloo’s surfaces were coated with white stucco inside and out to resemble snow. To dramatize the cooling power of Carrier equipment, ten women clad as “snow maidens” shoveled artificially made snow in front of the Igloo when the outdoor temperature was 98ºF.77 Outside, near the tunnellike entrance, a forty-​eight-​ foot-​tall thermometer registered the difference between the outdoor and indoor temperatures.78 Here, vivid, memorable, popular architectural imagery presented a wholly windowless enclosure made occupiable by air-​conditioning. The Windowless Versus the Windowed Factory, 1930–40 When the New York fair closed, in 1940, although architects like Albert Kahn continued to favor windowed factories, one assessment of contemporary design for mass production concluded: “A trend toward the provision of completely controlled interior conditions throughout the factory is evidenced by the growing number of windowless buildings. Such designs, of course, involve complete air-​conditioning during both summer and winter and artificial lighting of high average intensity. In contrast to plants daylighted through side wall and monitor sash and heated and ventilated by more simple means, they are costly to construct and maintain.”79 In each case, there were so many factors to consider that any decision about windowed or windowless production facilities needed to be based on a detailed study of specific issues. As one observer noted in 1931, “It is

a significant index of our present state of mind in architectural matters that we are trying out the windowless building at the same moment that we build structures of steel and glass that are practically all windows.”80 What was publicized as “industry’s first windowless factory building, entirely without daylight and embodying radically advanced ideas for the scientific creation of ideal light and other working conditions for employees,” was designed and partly built in 1930–31 by the Austin Company, a Cleveland firm of engineers and builders, for the Simonds Saw and Steel Company.81 As the Simonds designers wrote: “The fact that daylight has always been considered the most ideal illumination does not mean that it remains so today. . . . [R] esearch has demonstrated beyond doubt that the type of building we are now erecting will result in lower production costs. We estimate that the increase in efficiency of production resulting from concentrating the manufacturing activities of the three old style plants into the new one, embodying all new principles and

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Figure 23 Reinhard and Hofmeister, Carrier Corporation “Igloo of Tomorrow,” New York World’s Fair, 1939. Carrier Corporation Archives, Syracuse, New York.

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Figure 24 Austin Company, Simonds Saw and Steel Company factory, Fitchburg, Massachusetts, designed and partly built in 1930–31, completed in 1939; view from northwest, showing projecting volumes, including fan rooms (circled). Published for Simonds Saw and Steel Company by Davis Press, Worcester, Massachusetts. Courtesy of the Fitchburg Historical Society.

worthwhile ideas, will be at least 33 per cent.”82 By 1930 the century-​old company already had eight factories and a steel plant. The production work of three of the factories (one in Chicago and two in Fitchburg) was to transfer to the new plant, to be operating in the spring of 1931. Though no longer a working factory, the building still stands on a fifty-​four-​acre site in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, along the Nashua River, about forty miles northwest of Boston (fig. 24). Outer walls are “composed in a buff-​colored face brick, arranged in a design with contrasts which emphasize the horizontal sweep of the entire structure.”83 These and the roof were built in 1930–31, but due to the Depression, the building was not then equipped or occupied, and the company only decided to complete the facility in the spring of 1939. The one-​story structure, 360 by 560 feet, covered nearly two city blocks to the southeast 56

of the intersection of Bemis Road and a main railroad line, with the Nashua River to the southwest. It had walls without windows and a roof without skylights. Production-​line layout governed the structural scheme. Every operation was analyzed; the functions of every employee and piece of equipment were studied. Over this vast continuous open floor, with its five acres of production space and minimal columns, eight major straight production lines extended the length of the plant. Raw materials entered from railroad sidings on the plant’s south end, and finished products emerged on its north end for packaging near the shipping platform at the road. Lines were for manufacturing many types of saws, points and shanks (shafts), machine knives, files, hacksaw blades, and similar products. Each production line was furnished with water, gas, steam, power, light, conditioned air, and oil, carried to more

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than a thousand machine and furnace locations. Machines were laid out for straight-​ line production, partly to minimize worker fatigue. Supervision was from a four-​foot-​wide, quarter-​mile-​long catwalk eleven feet above the floor, running multiple times through the plant’s 560-foot length (fig. 25).84 The vast interior would have to be kept clean, cool, and comfortable despite the presence of some seventy heat-​treating furnaces, annealing ovens, and “more than a thousand individual motor-​driven grinders, cutters, and other machines which [were] in almost constant operation and throwing off heat, dust, and smoke.”85 Machines operated in a single partitionless room with an eighteen-​foot clearance. For good ventilation, the air-​conditioning units circulated 400,000 cfm, enabling five air changes per hour through the huge space. Fresh air was cleansed of dust and other impurities and then conditioned to the proper temperature and humidity. Hot-​weather cooling was performed by a bank of atomized water sprays, and cold-​weather heating by hot-​water coils. Both sprays and coils were in auxiliary fan rooms through which the air passed after being filtered and washed.86 The four fan rooms were located in wings, as projecting volumes on the long east and west sides (fig. 24). These bring to mind Louis Kahn’s later concept of discrete service spaces for mechanical equipment, volumes appended to the main served spaces for human activities—in this case, for manufacturing. Air-​conditioning was one factor for improving both worker comfort and productivity— twin goals that were conceptually inextricable, as they were for Ford. In the Simonds plant, to complement the air system, the lighting scheme was carefully considered, as nothing like it had been tried on this scale. The factory’s

huge interior had a uniform “blanket” of “cold,” or “north,” light created by more than fourteen hundred 100-watt fluorescent tubes. This light “never varie[d], assur[ing] each employee absolute uniformity of light at his job at all times.”87 Yet through the diurnal cycle, workers did need access to sunlight. Thus, to allow all of them such access during their hours off, two work shifts were originally planned, one from 5:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., the other from 2:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. By enabling the operation of at least two shifts daily under like conditions of light and air, the windowless factory allowed Simonds to “produce a given amount of output with an investment equivalent to no more than one-​half the amount that would be required for the ordinary factory designed for one day-​time shift.”88 With machinery idle for only eight hours daily, the return on the investment in plant and equipment was more quickly realized. Air-​conditioning and electric lighting

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Figure 25 Austin Company, Simonds Saw and Steel Company factory, Fitchburg, Massachusetts, designed and partly built in 1930–31, completed in 1939; interior, showing catwalk for production supervision. From AR 85, no. 6 (June 1939): 104. Photo: Rollin W. Bailey, Wollaston, Massachusetts.

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Figure 26 Austin Company, Owens-​ Illinois Glass Company Building, Gas City, Indiana, opened 1936, storage room with glass-​block walls (middle) and entrance with shafts of glass block (below). From Canadian Machinery and Manufacturing News 47, no. 10 (October 1936), 37, 38; photographs not attributed.

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together enabled a windowless design that resulted in more-​continuous operations under ideal environmental conditions to increase production both per man-​hour and in total. Thus worker comfort and factory efficiency were intertwined, just as they had been from the beginning of industrial air-​conditioning. The Advent of Gl ass Block Within the Air-​Conditioned Factory Companies like Ford and Simonds were exceptional in their financial capacity to experiment with costly solutions—windowed or windowless. There were arguments for and against

the two approaches. As one observer wrote in 1942, factories engaged in hot, dusty production operations tend to function better with ample openings for natural ventilation. On the other hand, for the manufacture of precision parts, where extremely close tolerances are the rule, elimination of windows and introduction of air-​conditioning could be profitable. Some plants, like Ford’s tool and die shop of 1938 at Dearborn, combined daylight with full air-​ conditioning.89 Yet most industries could not afford either to heat spaces enclosed behind large areas of glass that readily conducted cold to the inside or to air-​condition windowed halls to gain manufacturing economies. At the same time, most owners could not afford the high up-​front cost of a windowless plant.90 The competing priorities of providing both interior daylight and air-​conditioning motivated architects, engineers, and clients to try alternative approaches to meeting them equally. One direction that gained prominence from the mid-1930s was the glass-​block factory, like the new factory and warehouse building of the Owens-​Illinois Glass Company at Gas City, Indiana, designed and built by the Austin Company and opened in 1936 (fig. 26). This facility, then one of the largest ever built by the glass industry, was for packaging the firm’s prescription glassware. Like the Simonds plant, engineered by the same firm, this building (541 feet long and 101 feet wide) was based on scientific study of an optimal interior layout. It had to accommodate large stores of roll paper and their fabrication into corrugated board and cartons for glass-​packing containers. Yet the Owens-​Illinois company also manufactured glass block, and its factory featured forty-​two thousand such blocks in panels set into steel-​ framed brick walls. This type of glass block was marketed under the name Insulux, which

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connoted both its thermal-​insulation value and its translucence. The block allowed 87 percent light penetration but also acted as insulation against summer heat and winter cold, so that comfortable working conditions could be easily and economically maintained.91 The Owens-​Illinois plant was only one example of the sudden prominence of glass block in US industrial buildings from the mid1930s until the early 1940s. Glass block was distinct from translucent prismatic glass developed earlier in the century, which had been designed mainly to enhance interior daylight and not to insulate.92 Best known for its translucence, glass block’s value as a new material for factory walls also derived from its compatibility with air-​conditioning systems. It was marketed as an answer to the dilemma, posed by air-​conditioning, of providing daylight and yet having a sealed interior whose atmosphere could be closely controlled, as in a windowless building. Glass block avoided the high energy costs of plate-​glass wall surfaces and the high building and equipment costs of the windowless shell. In May 1940 Architectural Forum noted: “[T]he story of glass block is Building’s Success Story No. 1. . . . In a trifle over five years of commercial production more than twenty million glass block[s] have been manufactured and sold. Never has a new building product caught on so quickly.”93 Another editor noted that from 1935, when glass blocks were introduced, to 1941, more than ten million of these constructional units were sold nationally.94 By 1940 more than 40 percent of constructional glass blocks were used in industrial and institutional buildings, more than seven million of them in industry, “where novelty could not possibly have determined their selection.” As one writer for Architectural Forum wrote at the time: “The real reason for their popularity

goes back to function: glass block[s] do a long-​ needed job in an entirely new way. They couple one of the functions of the window—its light-​ giving function—with all of the non-​structural functions of the wall—heat and noise insulation, privacy, and security. Glass block construction therefore creates what amounts to an entirely new architectural element: a light-​ giving wall. There is little precedent for such an element in the architecture of the past.”95 In addition to its insulating properties, glass block offered advantages over plate glass in factories. First, its thickness lessened winter cold, so it offered freedom from condensation on the inside of the glass in cooler weather, even when abnormally high humidity had to be maintained within the building. Second, glass block offered controlled diffusion of light, with no transparent, glare-​producing surfaces. And third, in plants with stringent sanitary conditions, the nonporous surface of the block recommended its use for interior partitions as well as for outer walls.96 Mechanical Modernit y and the Museum of Modern Art, 1939 Glass block was given aesthetic cachet in the new building of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, opened in 1939, designed by Philip L. Goodwin and Edward Durell Stone (fig. 27).97 It was perhaps the second major museum in New York City to be air-​ conditioned, the first being the Frick Collection, in the Henry Clay Frick Mansion, on Fifth Avenue, remodeled by architect John Russell Pope after Frick’s widow’s death, in 1931 (see chapter 8). Contemporaries viewed the MoMA’s modernist front at 11 West Fifty-​Third Street as a radical departure from the Neo-​ Renaissance stone town houses on either side and the John D. Rockefeller Jr. mansion that

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Figure 27 Philip L. Goodwin and Edward Durell Stone, Museum of Modern Art, 11 West Fifty-​Third Street, New York City, 1936–39, showing Thermolux glass enclosing the south facade of the second- and third-​floor galleries. Wurts Bros. / Museum of the City of New York, X2010.7.2.8123.

formerly stood on the museum’s site and that had served as its headquarters from 1932 to 1938.98 Henry McBride wrote in 1939, “The facade has been disturbing New Yorkers, even the most up-​to-​date of them, during all the months of its construction, by its stark and machine-​made simplicity.”99 In the new museum, opened in the spring of 1939, of particular interest was the south-​ facing facade of Thermolux, a then-​new type of glass, fronting the second and third gallery floors, which was originally to be a broad expanse of marble.100 Developed to block solar gain in industrial interiors, Thermolux was a translucent sandwich formed of two sheets of clear glass with woven spun glass hermetically sealed between them. It both directed daylight into interiors and diffused that light to reduce glare. Rays of light spread out at right angles

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to the direction of the glass fibers. Thus, when the windows were installed, with the spun glass running horizontally, the light was thrown toward the ceiling and the floor. This richly toned, milky white Thermolux also provided insulation against sound, heat, and cold, so its overall effect was called “light conditioning.”101 The Museum of Modern Art was perhaps the first nonindustrial building in the United States to use Thermolux, which was then imported from Italy but would soon be manufactured under license in this country by Libbey-​Owens-​Ford. The museum was to use glass walls “to admit as much natural light as is possible without sacrificing too much of the insulating properties of the ordinary wall.” The 3,300 square feet of Thermolux was “used to wall the Museum of Modern Art galleries because it has only about one-​third the heat conductivity of clear glass; because of its sound-​reduction properties; and because of the qualities of light diffusion and distribution—it actually transmits light farther into the room than does clear glass, yet the light is singularly easy on the eyes and illuminates evenly the paintings and objects shown, without deep shadows or sun patches.” The glass’s heat-​insulating properties were to aid the air-​ conditioning system, which was designed by engineer Clyde R. Place, who had worked on Rockefeller Center. The MoMA system’s “draftless air distribution” was equipped by Anemostat Corporation of America.102 Since the desired type and amount of natural light varied with exhibits, glazing bars were designed to hold either Thermolux panels or opaque cement-​asbestos panels to enable changes in the south wall’s light.103 Figure 28 shows this south wall, on the left, with all Thermolux and no asbestos panels, throwing light toward the

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Figure 28 Philip L. Goodwin and Edward Durell Stone, Museum of Modern Art, second floor, looking west, showing exhibition space with south wall of translucent Thermolux glass panels (left) and north wall of glass block (right). Wurts Bros. / Museum of the City of New York, X2010.7.2.14217.

ceiling and the floor, before the first art exhibits were installed. The north wall, on the right, toward the sculpture court, was fitted with smaller glass block. Given the prominence of Thermolux fronting the second and third gallery floors, which were built like open lofts, without partition walls, the new museum embodied the factory aesthetic associated with the International Style of modernist European and American architecture first presented in the United States in the museum’s influential exhibit of 1932. The industrially developed Thermolux across its street front vigorously bespoke the MoMA’s departure from then conventional

Midtown architecture. But the glass block that announced the museum’s curatorial persona to the world was part of a scheme for the building’s air-​conditioning that went relatively unremarked in not only popular but also architectural periodicals. The factory as an air-​conditioned type had led to the transformation of glass into a thermally rigorous enclosing material, and glass block became emblematic of interwar modernism. Thus the unseen mechanical transformation contributed to the visible stylistic revolution. In the MoMA of 1939, anonymous technical developments from industry were assimilated into a signature work of art.

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The Architecture of Air-​Conditioning in Movie Theaters, 1917–40 Chap ter 3

q

I

ndustrial applications dominated in the development of “process” air-​conditioning from 1900 to 1920, but even by 1956 the Carrier Corporation estimated that only 1 percent of the nation’s “modern factories” had air-​conditioning, with the highest percentage in the textile industry.1 “Comfort” air-​ conditioning, which was intended to control indoor climates to enhance human comfort, did not become important in the national residential market until after World War II, accelerating there from 1955 to 1980 (as discussed at the end of chapter 4). Between 1920 and 1955, the main growth of air-​conditioning was in “commercial comfort” systems, adopted by retailers of goods and services in the hopes of attracting more customers. The first major selling season for such systems was the summer of 1932. The total dollar value of new air-​ conditioning equipment in 1934 doubled that of 1933, and 1935 doubled that of 1934.2 According to the Edison Electric Institute’s national survey of 180 utilities that solicited information on air-​conditioning installations in those utilities’ service areas, by 1940 nearly 90 percent of the nation’s air-​conditioning capacity was devoted to commercial comfort systems.3 The nearly windowless Sears, Roebuck & Company department store in Chicago’s Englewood shopping district was an example, as was the rapid adoption of air-​conditioning

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by nearby smaller retailers by the later 1930s. As economic historian Jeff Biddle has revealed, what happened there was characteristic of several national trends. First, the businesses that adopted air-​conditioning tended to be those where the consumption of their goods or services required the consumer to spend time in their establishments on unpleasantly hot days. The more time spent inside a store consuming what was offered, the more a customer appreciated the value of air-​conditioning to that setting. Second, if a good or service was not a frequently purchased necessity and a consumer could postpone acquiring it on hot days, then retailers would also likely see demand decline in those times. Third, retailers who adopted air-​conditioning tended to be in more densely populated markets, where lack of air-​ conditioning would put them at a competitive disadvantage. Fourth, retailers tended to install air-​conditioning in urban areas with higher family incomes and more highly educated residents. Given these factors, early retail adopters of air-​conditioning through the 1930s included restaurants, lunchrooms, barbershops, dress and other clothing stores, shoe stores, small beauty shops, drugstores with soda fountains, and, as discussed in chapter 2, department stores and chain stores. Less likely to adopt air-​ conditioning were grocery stores and hardware stores, where purchases were usually necessary

and based on customers’ fixed lists.4 Commercial facilities tended to use air-​conditioning exclusively in the summer, whereas industrial users tended to keep their air-​conditioning units busy all year round.5 Movie theaters fulfilled all of the major criteria, and they were the first large market for commercial comfort air-​conditioning. Period sources and later accounts almost always point to the movie theater as the building type where a broad public first experienced the new technology, and the systems developed for movie theaters were soon adapted elsewhere, as in the US Capitol. Even today, people mention movie theaters as the rooms where their parents or grandparents first felt cool, dehumidified air. Only later, from the mid-1930s, were department stores, restaurants, and other retailers air-​conditioned for comfort. Before that, as one designer wrote in 1931, “[t]he public [knew] air conditioning largely through the theater.”6 As Carrier’s chief engineer said in 1956, “Air conditioning was originally introduced for improving the efficiency of manufacturing processes and the quality of products. For the first two decades of its development and growth, only a few manufacturers knew of its existence. People in general knew nothing of it until, in the early 1920’s, installations spread into motion picture houses, department stores, and similar places.”7 Movie houses differed in their requirements from legitimate theaters. In the early twentieth century, legitimate theater was seasonal, occupied about three hours at a time, usually in the evening, and closed during hot summer months. But movie theaters were occupied, often to full capacity, for twelve hours every day of the week and all year round. Their air-​conditioning plants had to counter the extremes of summer and winter outdoor weather and handle a volume of air that was

often more than twice that required for legitimate theaters.8 The aims of movie-​theater owners ranged from profitability and entertainment to support of civic, democratic, aesthetic, and even spiritual values. Architects and engineers understood these aspirations and sought to integrate modern mechanical systems into solutions that were at once pragmatic and transcendent. Mechanical Refrigeration Comes to Movie Theaters, 1917–24 Cooling air with ice remained the predominant approach in US theaters through about 1900, but by 1910 air washers were being increasingly used for cooling, as they had been in Wright’s Larkin Building when it first opened, in 1906. Air washers cleaned air efficiently, but they were relatively ineffective for cooling theaters because they did not adequately control humidity, unless the water temperature was so low that it cooled the air down to its dew point so that its moisture condensed and precipitated out. But then the air would be too cold for comfort and would have to be reheated. Likely the earliest system created specifically for movie palaces was that for Chicago’s Central Park Theater, opened 27 October 1917 and owned by the impresarios Abraham J. and Barney Balaban and Samuel Katz, who later called it “the biggest motion picture theatre in the world at that time.”9 The 2,600-seat theater was their first commission for architects W. C. Rapp and George Rapp, and it was their first movie theater. It was built at 3535 W. Roosevelt Road, in the then rapidly growing West Side neighborhood Lawndale, near a commercial center with ready access to mass transit. Inside, the proscenium flanked a central stage with a screen for silent films, while two smaller side stages could hold an orchestra, singers, and a

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piano player. This movie theater was the first open year-​round because of its air-​cooled interiors, much advertised as an attraction during Chicago’s sweltering summers. Like the warm air that heated the theater in winter, cooled air was forced through floor vents and exhausted through the ceiling. This bothered patrons, especially women with long skirts, and air supplied could be either too dry or too moist. An improved system, by which dehumidified air was delivered from the side of the house, was installed in Balaban and Katz’s Tivoli Theater, at 6325 S. Cottage Grove Avenue, on Chicago’s South Side, the first 4,500-seat motion-​picture theater, opening on 16 February 1921. Its ceilings had air-​supply registers within their elaborate ornamental patterns. Unlike most of the nation’s then seventeen thousand movie houses, Balaban and Katz theaters were designed to do a year-​ round business, with entertainment just as elaborate and select in summer as in winter. They recalled, “We knew, even before the plans were drawn, that we would put elaborate refrigeration plants in every one. We did, and the result is, that every Balaban & Katz theatre is a delightful Summer resort when the heat is at its height.”10 They elaborated: “The air is constantly changing. You breathe fresh, new air with every breath you draw. Our theatres are healthful Summer resorts. They are cool but never too cool. When you leave them you can’t help feeling refreshed.” Not only were theirs Chicago’s only air-​conditioned theaters, but, they claimed, there was “no such equipment in any theatre in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Paris, London, Berlin.”11 The Tivoli Theater had no power plant; all electricity for motors and lighting was purchased from outside. In a basement below the foyer was the refrigerating system for cooling 64

spray water that washed and cooled the air to 74ºF or 75ºF in summer. The main air duct even had a spray nozzle for injecting a fine mist of perfume, mixed in a special valve with compressed air, once every hour. Chicago’s health commissioner stated that “because of the air-​ conditioning, the air in the Tivoli was better than that on Pike’s Peak, and he recommended to all that they go there for a few hours each week to really benefit by getting some fresh air in their lungs.”12 He advised anyone with a lung disease or women in the final trimester of pregnancy (the latter were admitted free to Balaban and Katz theaters) to spend time at the movies regularly. Instead of closing in summer, these houses then had their most prosperous season. By 1925 one editor wrote: Hundreds of thousands of people go into them with one animating thought—to be entertained in delightful coolness and purity of air; in fact, it is stated that many physicians had advised that convalescent patients should spend as much time as possible in the theaters of this corporation, when the air is washed and cooled to the clarity and dryness of mountain zephyrs. It is also claimed that the cool atmosphere of moving picture houses had tended to make Chicago a great vacation center. Thousands of people who formerly went away from the city during the summer months, now remain, relying upon the moving picture houses to make diverting and cool many evenings each week.13 Balaban and Katz theaters represented their city’s national leadership in air-​conditioning movie houses through the mid-1920s. As one report of 1928 noted, “New York City is far behind Chicago and some of the Western

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and Southern municipalities in this brand of weather-​making. Chicago has thirty-​four of the ninety-​eight cool theatre installations in the country.”14 By 1936 Consolidated Edison estimated that 149 of 256 movie theaters in Chicago had air-​conditioning, representing about 75 percent of the city’s total theater seats and 33.4 percent of Chicago’s total air-​conditioning capacity.15 Elsewhere, among the earlier large air-​conditioning plants for a new theater was that designed in 1922 by Logan Lewis, Carrier’s chief engineer, for Grauman’s Metropolitan Theater (later the Paramount Theater) at the northeast corner of Sixth and Hill streets in Los Angeles, opened on 26 January 1923 and demolished in 1961. This was the largest movie theater ever built in Los Angeles. As Lewis recalled, Carrier analyzed the Balaban and Katz theaters and saw that their cooling systems were designed mainly to control air temperature rather than humidity. Seeing a marketing opportunity to transfer Carrier’s industrial air-​ conditioning systems featuring humidity control to motion-​picture theaters, Carrier began looking for a movie exhibitor who would take a chance on adopting a version of the Carrier system, and Sidney Grauman accepted the idea.16 Like Balaban and Katz theaters, Grauman’s epitomized the movie palace, a type exemplified by large (2,000–5,000-seat), deluxe, first-​ run motion-​picture houses of the 1920s in the central districts of large cities. Their programs included feature films, comedies, and newsreels, usually with stage shows and vaudeville. Such theaters were often built as monuments to the owner or the producer. No expense was spared. Architecture was typically an eclectic mix of historical styles, like early French, Italian, or Spanish Renaissance, with occasional Moorish, Chinese, and other “Oriental” treatments. The usually much-​advertised

air-​conditioning of such a palatial movie theater was a form of showmanship, and overcooling was promoted as a bid for comfort, with its promotion focusing on the large temperature differences between inside and outside. In early movie palaces, some owners instructed engineers that they should design for 70ºF or 75ºF dry-​bulb temperature and 60 percent relative humidity inside, against 95ºF air outside.17 Only in time was it realized that “spectacular showmanship in the form of over-​cooling actually keeps many people away from the movie houses,” presumably because of their aversion to excessive cold and especially to drafts.18 In a theater, comfort depended on four factors: the dry-​bulb temperature, the relative humidity, air movement, and acclimatization, meaning protecting the person from thermal shock on entering or leaving indoor conditions.19 Thus, most owners chose not to overcool their theaters, holding the dry-​bulb temperature to 79ºF or 80ºF when the outside temperature was 92ºF or over, so that patrons experienced less of a thermal shock. But wishing to attract business by stressing indoor-​ outdoor differences, one manager, “after learning that the wet bulb temperature of the theater air [the temperature at which its humidity level is 100 percent] is always lower than the dry bulb temperature [the actual air temperature]—which is the only one the ordinary patron knows about— . . . arranged for a wet bulb recorder to be placed near the entrance,” where all could see its enticingly low reading, which was much lower than the dry-​bulb temperature that patrons would feel inside.20 In the theater district of Los Angeles, the capital of the motion-​picture industry, Grauman asserted: “The Metropolitan is to be the very center of the motion-​picture universe.”21 It was “locally the apex of the movement

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toward the palatial home for the photoplay.”22 An observer wrote: “A few years ago not a single film theater could have stood beside those of the spoken drama in elaborateness. Now the picture theater is second to none in size and adornment.”23 In the words of architect William Lee Wollett: “The picture theater for the people must offer more to the eye than just its drama of the screen. The screen drama is the essence of the entertainment to be sure. But the spectator demands something more. His taste requires that he be lifted out of the mood of everyday events, so that his imagination may be free to roam and his heart to enjoy. This is accomplished by completely capturing his fancy for the beautiful, long before he has actually lost himself in the story on the silver sheet.”24 Another cinema architect wrote: “The comfort of the patron also requires more careful attention in the cinema than in the legitimate theater. The spectator in the cinema must be at ease and must feel neither bodily nor ocular discomfort. This is essential to help complete the illusion of realism desired, despite the fact that the images on the screen have technically only two dimensions.”25 The Metropolitan’s heating, cooling, and ventilating system served these priorities. Its effect was transformative relative to Los Angeles’s desert climate, so that the theater’s interior would contrast in every way with diurnal urban life. As one account of the newly opened house noted: “The light of day never enters the building while it is open to the public. The noises of the street are shut out just as surely as are the sights of hurrying crowds and vehicles.” In bright Los Angeles, even the windows of the theater were “made of black opaque glass, and shut out every ray of natural sunlight from the beautiful lounging and rest rooms as well as from the auditorium.”26 Much of the cooling 66

load came from the 730 colored spotlights, whose ever-​changing hues mixed with the painted colors, and whose lighting effects were synchronized with the orchestral music. At the opening, music was “so closely allied to the arts of color that the perfect ensemble include[d] the blending of both.” The air-​conditioning was to combine with the music, coordinated with the lights, to shape a synesthetic experience. One observer waxed poetic: “The wail of a plaintive viola comes from afar. There is coolness in the air—but see, a glowing radiance from above warms again, but the music is just a whisper now. Listen, carefully! It is gone.”27 Grilles in the ceiling beneath the balcony were air-​supply openings, but the largest was the ninety-​foot-​diameter “doily” that crowned the auditorium (fig. 29). Hand decorated in pure pigment colors, its filigree was covered in gold and silver leaf. Through its filigree came not only the radiance of the many lamps that played over the theater below but also the conditioned air. Floodlights from below could light the doily in many changing colors so that lighting and cooling effects were visually fused.28 The air-​conditioning system was central to the experience of the Metropolitan from its opening, in January 1923. That long-​awaited and much-​promoted occasion attracted more excitement than any similar event in Los Angeles’s history. Heralded for months, the evening brought twenty to thirty thousand people to the vicinity of the theater. They mobbed the entrance, and it required a united force of police and militia to hold them back. On stage to receive the tribute of the audience and film stars, Grauman said the theater belonged to the public. He conceived its vast interior as a civic space that would endure for several generations as a premier venue for first-​run films, long after the local industry passed out of its relative

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Figure 29 William Lee Wollett (architect) and Logan Lewis (mechanical engineer), Grauman’s Metropolitan (later Paramount) Theater, northeast corner, Sixth and Hill Streets, Los Angeles, 1922– 23 (demolished 1961), interior, showing the circular “doily” for ventilation in the ceiling. USC Digital Library. “Dick” Whittington Photography Collection, 1924–1987, call no.: DW-010184-4, identifying no.: isla id: S-2348; ilsa id: 2096; Legacy Record ID: whit-​m1705. Courtesy of University of Southern California, on behalf of the USC Libraries Special Collections.

infancy.29 Plans provided for mechanical equipment that “would not only heat, humidify and ventilate the auditorium in winter, but would also cool, dehumidify and ventilate it during the summer season, when so many theaters find it difficult to operate, owing to excessive temperatures and the oppressiveness of high humidities.”30 These demands were daunting for a theater that was a single enclosed space, its balcony overhanging the main floor, and the tall proscenium towering over the stage. The cavernous hall was occupied twelve hours per day, and the heat from the myriad lights had to be offset by cooling in summer and by ventilation in winter, when local mild temperatures called for no heating.

As in earlier factories, air-​washing sprays dehumidified summer air by cooling it to its dew point and thus forcing it to lose much of its moisture. As shown in figure 30, the equipment was in the theater’s attic, including the fresh-​air intake, preheater, chamber for mixing fresh and recirculated air, dehumidifier / air washer, supply fan, and heater to bring cooled, dehumidified air up to the desired temperature. Having inspected the Balaban and Katz theaters in Chicago, Logan Lewis developed a downward air-​distribution system just for theaters.31 Properly cooled and dehumidified air would flow through outlets in the upper ceiling and in the ceiling beneath the balcony. Thus introduced overhead, the conditioned air

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Figure 30 William Lee Wollett (architect) and Logan Lewis (mechanical engineer), Grauman’s Metropolitan (later Paramount) Theater, longitudinal section. From Heating and Ventilating 21, no. 3 (March 1924): 58. © ASHRAE, www​.ashrae​.org.

diffused slowly downward, being exhausted through the balcony and auditorium floors by means of the same kind of mushroom ventilators used in updraft systems. An exhaust fan pulled vitiated air down through the floor vents and then pushed it up through an exhaust stack either to a relief chamber on the roof or back to the mixing chamber for recirculation. There were no exhaust openings in the ceilings, so that the theater was prevented from becoming a huge stack of rising air when doors were opened and inrushing cooler air displaced warmer air toward the ceiling.32 The mechanical system’s initial costs were about $26 per seat, the building’s total cost approximately $1,000 per seat. It initially cost about $500 per month to operate the 68

air-​conditioning system during the winter, when no refrigeration was used, or a little less than half a cent per seat per day. This amounted to about one-​fifth the cost of the lighting. In summer, the air-​conditioning with refrigeration cost more than four times the winter cost, meaning $73 per day or more than two cents per seat per day. Yet attendance averaged about 2.38 admissions per seat per day, reducing the cost by half.33 Clearly, Grauman and his team of designers saw the system as a worthwhile investment. Air-​Conditioning of Motion-​ Picture Pal aces in New York Cit y, 1925–27, and Film Production Grauman’s Metropolitan was an early successful air-​conditioned movie palace, with

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a precision of humidity control beyond that found in the Balaban and Katz theaters. Film distributors who came to Los Angeles to experience its air-​conditioning were convinced of its value. In the summer of 1924, Carrier’s downdraft system, with humidity control, was adopted in the Palace Theater in Dallas and the Texan Theatre in Houston, among others.34 The system’s operation required minimal on-​ site skills. The Texan’s owner, Will Horwitz Jr., wrote to Carrier in June 1925: “The cooling plant is Revolutionizing picture going. In the past two weeks, the humidity here has been intense, within a few degrees of rain, and I can assure you when they get inside of the doorway of the Texan you can hear exclamations of delight. The plant is working perfectly. Our Engineer says ‘he has nothing to do on the job but loaf.’ ”35 Lewis later claimed that, “almost without exception, the thousands of dollars which had been spent for air-​conditioning all came back through the box-​office during the first summer’s operation.”36 The potential for effective, appropriate levels of air-​conditioning to enhance the experience of moviegoing and thus attract increased business for theater owners was realized in New York City between 1925 and about 1932. There the movie palace had been established in several key examples built before the First World War along Broadway just north of Times Square. In the mid- and later 1920s, several of these were renovated with air-​conditioning, and by then newly built theaters included it. In New York, the first movie palace to employ air-​conditioning was the remodeled Rivoli Theater, which reopened in 1925 on the east side of Broadway between Forty-​Ninth and Fiftieth Streets, in the theater district that then represented the nation’s greatest concentration of movie palaces. The Rivoli Theater, opened in

1917 with 2,270 seats, had been among the most prominent projects of the producer Samuel L. Rothafel and his longtime collaborator, architect Thomas Lamb. Operated by the Rialto Theater Corporation and created as much for prestige as for profits, the Rivoli had long had socially elevated pretensions. Designed by Carrier, the Rivoli’s air-​ conditioning system was based on those installed in Grauman’s theater and in Texas. All used Carrier’s newly developed centrifugal compressors (discussed in the appendix). As Willis Carrier’s main biographer, Margaret Ingels, has described, the success of the Texas installations inspired the Rivoli’s management to replace its existing ventilation system with air-​conditioning. Intensive efforts were made to install the system by Memorial Day, 30 May 1925, for which “cool comfort” had been widely advertised. It provided not only “69 degrees all the time. But crisp, dry, and invigorating air, too!”37 Addressing the public, the management enthused: “We have invested over $100,000 in a refrigerating cooling plant to keep you cool and comfortable when the world is sweltering. Unseen, unheard, resistless are the huge motors with a combined pulling power of 221 horses—represent[ing] but a small part of the marvelous equipment which absolutely assures a temperature that is just right.”38 Carrier recalled that a long line formed at the box office hours before the remodeled theater’s opening. Many were curious or skeptical. Some men and most women carried fans as a precaution should the system not perform. Final adjustments before starting the machine meant, as one interested party observed, that the doors opened before the air conditioning system was turned on. The people poured in, filled all the seats, and stood

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hot day, and a still longer time for a packed house. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the fans dropped into laps as the effects of the air conditioning system became evident. Only a few chronic fanners persisted, but soon they, too, ceased fanning. We had stopped them “cold” and breathed a great sigh of relief.39

Figure 31 Outdoor temperature and attendance records of (top) a theater having no cooling system and (bottom) a theater that is artificially cooled. From AF 42, no. 6 (June 1925): 395; images not attributed.

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seven deep in the back of the theater. We had more than we had bargained for and were plenty worried. From the wings we watched in dismay as two thousand fans fluttered. . . . It takes time to pull down the temperature in a quickly filled theater on a

On 3 July the manager wrote with delight to Carrier: “The refrigeration system which you have installed at the Rivoli Theatre is an acknowledged success. Although the apparatus has only been in operation four weeks, it is the talk of Broadway.”40 The cooling plant cost $60,000, but in three months (June–August), it paid for itself with increased patronage.41 Among prominent theater engineers was Dwight D. Kimball, who discussed the issues in an essay of 1925 entitled “Ventilating and Cooling of Motion Picture Theaters.” He reported: “The demand for actual cooling of theaters is growing by leaps and bounds. Two years ago there were but one or two thoroughly cooled theaters in the entire country. At the present time there are dozens such, and dozens more are installing such equipment.”42 Owners’ motivation was financial, as clarified by two charts showing outdoor temperature and attendance records of a theater having no cooling system (fig. 31, top) and a theater artificially cooled (fig. 31, bottom). Records from the former, from December 1922 to September 1923, show average weekly attendance at just over 40,000. As temperatures peaked in June and July, weekly attendance fell to a low of under 28,000 in later June. In the artificially cooled theater, average weekly attendance in June, July, and August was more than twice as high, at 59,300, with the lowest level (in mid-​ July) being about 53,000. The increased paid

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admission in this single season exceeded the cooling plant’s installation and operating costs.43 In large metropolitan theaters, the time to recover investment was shortened because of the audience sizes. One report of July 1928 noted, “It is an open secret that one large New York motion picture theatre which last year installed a $50,000 air-​cooling plant charged it off as paid for at the end of the Summer season through the increased attendance.”44 Like movies, air-​conditioning was intended to please a mass audience. Carrier advertised it as “Manufactured Weather,” or “climate made to order.”45 These terms spoke to Mark Twain’s adage that everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it. Carrier defined “manufactured weather” as “another, more popular, term for scientific Air Conditioning,” which “means accurate, technical control of the air conditions within a given enclosure effected by means of highly developed equipment skillfully applied to the given requirements.”46 It meant (1) year-​ round control of temperature and humidity, (2) cleanliness of air by means of spray washing and the use of viscous oil-​coated filters, and (3) effectiveness of distribution, meaning complete and even or uniform distribution through interiors. This last factor was critical, “since no Air Conditioning System can be superior to its distribution.”47 Hence, “such a hold [had] the idea of manufactured weather on the human mind that a start in the same direction [had] been made in several foreign countries.”48 In theaters, “Manufactured Weather . . . made the Movie Theatre a haven of refuge from the summer’s heat and depressive excess humidity and, in winter, it made the enclosed, crowded area not only comfortable, but more healthful than most of the patrons’ homes, avoiding that enervating, odiferous, dry heat of yore.”

Doctors had earlier recommended that in times of epidemic, colds, or influenza, patients avoid movie theaters, but Carrier claimed that with Manufactured Weather “the Theatre is likely to be healthiest place you can go.”49 New York City’s Smoke Nuisance Committee reported in 1929 that the one trillion cubic feet of air above the city held 2,300 tons of dust but that, “of this, the cooled theaters, with their washed-​ air, [got] the least.” Thus “the cleanest air in New York [was] the air in theaters ventilated by refrigerating plants.”50 The adoption of air-​conditioning in movie theaters also had an effect on the motion-​ picture industry. Before the introduction of air-​ conditioning in the 1920s, the box office experienced a series of annual peaks and depressions. Theaters did not attract patronage during the summer. Producers timed good pictures for release during the nonsummer seasons, in which a good attendance could be expected. As a consequence, the entire industry, including producers and actors, split their professional lives into annual alternating periods of prosperity and depression. With the spread of air-​conditioning to movie theaters nationwide, industry veterans were astounded to find lines of patrons facing “sold out” signs during the hottest and most humid summer weather.51 Air-​conditioning’s effects on film production were not limited to theaters. The efficient manufacture of coated movie film of absolutely consistent quality also depended on controlled conditions of temperature and humidity. These conditions were important for the drying of coated film, which was done on large rotating drums, a process whose speed depended on air-​conditioning. The perforation of film also needed proper environmental controls, which were equally important in the developing, printing, and cutting rooms

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Figure 32 Animation Building, Walt Disney Productions, Burbank, California, 1940, aerial view and fan room, showing air-​ conditioning ducts. From Compressed Air Magazine 45, no. 5 (May 1940): 6147; photographs not attributed.

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of the film laboratories that were essential to production.52 Air-​conditioning of film-​ production plants and laboratories enabled them to produce film stock whose quality was sufficiently high to include soundtracks even before these had been developed. With the advent of sound productions came the necessity of excluding extraneous noises on film sets. Yet if sound stages had to be absolutely quiet, their walls and ceilings had to be completely insulated, which meant that heat generated by lighting, people, and other sources could not

easily be exhausted. The heat, in turn, caused unworkable conditions in the studios of hot, dry Southern California and led to the necessity of air-​conditioning in sound stages. But the noise of the fans, motors, and refrigerating machines, which had been tolerable in most factories, had to be reduced in sound stages to a level at which they would not be picked up by the microphones and thus would neither register on nor distort the soundtrack. Metro-​ Goldwyn-​Mayer was among the first film studios to achieve acceptable levels of noise reduction in air-​conditioned sound stages. The technology’s importance extended to animated films. The makers of cartoon features found that the celluloid on which they drew their images curled or distorted with changes in relative humidity. Walt Disney’s first animated feature film, Snow White, which premiered in December 1937, required more than two hundred thousand such handmade drawings. Air-​conditioning that kept the celluloid sheets consistently free from atmospheric changes thus became essential to the artists and technicians who created such cartoons.53 By 1940 the group of twenty-​one buildings for Walt Disney Productions, on a fifty-​one-​acre tract in Burbank, California, was entirely air-​ conditioned, by the largest such plant west of the Mississippi River (fig. 32). The Animation Building’s eight wings housed nine hundred animators, with 160 ducts supplying fresh, conditioned air to its interiors, responding to 156 independent thermostatic control points. General Electric built this system with wells drilled on the grounds that supplied water at a temperature of 67ºF to preheat the entering air on cold days and precool it on hot days. This geothermal source cut operating expenses because the natural water had a cooling capacity equivalent to about one thousand tons of

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Figure 33 Reinhard and Hofmeister; Corbett, Harrison, and MacMurray; and Hood, Godley, and Fouilhoux (architects); and A. Warren Canney (air-​conditioning engineer)— Rockefeller Center, rendering by John Wenrich, 1935, view from the northeast, showing the central, tallest RCA Building and (a) the RCA Building West. © 2019 Rockefeller Group Inc. / Rockefeller Center Archives; graphic addition by author.

refrigeration.54 All this capacity enabled not only the animation but also the production of films. After images were drawn, the studio photographed a sequence of scenes onto celluloid sheets (twenty-​four for each second of action on the screen); “a single particle of dust on a painting produce[d] light effects and halations which spoil[ed] the picture.” Access to the filming studio was therefore through a “de-​dusting chamber” where those entering were “frisked” of dust by high-​velocity air jets to create immaculate conditions in the camera rooms.55 Thus, as in other industrial settings, air-​conditioning proved essential. Air-​Conditioning in Rockefeller Center and Radio Cit y Music Hall The state of the art for Carrier’s system of theater air-​conditioning reached its apogee in Rockefeller Center’s Radio City Music Hall, which opened in New York on 27 December 1932. In this theater’s enormous interior were combined the lessons of the previous few years. Yet this space was only one of the air-​conditioned parts of Rockefeller Center, the largest urban development of its time to broadly adopt the new technology (fig. 33).56 When its first completed buildings opened, in 1932, the center purportedly contained the largest and most advanced air-​conditioning systems installed anywhere in the world. As of June 1932, plans for the whole project called for

a

approximately ten thousand tons of mechanical refrigeration with 4,000,000 cfm of conditioned air. Some fifteen thousand tons of air ducts were to distribute cooled and filtered air for 130,000 people. The cost of the air-​conditioning system

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was $4 million. In 1932 the Rockefeller Center Corporation described the development: “In both theaters now under construction in Rockefeller Center, in all the shops, stores and studio space [but at first not the offices] in the RCA Building and the RKO Building, air will be filtered, washed and cooled to a temperature of about forty degrees, in order to remove as much moisture as possible. Subsequently it will be reheated to a point a few degrees below the temperature outside and distributed by pipes and vents. Refrigeration machines will be included in the mechanical equipment of the buildings mentioned above.”57 The system’s chief designer, A. Warren Canney, speaking “not as an air conditioning design engineer, but as an advocate of his art,” claimed that “air conditioning contribute[d] more than any other single item in making the project modern.”58 The scale of Rockefeller Center as an experiment in air-​conditioning gave its systems an importance beyond this site, which in the 1930s supported the major building effort under way in New York City. The project began when the Great Depression “was in full sway and the country was full of firms with depleted manufacturing orders, whose executives were predicting that air conditioning along with television—‘will pull us out of this depression.’ ”59 Then-​idle industrial plants were well suited to manufacturing air-​conditioning equipment. It was a commodity for which, if it proved effective on a large scale, there would be great demand in new and retrofitted buildings. In late 1934 R. E. Wantz, president of the Illinois Manufacturers Association, identified air-​conditioning as the new lively industry that would restore prosperity to the United States, affording an important market for machinery, copper, zinc, tin plate, sheet metal, insulation, and other materials: “It employs cotton 74

and rubber workers, steamfitters, plumbers, plasterers, sheet metal workers, carpenters, painters, electricians, and laborers. It furnishes work for architects, engineers, transportation employees, salesmen, and other employees in the industries involved.”60 Air-​conditioning was reaccelerating American industry, reducing unemployment, and putting more energy, comfort, and health into industry and general living conditions. Power companies as well as manufacturers were among its leading advocates, and their advertising programs generated broad public interest in it.61 The scale of Rockefeller Center also forced a change in practices in a field where technical disagreement was rife. All engineering designs, specifications, inspections, and approvals were made by Clyde R. Place, consulting engineer of New York City, working with Ernest Williams, associate and project manager, and Canney, the air-​conditioning engineering specialist on Place’s staff. Working with the center’s Associated Architects (L. Andrew Reinhard and Henry Hofmeister; Harvey W. Corbett, Wallace K. Harrison, and William A. MacMurray; and Raymond M. Hood, Frederick A. Godley, and J. André Fouilhoux), these engineers made many interrelated decisions about refrigeration methods in terms of their space, efficiency, power and water requirements, operational suitability, and safety. The details of duct design were endless, as were those of the architectural coordination for housing equipment. The wealth of experience gained at Rockefeller Center’s uniquely large system served to rationalize design procedure for air-​conditioning. As late as 1931 most skyscrapers were built without it, but by 1934 they were deemed obsolete, in part because the center had provided “for complete air conditioning with a system destined to set a precedent of wide commercial importance.”62

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As a view of the center looking southwest from late 1934 shows, there were then eleven buildings from Fifth Avenue (east) to Sixth Avenue (west) and from West Forty-​Eighth Street (south) to West Fifty-​First Street (north) (fig. 33). Buildings differed in size, function, and electrical and water needs, demanding separation of their mechanical services. Had there been a central refrigeration plant, responsibility for maintenance and operation would have been divided, occasioning difficulty and expense in prorating costs among tenants. Thus each building had its own system. In designing them, much was learned about their needs for condenser water to remove heat from circulating refrigerants and to condense them for recirculation and for more chilled-​water cooling. One engineer for Rockefeller Center wrote in 1932: “The amount of condensing water required in an air-​conditioned building is dependent on the installed tonnage and the type of refrigeration machine used. The condensing water requirement is a function of such factors as outside air temperature, sunshine on the building walls, air humidity and density of population. As with the plumbing water requirement it varies with the time of day.”63 Rockefeller Center’s unprecedentedly large air-​conditioning system needed large supplies of condensing water. This led to negotiations with the city’s Department of Water Supply, which did not look favorably on draining the reservoirs supplied by the Croton Aqueduct to service a concentrated area of three blocks around the center. Its demand for air-​ conditioning in summer would call for twenty million additional gallons per day in the hot season, when water levels were at their lowest. The department asked for cooperation in avoiding this extraordinary consumption, and this led to the use of cooling towers throughout

the center, where heated condenser water could be cooled at rooftop levels with outdoor air and then recirculated back to the condensers, instead of constantly using fresh cool city water to supply the condensers. Recirculation of condensing water was also an economy measure. As one engineer noted: “Inasmuch as water passed through the condensers is undamaged except for its rise in temperature, it is possible to effect a saving in the water bill by re-​using the condensing water in the pumping system. Thus in designing the RCA Building, . . . it was decided to re-​use the condensing water.”64 Brightly painted cooling towers for condensing water were on its west rear roof. Each air-​conditioning system also had an auxiliary connection to the street-​water supply. This was among the first large interactions between urban infrastructure and air-​conditioning, wherein public interests in terms of water service were to be balanced with private needs.65 Within the original Rockefeller Center were eight major installations for air-​conditioning, the largest of which (675 tons) was in the International Music Hall, or Radio City Music Hall, then the world’s largest theater, seating 6,200. From its opening, the Music Hall has been identified with a certain style of showmanship (fig. 34). Its main architect, Wallace Harrison, with Edward Durell Stone as the theater’s chief designer, sought a modern image distinct from movie palaces. Radio City was designed for staging exhibits and revues of various types on a large scale, yet in a way that would allow the hall’s occasional conversion for use either as a sound motion-​picture theater or as a legitimate theater. The room’s capacity made it an unprecedented mechanical and architectural challenge. The interior design’s chief aim was to achieve an apparent intimacy despite the huge size of the auditorium. Thus runways extend

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Figure 34 Wallace Harrison, Edward Durell Stone, and Donald Deskey (architects), Radio City Music Hall. Wurts Bros. / Museum of the City of New York, X2010.7.1.7534.

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around the slanted sidewalls to the stage, helping to diminish feelings of remoteness and distance from the stage. The oval contour of the main hung ceiling begins at the floor line, and at the stage the ceiling terminates in an arched proscenium with a hundred-​foot width. The ceiling is a series of arches of acoustical plaster, stepped back each from the next so as to create a break about two feet deep every thirty

feet (fig. 34). The air-​conditioning and lighting systems were integrated into the arches of the ceiling design, as they had been in the Chicago Auditorium, so that their visible venting bore no resemblance to the circular ceiling motifs of Grauman’s theater. The three rear mezzanines (each seating about one thousand) were shallow, overhanging less than a quarter of the orchestra level (seating about three thousand).

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The Music Hall’s volume and capacity forced a partial rethinking of the methods of air-​conditioning theaters. The basic task—dissipating the heat generated by many human bodies—remained as it had been since the 1880s. In addition, the room’s heat gain from its lighting was especially large and added considerably to the required capacity of the refrigerating machinery. Finally, the theater volume’s outdoor exposure along Sixth Avenue, on the west, and especially its long dimension on Fiftieth Street, on the south, resulted in a large daily afternoon heat gain.66 Given these loads, the air-​conditioning engineers were asked to guarantee steady systemic performance for a dry-​bulb temperature of 77ºF and 55 percent humidity during the summer, spring, and fall and a dry-​bulb temperature of 70ºF and 45 to 50 percent relative humidity in the winter. To ensure that people would not feel a draft regardless of where they sat, air was supplied through a downward system, entering the hall’s volume through ceiling outlets and exhausted through floor or sidewall registers. As the cool air fell, it would pick up heat rising from the bodies of audience members and would reach them at a moderate temperature.67 In order to maintain consistent conditions, the Music Hall was divided into three sections, each requiring its own entering air temperature. These three sections would be served by three separate and independent systems. Each had its own supply and exhaust air outlets. The aim of such a zoned approach was partly to ensure economy of operation, so that differential amounts of energy would serve to cool different parts of the hall, whose heat loads varied. To further save energy, the three systems were designed to produce comfortable conditions during the intermediate spring and autumn seasons without the use of mechanical

refrigeration, so long as the outside air did not exceed 48ºF wet-​bulb temperature, meaning that it was relatively dry. If outside air was dry and temperate, 100 percent outside air could be used. If outside autumn and spring air was less ideal, a high percentage was admitted through a specially designed combination of dehumidifiers and air washers to make it acceptable for interior circulation.68 Air-​handling equipment for all three systems occupied the space above the ceiling spanning the auditorium and on the level above the grand foyer (fig. 35). Refrigeration equipment was in an excavated subbasement, and the cooling towers were on the roof, but within open volumes screened on the theater’s exterior by ornamental aluminum screens punctuating limestone-​clad extensions of the lower walls. Two towers were so screened high over the theater’s entrance on Fiftieth Street (fig. 36). As figure 35 shows, System A served the musicians’ pit, front-​orchestra seating, and

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Figure 35 Wallace Harrison, Edward Durell Stone, and Donald Deskey (architects), Radio City Music Hall, longitudinal-​ section diagram showing HVAC System A for the musicians’ pit, front-​orchestra seating, and the front sections of the first and second mezzanines. From Heating and Ventilating 29, no. 6 (June 1932): 48. © ASHRAE, www​.ashrae​.org.

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the front of the first and second mezzanines. The total occupancy of these spaces was about 3,000 persons, almost 2,600 of whom were in the vast frontal orchestra seating. This big zone called for 70,000 cfm, or about 27 cfm per person, just above the recommended norm for theaters of 25 cfm per person. When the minimum amount of fresh air was being circulated, the used air was exhausted at the floor through special exhausters (fig. 37). These widely distributed floor exhaust vents kept a balanced temperature, humidity, and air motion throughout the main orchestra. The exhaust air went to a large underfloor plenum and then recirculated back up to the air handlers above the ceiling (fig. 35). System B served the rear orchestra, one-third of

Figure 36 Wallace Harrison, Edward Durell Stone, and Donald Deskey (architects), Radio City Music Hall, cooling towers on the roof facing Fiftieth Street. From Ice and Refrigeration 87, no. 5 (November 1934): 210; photograph not attributed.

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the grand foyer and the main lounge below, lobbies, and the first mezzanine’s rear and promenade. These spaces together held some 3,445 persons. System C served the rear parts of the second and third mezzanines and their promenades and two-​thirds of the grand foyer, holding 2,142 persons. All three systems had to be integrated into the hall’s architecture, with its distinct demands for stimulating fantasy and creating a mood appropriate to the type of performance for which Radio City would become renowned. Air-​Conditioning the NBC Broadcasting Studios in Rockefeller Center The opening of Radio City Music Hall in late December 1932 defined the public face of entertainment at Rockefeller Center. But just west of the towering central RCA Building were broadcast studios or small-​audience theaters for creating radio programs, the era’s new mass medium. Among the foremost broadcasting companies was NBC, created in 1927 as a subsidiary of RCA, which was owned by the General Electric Corporation. In 1933 NBC joined RCA in spacious new quarters in Rockefeller Center. A chief problem in the design of NBC’s new headquarters was the distribution of properly conditioned air through studios, control rooms, and offices. Together these totaled three hundred separate spaces, many with loads that varied widely over the course of a single workday. Studios were not in the RCA Building itself, where NBC’s offices were located, but rather in an adjacent, lower, eleven-​story structure to its west, not well located for natural light. There NBC leased twenty-​seven major studios and auxiliary spaces. Further west was the RCA Building West (fig. 33), a sixteen-​story building between

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Figure 37 Wallace Harrison, Edward Durell Stone, and Donald Deskey (architects), Radio City Music Hall, under construction, looking north across orchestra floor, showing cast-​iron sleeves for exhausting air under seats. From Heating and Ventilating 29, no. 9 (September 1932): 32. © ASHRAE, www​.ashrae​.org.

Forty-​Ninth and Fiftieth Streets on Sixth Avenue, where a loud, vibrating elevated train still ran. Since microphones were highly sensitive to low-​intensity sounds, air-​conditioning equipment in broadcast studios and control rooms had to be quieted and the spaces soundproofed. These were built inside a structural steel cage, with acoustically isolated walls, floors, and ceilings. Entrance and exit were through a “sound lock” equipped with double doors, so that the studios were hermetically sealed.69

Given the need for sound insulation, Canney wrote, “continuous broadcasting would be an impossibility under the structural conditions imposed by the modern broadcasting studios without the adjunct of air conditioning.”70 Cooling loads varied, as studios were filled to capacity for an hour or two and then were vacant, with activity and thus cooling load shifting from studio to studio. The studios had high-​wattage lights for uniform illumination, plus wattage for decorative illumination. Under these lights, a studio in use had a concentrated

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Figure 38 Reinhard and Hofmeister; Corbett, Harrison, and MacMurray; and Hood, Godley, and Fouilhoux (architects); O. B. Hanson (chief engineer, NBC); and A. Warren Canney (air-​conditioning engineer)— RCA Building West, Rockefeller Center, NBC Broadcasting Studio 8H. Wurts Bros. / Museum of the City of New York, X2010.7.2.5847.

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occupancy of active people emitting double the heat and moisture of persons at rest. To maintain constant humidity, individual studio control was essential. This meant an unusually high quantity of ductwork relative to floor areas served. Since soundproofing materials were also excellent heat insulators, there was practically no radiation through the studio’s walls, so heat generated within them had to be removed by air-​conditioning. Air also had to be exceptionally clean, since acoustic materials were porous and hence needed to be kept dust free.71 NBC’s new facility west of the RCA Building had a total refrigeration capacity of nine hundred tons, equal to about twenty thousand domestic refrigerators. Air handlers, in which chilled water cooled incoming and recirculated air, were on the tenth floor. As in Radio City Music Hall, concentrating equipment in

as small a space as practicable facilitated the work of operating engineers. The system served more than three hundred rooms on nine occupied floors, like an efficient cold-​storage building.72 The three-​story Studio 8H on the west (fig. 38), then the world’s largest broadcasting studio, had lower levels for musicians, artists, announcers, and studio engineers, along with rooms for control, instrument storage, dressing, and the sound-​lock vestibule. The upper level held observation rooms for broadcast clients and for visitors.73 Canney described NBC’s studios as “the most extensive air conditioning system ever built under one contract . . . the best that air conditioning can be made to do under the most stringent requirements yet imposed on an air conditioning system as a building service.”74 The total capacity of the studios’ refrigeration machines was enough to create a five-​hundred-​ thousand-​square-​foot indoor skating rink.75 This new type of architectural interior had its visible surfaces set within a fabric that made of each studio a chamber so insulated that one engineer compared it to a thermos bottle. Each studio’s air supply had constant and highly controlled temperature, humidity, freshness, purity, and draftlessness. Broadcast studios were theater-​like factories whose productivity depended on air-​conditioning to optimize conditions for performers and audiences. NBC invested more than $1 million in its studio air-​conditioning because “experience proves that the artists are productive of the best their talents can give when the atmosphere is conducive to complete comfort.”76 Thus, as in manufacturing plants, air-​conditioning broadcast studios served workers as economic actors. Their enhanced performance was a measure of the system’s success, while its financial and energy costs were perceived as secondary.

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The Ice-​Skating Rink in Rockefeller Center Pl aza The comparison of the refrigeration capacity needed for the NBC studios to that which could create a large ice rink is meaningful. Perhaps the most publicly visible symbol of Rockefeller Center’s cooling systems is the ice-​skating rink in its plaza, which became the center’s focal celebratory space from the time it opened (fig. 39). Overlooking the rink is Paul Manship’s gilt statue of Prometheus, the figure in Greek mythology who stole fire from the gods, signifying the beginnings of human technical control over the environment. Yet the plaza’s ice rink showed the capacities of modern mechanical refrigeration. This extraordinary urban place represented a broader national trend. For winter seasons from 1935 to 1937, demand had grown for refrigeration applied to skating rinks. Excavated and first made ready for operation in the winter of 1937, Rockefeller Center’s rink was believed to be New York City’s first outdoor artificial skating rink. It had originally been intended as a sunken plaza around which pedestrians could pass into a shopping concourse that ran east-​west under the RCA Building to a new subway line under Sixth Avenue. This subway’s construction was delayed, so interim treatment of the plaza posed a challenge. In summer, the area had been used as an open-​air restaurant and dance pavilion. To animate the space in winter, the solution of the ice-​skating rink emerged only in 1936, three years after the plaza first opened. Like an outdoor urban theater, a two-​level promenade framed the sunken plaza, leading to air-​conditioned shops around it.77 The rink, forty-​five by ninety feet, contained under its surface about 13,800 feet of one-​inch wrought-​iron piping through which was pumped a cold brine to create an even

sheet of ice.78 The plaza’s wintertime conversion into a skating rink was enabled by the proximity of refrigerating equipment that supplied surrounding buildings with comfort cooling and cold storage. The plaza’s rink in winter is the most publicly visible by-​product of the center’s enormous air-​conditioning system. Its refrigeration plant was the world’s largest and

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Figure 39 Reinhard and Hofmeister; Corbett, Harrison, and MacMurray; and Hood, Godley, and Fouilhoux (architects)—Rockefeller Center Plaza, with ice rink opened in 1937, below Paul Manship’s sculpture of Prometheus. From Refrigerating Engineering 33, no. 3 (March 1937). © ASHRAE, www​.ashrae​.org.

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most complex when it was completed. Thus in winter the mythical Prometheus, heroic inventor of fire, presides over another thermal invention embodied in the ice below him. In this era progress was equated with the large scale of a refrigerating system and with consumption rather than conservation of energy. When Carrier received the largest contract on record, for air-​conditioning parts of the RCA Building, it announced that it would provide refrigeration equal to freezing three million pounds of ice a day, or the equivalent of the summertime consumption of 120,000 families or a city the size of Washington, DC, with its then 513,000 residents. In extremely hot weather, the system removed about eighteen

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million Btu per hour, equal to the hourly heating needs of about four hundred average-​sized homes during the winter.79 NBC’s broadcast studios alone would have refrigeration equal to that of freezing two million pounds of ice per day, the equivalent of the entire summer ice consumption of a city the size of Dallas.80 In the mid-1930s, as the Great Depression slowly eased, with fuel prices low, high energy consumption not only went unquestioned but was touted as an indicator of large capital investment in building systems, then valued as a stimulus to economic recovery. By then, air-​ conditioning was beginning to have a profound effect on the operations of the federal government in the nation’s capital.

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Air-​Conditioning Comes to the Nation’s Capital  and the South, 1928–60 Ch ap ter 4

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ir-​conditioning in new buildings such as those of Rockefeller Center, which were consciously modern in all aspects of their design and construction, was exceptional before World War II. More common was the installation of systems into existing buildings not designed for air-​conditioning, whose mechanicals thus had to be set into an older shell. The larger and more complex the building, the more the decision to refit it with air-​ conditioning entailed rethinking its operability. Functionality was redefined to include air-​ conditioning for building types that had heretofore not been imagined with anything beyond heating and ventilating as these systems had developed from the mid-​nineteenth century. Among the cases of retrofitting larger buildings, that of the US Capitol stands out because of its institutional importance, and also because the Capitol’s air-​conditioning was the outcome of deliberations and testimony that give insight into how contemporaries understood the benefits, costs, limitations, and transformative potential of the new technology. While the classical federal architecture of Washington, DC, has received much historical attention, little has been given to the mechanical systems that have made these buildings habitable in the capital city’s notoriously hot and humid summer climate.

q

The air-​conditioning of the Capitol building marked this technology’s arrival in the capital city. A number of buildings had refrigeration plants for preserving food or cooling air for industrial processes like printing, but comfort air-​conditioning did not yet exist in the city. Before World War II, it was also used in new buildings of the Federal Triangle. This district’s architecture was neoclassical and not modernist; hence those architects and engineers who equipped the new federal buildings with air-​conditioning had to integrate mechanical systems into spaces and building masses whose aesthetic normally precluded these systems. Air-​conditioning had a transformative effect on sessions of Congress and on the government’s operations, reshaping the capital’s functionality. Soon the technology became integral to the designs of new buildings as well, such as the National Gallery of Art (1937–41); the Pentagon (1941–43), which had the largest system of all; and the Statler Hotel (1941–43). The capital’s air-​conditioning also links to the technology’s broader transformation of the South and Southwest through the twentieth century. As with factories and theaters, transforming Washington, DC, into an air-​conditioned city was not so much an achievement of individual architects as it was a long-​term collaborative effort by varied professionals.

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Ventil ation and Air-​Conditioning in the House and Senate Chambers, 1924–29 In 1850, as the country grew, the decision was made to enlarge the Capitol, and from 1851, under architect Thomas U. Walter and superintendent of construction Captain Montgomery C. Meigs of the US Army Corps of Engineers, the building was expanded to its present dimensions of 751 feet north-​south and 350 feet east-​west (fig. 40). A desire to reduce outside noise and disagreeably distracting natural light, to restrict public access to congressmen entering and leaving the building, and to maintain relatively uniform interior temperatures led Meigs to place the House of Representatives in the center of the south wing.1 The House chamber opened in December 1857, while the Senate chamber, in the center of the north wing, opened in January 1859 (fig. 41). The Capitol’s majestic dome of iron, designed by Walter, was finished in 1863.2 Since the House and Senate chambers were enclosed by rooms and corridors, there was no simple way of naturally

ventilating these halls. The House chamber, measured over the galleries, is 139 feet long, 93 feet wide, and 36 feet in height from ceiling to floor (fig. 42). Keeping a comfortable temperature meant responding to the heat load from occupants. As of 1929, 444 people could be seated on the House floor, with room for 25–30 standing attendants. An additional 1,048 people might crowd into the galleries. Special joint sessions of Congress in the House could fill the galleries and floor far beyond these limits. The Senate chamber had comparable issues. It is 113 feet in length, 80 feet in width, and 36 feet in height. Normal seating capacity of the floor was 96 and that of the galleries 682, with about 20 standing attendants.3 By the mid-1920s the air system in the Capitol’s House chamber was recognized as “antiquated . . . and incomparable to modern systems in use in large theaters, halls and auditoria throughout the country.”4 One proponent of change was Senator Royal S. Copeland (1868–1938), a Democrat from New York and a physician who had entered the Senate in 1923

Figure 40 Thomas U. Walter et al., US Capitol, as expanded in 1851–67, view from the northwest, ca. 1929, showing the north wing for the Senate left and the south wing for the House of Representatives at right. From Domestic Engineering 130 (8 February 1930): 41, reproduced by permission of Carrier Corporation.

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after a five-​year term as commissioner of the New York City Board of Health. He had gained a national reputation through radio broadcasts and his writings on health issues. For most of his fifteen years in the Senate, until he died in office in June 1938, Copeland was the only physician in Congress, and he encouraged his colleagues to rethink their meeting spaces. In June 1924 Copeland led the Senate in passing a resolution that he had introduced weeks earlier instructing David Lynn, architect of the Capitol, to consult with “architects of repute and expert in ventilation and acoustics with a view to improving the living conditions of the Senate Chamber.”5 Copeland noted: “Congress is largely made up of members who, having passed beyond the vigor of youth, are sensitive to air circulation.”6 In 1928 he cited the deaths of thirty-​four incumbent senators over the previous twelve years and suggested that their lives had likely been shortened by the poor quality of air in the Senate chamber. The influenza epidemic of 1918, the devastations of which Copeland dealt with firsthand in New York, had made health problems acute. In winter, dry heated air was blamed for the spread of influenza, bronchitis, and the common cold. In summer, Washington’s excessive heat and humidity sapped energies and tested tempers. The lack of a properly ventilated chamber and adjacent rooms adversely affected the Senate’s proceedings. Copeland, as a physician long familiar with tuberculosis in cities like New York, believed in fresh air, writing in March 1928, “There are other methods of ventilation, but I have little faith in a single one of them as the sole means of sustaining life and energy.”7 Claims that poor air quality was damaging congressional health were based on perceptions not supported by scientific evidence,

but they persisted, and the House formed a commission of experts to advise the Architect of the Capitol about the potential of “air conditioning.” In 1927 Lynn wrote that in the previous three years, since it had first been introduced in movie theaters, air-​conditioning had “passed from a luxury in places of assembly to a semi-​necessity.”8 The commission of 1928 examined conditions in the House and Senate and prepared an act for purchase and installation “of complete, improved ventilation, dehumidifying air-​conditioning apparatus with automatically controlled ducts and water piping for the connection of the different units of such apparatus, and for all necessary structural alterations required for such alteration.”9 The commission resolved that the system was to be able to maintain in the chambers during periods of peak occupancy a maximum temperature of 75ºF with a relative humidity not in excess of 55 percent when outside temperatures were 95ºF dry bulb and 75ºF wet bulb. In winter, it was to maintain an indoor temperature of 75ºF with a relative humidity of 30 to 50 percent. These numbers were consistent with tests by the US Public Health Service and the American Society of Heating and Ventilating

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Figure 41 Thomas U. Walter et al., US Capitol, main-​floor plan, as expanded in 1851–67, showing the House chamber in the south wing and the Senate chamber in the north wing, both enclosed by rooms and with no outside walls. From Carrier Corporation, Weather Vein 9, no. 3 (1929), reproduced by permission.

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Figure 42 Thomas U. Walter (architect) and Montgomery C. Meigs (superintendent of construction), US Capitol, House of Representatives, interior, looking southeast, showing art-​glass ceiling, before reconstruction of the floor and ventilating system in 1898. Courtesy of the Architect of the Capitol.

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Engineers, which had established a 68ºF–70ºF temperature and 35–45 percent relative humidity as the most healthful indoor winter atmosphere.10 While the existing system provided ventilation through the floor, the commission concluded that the desired conditions could “only be realized by a system operating on the downward principle—that is with the air flowing from the ceiling toward and out through the floor—with careful provision for initial horizontal diffusion.”11 Carrier won the bid to air-​condition the House chamber and its adjacent L-​shaped cloakrooms, installing its trademark Manufactured Weather. The House’s system proved so satisfactory that Carrier was given the contract for the Senate chamber as well. The effect was transformative. As Lynn wrote, “There is so much difference between the ordinary system of ventilation and the system of ventilation

combined with air conditioning.”12 The task was to air-​condition the floor, galleries, cloakrooms, and press rooms. The chambers and cloakrooms of both the House and Senate were surrounded by corridors and rooms in their respective wings. Given this enveloping spatial buffer, air-​conditioning in each chamber served mainly to absorb heat given off by the occupants and the electric lighting. While cooling loads from lighting could be estimated accurately, occupancy varied widely and quickly. During executive sessions, the public was excluded and the galleries were empty. On ordinary days, tourists were scattered about the galleries, the floors were sparsely occupied, and the cloakrooms were crowded with smokers and conferees. When a quorum was called, the cloakrooms were deserted. The cooling system had to respond to all these changing conditions.13 Experiments by Carrier engineers led to a design with multiple systems for each house of Congress. The largest one moved air through each chamber at the rate of 36,000 cfm. Downdrafts were a major part of the scheme for cooling the House chamber (fig. 43). The design was to yield flexible systems that could respond to the variable occupancy of the House floor and gallery. There, the design was based on a maximum demand produced by seven hundred persons on the floor, nine hundred persons in the galleries, and consumption of 89,600 watts for lighting.14 About half the air for each chamber was taken from outdoors, via the existing tunnel ending in a tower to the Capitol’s west, then five hundred feet from the refrigerating machine in the basement. Large rotary fans drew air through the tunnel, but no attempt was made to cleanse or humidify the air there. With windows closed, fans drew fresh air from outside into the basement, where a

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Figure 43 US Capitol, House of Representatives, transverse section looking east, showing downward scheme of ventilation adopted for air-conditioning, 1928. The speaker’s rostrum (right) faces toward cloakrooms (left). Openings from the floor to the exhaust chamber beneath are not shown. From HPAC 1, no. 8 (December 1929): 666, reproduced by permission of Carrier Corporation. Figure 44 US Capitol, House of Representatives, south wing, floor plan of the western half of the basement, showing (a) a chiller, or refrigeration machine, and (b) air-​handling units with fans where water spray cooled supply air, shown in plan at right and in section at left. From HPAC 1, no. 8 (December 1929): 670, reproduced by permission of Carrier Corporation; graphic additions by author.

refrigerating machine (chiller) was the system’s heart (fig. 44, a). The basement’s south side held one such machine and related apparatus to serve the House chamber, and one in the basement’s north end served the Senate. Rooms with air-​conditioning equipment were situated on a ground-​level light court to facilitate their ventilation. Refrigerating machines chilled water using Freon as the refrigerant. Freon, the trade name for dichlorodifluoromethane (CCl2F2), was developed in the late 1920s; it was nonflammable, relatively nontoxic, and efficient, and it soon became standard for air-​conditioning.15 In the US Capitol’s system, liquid Freon at a reduced pressure in a vacuum-​tight evaporator compartment poured over many bronze tubes through which water ran. The Freon absorbed heat from the water, which circulated to and from spray chambers, where it washed and cooled the air.16 In the chamber of an air-​ handling unit, the ice-​cold water was sprayed through hot humid air (fig. 44, b). Many fine sprays exposed this air to a maximum surface area of very cold water. Each minute, 350 gallons could be sprayed into the chamber to fix the air’s moisture content.17

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The spray’s temperature determined the air’s temperature because the air in the spray chamber became saturated, or reached its dew point, at about the spray’s temperature. When preconditioned air, having moisture content higher than desired, was sprayed with the chilled water, condensation of excess moisture occurred, just as moisture condenses on

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Figure 45 US Capitol, House of Representatives, air handler with spray chamber at right, next to a large centrifugal fan that drew the air through the spray chamber. Carrier Corporation Archives, Syracuse, New York. Figure 46 US Capitol, House of Representatives, attic viewed along its center line, showing air-​ conditioning ducts installed in 1928 between iron trusses installed in 1857, with diffusers along the base of the ducts at the edges of glass ceiling panels. Carrier Corporation Archives, Syracuse, New York.

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the outside of a pitcher of ice water. Since air at a given temperature can hold only a given quantity of water vapor, reducing the temperature below the dew point at which the air can hold the moisture present causes moisture to condense into tiny droplets and fall away. The washed air, once cooled by the water spray, loses its moisture—it is dehumidified. The moisture, extracted as droplets from the muggy

outside air, falls into a settling basin beneath the spray machine, along with the spray water. Thus, air-​conditioning is paradoxical, dehumidifying by spraying hot air with chilled water. Or, as one Washington reporter phrased it, “By adding moisture to moisture, the air is dried.”18 Since it was undesirable to deliver air at too low a temperature, the cold, saturated air in the air-​handling unit was either mixed with warmer refiltered air or passed over automatically controlled steam heaters. The spray temperature was such that, when the air was later raised to the desired room temperature, it had the desired relative humidity. If the desired conditions for delivered air were 75ºF and 40 percent relative humidity, that air would have a dew point of 49ºF. It would first be sprayed with water at 49ºF until saturated, bringing the air temperature to 49ºF, then would be reheated to 75ºF, when it would have the desired humidity of 40 percent.19 In winter, when fresh air had to be humidified, the system first cleansed the air by passing it through filters that trapped grime and dirt, removing about 90 percent of impurities. It then humidified and further cleansed the air by passing it through a cold-​water spray to make up its deficiency in moisture. As in summer, the spray brought the air to its dew point, which corresponded to the desired temperature and humidity levels for the chambers. Then the air was heated to that temperature, yielding the desired relative humidity. A large centrifugal fan powered the air’s movement through the filters, the spray chamber, and the final mixing chamber (fig. 45). This discharged the air into the metal ducts above the House chamber’s glass ceiling, from which it was then forced down into the room (fig. 46). So that the attic air ducts would not cast shadows on the glass ceiling below, they were

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subdivided and arranged vertically and horizontally high above the ceiling. This scheme permitted smaller ducts, which were painted with a light enamel color to reflect and diffuse light above the glass. The ductwork was to be invisible above the ornamental art-​glass ceiling. In 1928 the House’s supply ducts and diffusers were set among the cast-​iron trusses designed by Meigs, which had been in place since 1857. The sheet metal of the twentieth-​century air ducts was set between the diagonal rods and tensile cross bracing of the nineteenth-​century iron frame. In both chambers the attic’s ductwork was supplied with conditioned air from large ducts on the roof, insulated and copper clad to resist weather (fig. 47). As in theaters, downdraft systems meant that cold air fell gradually through the space below. In the chambers’ floors, the earlier ventilation system’s supply grilles were changed to serve as exhaust vents. In 1928, with no close precedent for the House and Senate air-​conditioning system, a lack of data hindered selection of the proportion of outside air to recirculated air. This proportion determined the needed capacity of the chiller. With partly recirculated air, the chiller’s refrigerating capacity could be 206 tons. But if all outside air were used for cooling, then the required capacity would have been 486 tons to maintain the same air conditions in the chamber, necessitating a larger, costlier, and noisier machine.20 The system’s designers selected the 206-ton chiller, but in order to prevent noise from even this chiller’s compressor motor from reaching nearby corridors, they enclosed it in its own room, with windows that permitted observation from the adjacent apparatus room (fig. 48).21 In the summer, it was found that condensing water, needed for removing heat from the

Figure 47 US Capitol, Senate, looking southeast to air ducts over the roof, insulated and copper clad for weather resistance, carrying conditioned air to the air-​supply ducts below the roof, with the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress in the background. Carrier Corporation Archives, Syracuse, New York. Figure 48 US Capitol, Senate, 206-ton refrigerating machine installed in the basement in 1929, including compressor and chiller. Carrier Corporation Archives, Syracuse, New York.

refrigerant, could not be taken from the city’s mains because of insufficient supply. If the refrigeration system could not draw on a continuous external supply of fresh water, then the condensing water would have to be wholly recirculated and somehow cooled. Normally, this process would involve circulation to a cooling tower, but the Capitol’s roof provided no location for a tower, since “such equipment would have been entirely out of harmony with the architecture and purpose of the building.”22 For aesthetic and symbolic reasons, the mechanical system was not to be obtrusive either in public interiors or outside, atop the classical shell. The machinery’s visibility would be inconsistent with the aura of dignity that

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marked the Capitol as a temple of government. That ideal was embodied in its classicism, crowned by the dome. For architects and engineers, this style could not be reconciled with the visibility of new air-​conditioning equipment. So they opted to cool the condenser water not via a cooling tower but by air cooling. Warm air near the refrigeration machine’s condenser was drawn off by a 49,000-cfm exhaust fan capable of cooling water at 720 gpm. Once discharged into the air, the heat was channeled to a vertical flue rising to the roof.23 There it escaped, smokeless and invisible, into the atmosphere. No cooling tower marred the roof ’s classical profile, at least as it could be seen from the ground below. Work was completed for the House by 3 December 1928, the opening day of the second session of the Seventieth Congress. Work on the Senate’s chamber began early in 1929, during the first session of the Seventy-​First Congress, and by August that room also had its first air-​conditioning. The systems together cost $300,000, or $4.5 million in 2019 dollars.24 Then conditions at each seat on the House and Senate floors were observed personally and measured with an anemometer and a thermometer. The goal was uniform and draftless, yet effective, distribution of air.25 First tests in the House indicated that the system maintained the desired temperatures and relative humidity throughout the day. It provided a change of air every five minutes, so that bodily odors and carbon dioxide would not be problems. Yet air velocities in different zones were too high at certain points on the floor, so the contractor adjusted the dampers of the attic ducts and those in the floor return plenum. In summer, the system worked well for temperature, relative humidity, and air velocity. Bacteriological counts at twenty-​two different 90

stations in the House showed an average reduction of bacterial content by 50 percent over tests made with the old ventilation system in 1924.26 Tests in the Senate confirmed that its system also worked well.27 When the House system was first tried out, in the spring of 1929, “some members complained it was too cold, in contrast with the heat outside. However, it is said to have improved attendance at sessions during hot weather.”28 Carrier opined that congressional chambers were “the most nearly perfectly conditioned enclosures in the world.”29 Attendance at sessions was less of a strain, with the number of quorum calls from representatives wanting to flee the heat greatly reduced. Numerous favorable comments were received from members, who could “now sit through the entire day’s session without the headaches and depression from which they formerly suffered.”30 Each summer since its founding, Congress had gone into recess to avoid the heat, but that year Carrier asserted, “Manufactured Weather may, indeed, have a profound effect upon our governmental system! Congress may voluntarily remain in session throughout the summer.”31 In winter, humidity control was critical, since ailments were blamed on dry air. In July 1929, “during the last few days before Congress adjourned,” when the House had air-​conditioning but the Senate still did not, “there was a notable difference between the ability of Senators and Congressmen to ‘keep cool,’ while the city became hotter and hotter. Representatives retained their poise, while Senators wilted.”32 Workers pushed to install the Senate’s system before that body reconvened, on 19 August. In June, before the summer recess, temporary ceiling fans brought relief. Since senators were usually older than House members, more senators were bald, and

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they preferred no fans creating drafts around their heads, yet colleagues with hair at adjacent desks preferred the fans.33 Senators praised the new air-​conditioning when it arrived, but some were disquieted by how different the hall’s atmosphere felt. In June, near the project’s completion, one newspaper reported that “the possible political effect of a modern ventilating and cooling system in the Senate chamber [had] become the subject of speculation.” The chamber was “almost unbearably hot by the time Congress recessed. . . . If the same temperatures prevailed when the Senate resumed work in August, it [was] believed little would be accomplished before the cooler fall months arrive[d]. With the new cooling system in operation, however, it [would] be possible to keep the mercury down to about 79 degrees.” The system worked well when the Senate debated a major tariff bill, and “some political observers predict[ed] it [would] influence materially the manner in which that measure [was] considered.”34 The architect of the Capitol assured wary senators: “The sensation of chill experienced on entering the Senate Chamber is due principally to the dryness of the air causing the evaporation of the slight amount of moisture of the skin. After the completion of this evaporation the body will be perfectly comfortable, for the actual difference in temperature between the inside and outside air is very small. No fear may be felt by the occupants of the Senate Chamber from the conditions produced by this new system of ventilation and air conditioning.”35 Air-​Conditioning the Capitol and House and Senate Office Buildings, 1935–39 The first installations at the Capitol, “the First Building of the Land,” aroused public awareness

of the still-​young science of air-​conditioning. Within three months of the system’s start-​up, the House engineer, Charles R. Torbett, told a committee that the chamber’s air-​conditioning had collected five hundred pounds of dust and dirt, which otherwise might have been inhaled by representatives. The system not only removed such large quantities of impalpable particles from the air but also killed about 50 percent of germs in the air. Each House member received thirty cubic feet of cooled dehumidified air per minute; a similar allotment went to every gallery visitor. To the Washington Post, Torbett’s report showed “the menace of air sewage to public health”: “That there is such a thing as air sewage and that it is as repulsive as it sounds is indicated by what the nose conveys, when an individual, fresh from out of doors, enters a crowded enclosure that has not been properly ventilated. Often the most flagrant examples of such places are public schools, which depend on spasmodic opening of windows for air change.”36 Another newspaper editorial asked, with Congress air-​conditioned, “why the up-​to-​date apartment house, which provides so many wrinkles to make the life of its occupants easier and more comfortable, did not offer this extra attraction.”37 Changes in the Capitol chambers prompted state legislatures to consider air-​conditioning their own buildings. One Dallas newspaper editorial concluded: “The betterment of ventilation may tend to improve the quality of the service given by the senate. Should it do so no time should be lost in providing iced air for all legislative chambers. News that the halls of the state house at Austin were to be made more comfortable was gratifying.”38 The Capitol’s legislative halls were made so comfortable by air-​conditioning that in August

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1935, as the Great Depression eased, Congress began to appropriate funds to provide this amenity to the rest of the building and to the one Senate and two House office buildings then in existence.39 As one newspaper noted: “Everything was serene and comfortable when legislators were on the floor of either house. But they had, alas, to return betimes to their various and sundry offices for the routine conduct of legislative business. This, to put it succinctly, was not so good.”40 The members of Congress soon found that “under the conditions of their work, partial air conditioning was little better than none at all. The shock of coming from sweltering committee rooms into the chill atmosphere of the chambers resulted in a crop of summer colds and general dissatisfaction with the operation of the cooling system.”41 Certain committee rooms in the House and Senate office buildings had been air-​ conditioned in 1931–35.42 For cooling its offices, Congress commissioned studies to determine the proper locations for ducts, flues, and supply inlets to more than twenty-​five hundred rooms in the Capitol and the Senate and House office buildings, and plans were approved on 20 April 1936.43 Carrier won the contract for the Capitol itself, and two other firms were chosen to refit the office buildings.44 After Congress adjourned, on 20 June, work proceeded from July into the fall of 1936, when ducts and registers were installed. The cooling and dehumidifying equipment was installed in the summer of 1937.45 Air-​conditioning the Capitol and House and Senate office buildings in the mid-1930s was another step toward their operational unity. Before this, underground passages connected the Capitol to the House office buildings, and since 1912–13 a subterranean electric monorail had linked the Senate office building with the 92

Capitol. The Capitol itself had been making its own electricity since 1895, but since 1910 the Capitol and nearby buildings had had a power plant located on the south side of E Street between South Capitol Street and New Jersey Avenue (fig. 49, top). This originally furnished light, power, and low-​pressure steam for heat through tunnels to the Capitol, the Library of Congress, and Senate and House office buildings, and later to the Supreme Court, Government Printing Office, Botanic Garden, and other structures.46 With the remote power plant’s completion, the Capitol itself was no longer central to its own mechanical systems; rather, it was merely the largest of several buildings in its utility network. The scale of new air-​conditioning systems serving multiple buildings necessitated a rethinking of the Capitol Hill area’s water supply for cooling. The original plans for the whole Capitol and congressional office buildings called for installation of refrigeration equipment in each of the four buildings. But this plan was abandoned because there was insufficient floor space in these buildings for both the refrigeration and air-​conditioning equipment, including compressors and cooling towers, and such machinery could not be installed on the roofs of Capitol Hill–area buildings without architecturally defacing their silhouettes.47 Also, four refrigerating plants would use too much condenser water from the city’s system, for which the government paid nothing.48 Engineers considered tapping a subterranean water supply, but the Interior Department’s geologists assured them that the natural water supply near the Capitol was insufficient for this purpose, despite the fact than an underground stream cut across the Capitol grounds. Finally, it was decided that chilled water for cooling purposes would be circulated in a

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Figure 49 Top: Capitol Power Plant (1910) from the north, with eastern extension (1937) at left. Bottom: chilled-​water circuit from the refrigeration unit at the Capitol Power Plant to the New House Office Building, Old House Office Building, US Capitol, and Senate Office Building. From Power 82, no. 6 (June 1938): 60, 61; graphic additions by author.

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pipeline through underground tunnels from a new chilled-​water plant to be added to the east side of the Capitol Power Plant, half a mile south of the Capitol (see fig. 49, bottom). But where would the huge quantities of condenser water for this vast new system be obtained and discharged? The question regarding sourcing and disposal of condenser water for Capitol Hill resonated with an emerging national concern about the new demands that air-​conditioning systems were making on water supplies. In 1937 an editorial in Business Week stated, “There

is little question that a major headache of the air-​conditioning industry is water—its scarcity, its mineral content, its temperature, and its ultimate disposal.”49 In 1936 Logan Lewis, the Carrier Corporation’s chief engineer, estimated that water “consumption” per person where summer comfort cooling was provided for a season of 120 days ranged from 4,500 gallons in theaters to 48,000 gallons in residences.50 This issue was raised repeatedly in the American City, a monthly journal devoted to municipal problems ranging from air pollution to affordable housing to zoning. From 1933 to

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1938, the number of US air-​conditioning plants increased 1,400 percent, and about 40 percent of these depended on condenser water drawn from municipal systems and discharged into local sewers without being recycled through cooling towers. The average period of operation for air-​conditioning was about 750 hours, or 8.7 percent, per year. From 1931 to 1936, in towns with little or no air-​conditioning, such as Hartford, Connecticut, water demand increased by 5.7 percent. In Washington, DC, in these same years water needs rose 15.2 percent, an increase that was related to the growth of the city’s population in the New Deal era. Yet some engineers attributed increases such as Washington’s to the broad adoption of air-​ conditioning, because “it is the condensing system of an air conditioning plant that makes the heaviest demands on a city’s water mains.”51 The owners of many large users of air-​ conditioning, including department stores, theaters, and office buildings, preferred to use free water from privately dug wells as a cooling agent rather than purchased city water. But in some cities the numbers of wells that were drilled to supply private air-​conditioning plants aroused concern over their effect on the ground-​level water from which municipal supplies were obtained. The US Geological Survey studied this problem in the District of Columbia. Another question was what to do with warmed condenser water, which in some localities was initially discharged into sanitary sewers rather than storm sewers, choking the sanitary sewers.52 The answer was to recycle condenser water through cooling towers or evaporative condensers, which allowed water to be used repeatedly. Either method of recycling reduced an air-​conditioning system’s consumption of externally sourced water by 90 to 95 percent of that used when warmed 94

condenser water was drawn entirely from municipal supplies and returned to sewers or rivers after use. Although engineers advocated this solution, it was first decided that condenser water for Capitol Hill in the mid-1930s would be drawn from the Anacostia River, near the power plant. Each of the four linked congressional buildings would have air-​cooling and dehumidifying apparatus located in its basement. The power plant’s annex was substantially completed by March 1938, chilled water was received in the Capitol in early May, and the 1.5-mile single twenty-​four-​inch pipeline circuit linking all the buildings was finished by July. About 8,000 gpm of water at 40ºF was pumped into the supply header at the power plant and circulated to the four buildings. At each one, part of the chilled water was taken from the main and circulated through the coils in the air-​handling units of the individual building, where it cooled the air. The water, having lost its chill, then flowed in a closed circuit to the plant’s return header at about 54ºF.53 The expanded Capitol Power Plant had one of the nation’s first large central refrigeration installations. The addition to the power plant was built by the York Ice Machinery Corporation of York, Pennsylvania, under the direction of David Lynn and his assistant Horace D. Rouzer. York’s engineering, manufacturing, and sales operations gave it an international reach comparable to that of the Carrier Corporation.54 This addition created a refrigerating capacity of approximately 7,065 tons, making it then the world’s largest single installation of water-​cooling equipment and the largest central-​station water-​cooling plant for air-​ conditioning (fig. 50). As with Rockefeller Center in New York, on Capitol Hill in Washington air-​conditioning

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Figure 50 Advertisement for York Air Conditioning and Refrigeration, promoting the York System for the US Capitol, showing the old (Russell) Senate Office Building and the old (Cannon) and new (Longworth) House Office Buildings. From HPAC 9, no. 5 (May 1937). © ASHRAE, www​ .ashrae​.org.

for multiple large buildings reshaped mechanical urban infrastructure. When the plant opened, its magnitude, precision, and efficiency set a new national standard. It was a utility provider at an urban scale. The rhetoric surrounding its inauguration was quantitative. The plant cooled 11.5 million gallons of water to 40ºF every twenty-​four hours, or enough to supply a city of one hundred thousand people. The plant had a pumping capacity equal to a water system for a city of two hundred thousand, allowing for a standard of sixty gallons per day for each person. Its refrigeration capacity was equal to that which could freeze every twenty-​four hours a block of ice fifty feet square at the base and as high as a seven-​story building, a total volume greater than that of the machinery.55 The total refrigeration produced in the first cooling season, from May to November 1938, was 172,156 tons, equivalent to a block of ice 105 feet square and as high as the Washington Monument (about 555 feet).56 In mid-​June 1938 Harry L. Haines, the Pennsylvania congressman who represented the York Corporation’s district, extolled the system: “I am certain that the membership of the House is experiencing a happy condition in their offices these hot days, comparable to the days of previous summers, when at times it was really a punishment to ourselves and our clerks to work under conditions that not only lowered our efficiency but also made us very uncomfortable.”57 His report had a

receptive audience. After the system began operating in the summer of 1938, the Capitol physician estimated that it reduced colds among members of Congress by half, as Copeland and his allies had hoped.58

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More profoundly, air-​conditioning the Capitol and nearby congressional office buildings changed the norms of the legislature’s calendar before the nation entered World War II, in December 1941. Before air-​conditioning, Congress typically met for fewer than three hundred days, or about ten months per year, adjourning by the end of June. The city was largely deserted from mid-​June to September. Of the 150 years between 1789, when the first Congress met in New York City, and 1939, only nine saw Congress remain in session more than three hundred days. Even through the national crisis over slavery and the Civil War (1861–65), only one Congress stayed in Washington for more than three hundred days, in order to reach the Compromise of 1850, which limited the expansion of slavery to the more southerly new western states. Yet every year in the six years after 1938, when air-​conditioning first operated through Capitol Hill, Congress carried its sessions past three hundred days and beyond its traditional adjournment at the end of June, when heat waves settle over Washington. One observer noted: “Older Washington residents recall how the arrival of summer was announced in the Senate by the appearance of big palm leaf fans, bowls of lemonade in the cloak rooms, and by admonitions . . . that the senators would have to attend diligently to the business at hand in order that Congress could get away. Such drives for early adjournment had been occurring as long as could be remembered.”59 Air-​conditioning improved conditions to the point where a postwar reorganization bill suggested 1 August as the new, later annual closing date of sessions. Many members commented on air-​conditioning’s effects. Among those who witnessed the change was Representative Joseph Martin, Republican of 96

Massachusetts, who entered the House in 1925 and served as Speaker in 1947–49 and 1953–55, when a Democratic southern bloc dominated Congress. In 1960 he recalled: “The installation of air conditioning in the 1930s did more, I believe, than cool the Capitol: it prolonged the sessions. The members were no longer in such a hurry to flee Washington in July. The southerners especially had no place else to go that was half as comfortable.”60 Air-​Conditioning Federal Buildings in Washington, DC Air-​conditioning the Capitol and nearby buildings in 1928–38 coincided with the creation of mammoth new office buildings for the US government in the Federal Triangle. This three-​quarter-​mile-​long site extends from its eastern apex at Sixth Street near the Capitol to its western base at Fifteenth Street near the White House, and between east-​west Constitution Avenue along the south and Pennsylvania Avenue running northwest (fig. 51). The triangle may contain the world’s largest unified collection of Beaux-​Arts buildings.61 The project began in 1926 and was realized through the 1930s. Most of the buildings were six stories, with classically styled facades of Indiana limestone and open-​air light courts. The buildings, west to east, originally housed (1) the Department of Commerce (1932; York and Sawyer— this then the city’s largest office building); (2) the Post Office Department (1934; Delano & Aldrich); (3) the Interstate Commerce Commission and Department of Labor (1934–35; Arthur Brown Jr.); (4) the Internal Revenue Service (1930–35; Louis Simon, architect of the Treasury); (5) the Department of Justice (1934; Zantzinger, Borie & Medary); (6) the National Archives (1935; John Russell Pope); and (7) the triangular Federal Trade Commission (1937;

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1

2 3 4 5 6 7

Bennett, Parsons, and Frost). Other structures were brought into the plan over time. The Federal Triangle’s architecture and sculpture have received ample historical attention, yet its mechanical infrastructure, like that of the Capitol, has gone unremarked. The imposing limestone fronts of the buildings would have been vulnerable to pollution from coal-​fired heating plants, should these have been located throughout the individual structures. Individual heating plants would also have necessitated smokestacks ending above the rooflines, which would, under certain atmospheric conditions, have become a nuisance to the buildings’ occupants and have hastened

Figure 51 Federal Triangle, Washington, DC, looking northwest, 18 December 1937, with (1) the Department of Commerce (1932), (2) the Post Office Department (1934), (3) the Interstate Commerce Commission and Department of Labor (1934–35), (4) the Internal Revenue Service (1930–35), (5) the Department of Justice (1934), (6) the National Archives (1935), and (7) the triangular Federal Trade Commission (1937) buildings, the last facing Sixth Street between Constitution (left) and Pennsylvania (right) Avenues. Dunlap Society Collection, National Archives, photo no. 18-AA-151-5-AN-14043 AC; graphic additions by author. Photo by Bolling Field, from the National Archives. Courtesy of Department of Image Collections, National Gallery of Art Library, Washington, DC.

the stonework’s blackening and decay. Also, if individual plants had been built from different designs for the new buildings, they would likely have had variable operating efficiency, and the need to truck fuel and ashes of such individual plants through the capital’s central streets would have posed challenges. Therefore, to address these concerns, a new system for providing steam to heat all the triangle’s buildings was installed in the 1930s (fig. 52).62 The new Central Heating Plant was located on the area’s southern outskirts; the plant’s high operating efficiency and combustion control would eliminate practically all flying particles to keep the city’s air cleaner. After analysis of

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Figure 52 District Heating Plant, Washington, DC, showing the original distribution system, 1934, with the Central Heating Plant, labeled in the lower left, built for the then-​proposed Federal Triangle buildings south of Pennsylvania Avenue. From HPAC 6, no. 6 (June 1934): 251. © ASHRAE, www​.ashrae​.org. Figure 53 Paul Philippe Cret, Central Heating Plant, 30 March 1934, south side of C Street SW, between Twelfth and Thirteenth Streets, Washington, DC, looking southeast across C Street from the Department of Agriculture. National Archives, photo no. 121-BCP-118D-12.

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heating loads and fuel distribution, the decision was made to construct a plant for new and old buildings in or near the Federal Triangle and, later, related buildings in West Potomac Park. The plant was on the south side of C Street SW, between Twelfth and Thirteenth Streets, adjacent to the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Fourteenth

Street freight yard, the available site nearest to the collective center of the buildings’ heating load (figs. 52, 53). Designed by Paul Philippe Cret, the Beaux-​Arts architect for the Federal Reserve Building (1935–37) and others in the city, the tan-​brick plant was consistent in style with federal buildings. Smokestacks barely rose above the parapet. Instead, they were low, housed in stainless-​steel octagonal enclosures, so that the roof presented an even, harmonious aspect. By then, induced-​draft fans forced out coal gases at sufficiently high velocities that tall smokestacks were no longer needed, as they had been in the Capitol Power Plant of 1910 (see fig. 49, top).63 Cret’s building housed six steam-​generating boiler units, which began operating in January 1934. During January 1936 these units consumed 16,588 tons of coal, far less than would have been required had the numerous federal buildings served by Cret’s facility been heated by individual plants.64 At the bases of the piers framing the Central Heating Plant’s entrance, sculptural limestone panels depict the machinery of power production.65 Cret had praised Frank Lloyd Wright, and the closed yet articulated corners, overall verticality, and paired projecting piers on the end elevations of his power plant bring to mind Wright’s Larkin Building (1906).66 The Federal Triangle continued a large expansion in the air-​conditioning of government offices beyond Capitol Hill. This began in 1929, when President Hoover had Carrier equipment like the Capitol’s installed on the second floor of the White House’s West Wing, part of its rebuilding after a fire on Christmas Eve 1928.67 The system maintained a temperature of 73ºF–78ºF through the heat wave of July 1929, when temperatures reached 105ºF— among the highest ever recorded locally.68 Success aroused speculation that Hoover might

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recommend that systems be installed in other executive departments.69 Summer heat had led to the closing of some, causing loss of time and delays in work, not only in Washington but also across the country. It was “found that a reconditioned atmosphere adds to the efficiency of the clerical force and saves the Government a lot of time.” Air-​conditioning plants “before many years would pay for themselves in bringing about more comfort, better health, and greater efficiency.”70 Under Hoover’s successor, Franklin Roosevelt, air-​conditioning began to pervade the federal workplace. After he took office, in March 1933, air-​conditioning was installed that summer in the offices of high-​ranking appointees. In April 1935 the Department of the Interior placed a million-​dollar order with the York Corporation to air-​condition its new building between Eighteenth and Nineteenth Streets, designed by architect Waddy Butler Wood.71 Completed in 1936, this block, the first authorized, designed, and built during the New Deal, was also the first new large government building to have central air-​ conditioning. By 1937 it became official policy to air-​condition all new local government buildings.72 The federal buildings in central Washington likely represented the nation’s largest concentration of air-​conditioning before World War II (fig. 54). In the Federal Triangle, air-​conditioned by 1939 were the buildings for the National Archives, the Federal Trade Commission, the Post Office, the Interstate Commerce Commission and Department of Labor, and the Department of Justice (fig. 55).73 Unlike the buildings in the Capitol area, which shared a central refrigeration plant, each Federal Triangle building had its individual equipment for chilling water. Inside each building’s classical shell, a key issue was use

of space for the large supply and return ducts. In the Justice Department, all occupied spaces were air-​conditioned for a maximum dry-​bulb temperature of 80ºF and a maximum relative humidity of 50 percent. The water-​cooling equipment was in the basement, and condenser

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Figure 54 “7,000 Tons of ‘Freon’ Air Conditioning in Government Buildings in Washington, D.C.,” advertisement for Freon. From Refrigerating Engineering 33, no. 5 (May 1937): 341. © ASHRAE, www​.ashrae​.org.

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water was brought from the Potomac River basin to a well outside the building. Chilled water was pumped to the eighth floor’s attic-​ like space, which housed all fans, dehumidifiers, dehumidifier pumps, heaters, and horizontal distributing duct mains (fig. 56). The hipped attic roof, adapted from classicism, lent itself well to this use. The building was divided into nine sections, each served by its own equipment. In each were many small rooms. Under each window was a unit supplying cool air, with individual controls; 1,526 such units were installed. This environmental improvement was timely. One observer noted: “Now handling an increased amount of work because of political and legal changes, the [Justice] Department’s personnel need air conditioning’s benefits. . . .

Figure 55 Zantzinger, Borie, and Medary, Department of Justice Building (now the Robert F. Kennedy Federal Building), Washington, DC, August 1934, under construction, looking northeast along Constitution Avenue at Tenth Street, with a sloping roof above balustrade. Dunlap Society Collection, photo by Bolling Field, from the National Archives, photo no. 121-BCP138-B-15. Courtesy of Department of Image Collections, National Gallery of Art Library, Washington, DC. Figure 56 Zantzinger, Borie, and Medary, Department of Justice Building (now the Robert F. Kennedy Federal Building), Washington, DC, 30 December 1934, attic with condenser pumps and piping at left and chilled-​water lines overhead. National Archives, photo no. 121-BCP-139A-3.

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Continued periods of high humidities during the summer produce a feeling of lassitude far from conducive to mental or physical efficiency.” The department’s many new tasks for the New Deal made air-​conditioning a “practical necessity . . . a means of cutting office costs through increased efficiency, reducing lost time because of sickness, less mistakes.”74 The Carrier Weathermaster at the Pentagon, 1942 Concern for efficiency also shaped the design of the Pentagon, built from September 1941, on the eve of America’s entry into World War II, and occupied in stages from May 1942, before construction closed, on 15 January 1943. Its six million square feet for forty thousand workers made it the world’s largest office building (fig. 57). This structure’s air-​conditioning was correspondingly unprecedented in its scale and sophistication and in the degree to which it was integrated into the building’s modern variant on a neoclassical aesthetic. The chief architect was initially G. Edwin Bergstrom, from July 1941 to April 1942, when he resigned and was succeeded by his deputy, David J. Witmer. The main mechanical engineer was Charles S. Leopold of Philadelphia, who had consulted on the refrigeration equipment in the addition to the Capitol Power Plant in 1934. The Pentagon was the main new facility for what was then called the War Department, which received a congressional authorization of $26 million for several new buildings as part of the rapid buildup of the nation’s defense forces before Pearl Harbor.75 After a study of alternatives, a four-​hundred-​acre site was chosen across the Potomac River from the District of Columbia, south of Arlington National Cemetery. The site was bounded by roads and other features that suggested a pentagonal shape.

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Figure 57 G. Edwin Bergstrom and David J. Witmer (architects) and Charles S. Leopold (mechanical engineer), Pentagon, Arlington, Virginia, 1941–43, cutaway aerial view by B. G. Seielstad. From Popular Science 142, no. 2 (February 1943): 50–51. Used with permission of Popular Science. Copyright © 2019. All rights reserved.

A pentagon approximated a circle, the shape that gave the greatest area with the shortest walking distances. The building’s size meant that its perimeter would have 4,600 feet of facade, or nearly a mile around all sides.76 The Pentagon includes first and second floors with deep office areas around the building’s outer five sides and one pentagonal indoor road (first floor) and light court (second floor) between the inner and outer office areas. On the third, fourth, and fifth floors, five concentric pentagonal rings, each fifty feet wide, are separated from one another by light courts, each forty feet wide, to provide natural light (fig. 57). The central, open, five-​acre grassy court provides a noonday retreat, since,

even with light courts, about 70 percent of the building’s floor area, including the basement, lacks natural light.77 On the second through fifth floors, ten radial corridors extend between the vertices of the main corridor around the innermost pentagon to the periphery of the outermost pentagon. On their top (fifth) floors, each radial corridor had a room for mechanical equipment. The Pentagon was to be fully air-​ conditioned, “keeping man power efficiency at its peak in the humid weather on the banks of the Potomac.”78 The rhetoric stressed capacity and consumption. The heating-​and-​refrigerating plant was in a separate building linked to the Pentagon by a

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Figure 58 G. Edwin Bergstrom and David J. Witmer (architects) and Charles S. Leopold (mechanical engineer), Pentagon, Arlington, Virginia, 1941–43, rooftop photoelectric cells for activating the cooling system’s fans for affected parts of the building, illustration by B. G. Seielstad. From Popular Science 143, no. 3 (September 1943): 88. Used with permission of Popular Science. Copyright © 2019. All rights reserved.

twelve-​hundred-​foot tunnel. Five boilers occupied half of this three-​story plant, while the other half housed twelve eleven-​hundred-​ton centrifugal Carrier compressive chillers with a total capacity of 13,200 tons, then the world’s largest single-​building refrigeration plant. The 46,600 gpm of condenser water that removed heat from the refrigerant in the compressors 102

came from a nearby lagoon along the river.79 This condenser water was enough to fill a swimming pool twenty-​five by sixty feet, with a six-​foot average depth every seventy-​two seconds.80 It was returned to the Potomac after use, instead of being cooled and recirculated in a closed system using cooling towers.81 The chillers supplied almost 26,000 gpm of water at a temperature of 43ºF for air cooling. The chilled water ran through a main pentagonal tunnel around and under the innermost building ring, with machine rooms under the five vertices. From these, chilled water lines led out through the ten radial corridors to feed risers through the various floors. For cooling, the chilled water supplied ninety spray and coil-​type dehumidifiers that could cool more than 4,000,000 cfm of fresh air to 55ºF. These air-​handling units were in the radial corridors above the fifth floor, where they could take in outside air. Conditioned air was blown by five hundred fans, mainly in blower rooms in the fifth floor’s radial corridors.82 The Pentagon’s low, spread-​out volume, with its exposed exteriors, left the building unusually vulnerable to changes in outdoor temperature. The operation of the cooling system relied on photoelectric cells located in rooftop control stations. As the sun passed over the vast roof, its rays fell on these cells, which registered the temperature rise and, by means of electronic relays, activated the

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cooling system’s fans for the affected parts of the building (fig. 58). Leopold developed this system in tandem with engineers at Minneapolis Honeywell, the firm that had supplied elements of the White House’s cooling system in 1929–30. The system used a principle of “solar compensation”—that is, “the higher the outside shade temperature and the more direct the sun’s penetration into the rooms, the more refrigeration [was] demanded by the compressors.”83 The aim was a summer interior air temperature of 77ºF.84 Air was supplied to offices at 55ºF, where it would be warmed by solar radiation, human occupancy, and heat from lights to reach 77ºF. Relative summer humidity was to be 50 percent. In winter, the air was to be 75ºF with 30 percent humidity, “improving working efficiency and protecting documents.”85 More than a decade after its completion in 1943, the Pentagon’s air-​conditioning system was still the world’s largest for a single building.86 The building had the largest early application of the Carrier Weathermaster System, a new type of unit under individual windows, designed for multiroom buildings with a high percentage of outside rooms whose shifting solar heat gain represented a high proportion of the total cooling load. The primary air-​ cooling was done at the central refrigeration plant. But instead of processing 100 percent of the air circulated in the building, the central plant preconditioned only 25 percent of the air needed for ventilation. The system propelled this “primary air” at high velocities through narrow tubular ducts to room units (fig. 59). Primary air entered each unit’s base, where it was pushed over coils of hot or chilled water. The primary air’s high velocity through nozzles induced secondary room air to flow over the unit’s water coils, which heated or cooled the 75 percent or so of recirculated air. The room’s

Figure 59 G. Edwin Bergstrom and David J. Witmer (architects) and Charles S. Leopold (mechanical engineer), Pentagon, Arlington, Virginia, 1941–43, schematic drawing and views of the Weathermaster unit, showing hot-​water (and cool-​water) coils and an air-​supply duct, with low side-​ intake grilles and window-sill supply grilles. From AR 93, no. 1 (January 1943): 67; photographs and drawing not attributed.

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occupant set the desired temperature with a dial on the unit, which maintained that temperature by controlling the flow of hot or chilled water into the unit’s pipes. Independent local control yielded a savings of 15 to 25 percent in fuel costs over a system with no individual controls. This differed from buildings like the Justice Department, where room units had cool air and steam for heat but no water coils. The Pentagon had 7,800 Weathermaster units, one in every window bay along its outer walls.87 At its wartime peak, the building housed thirty-​two thousand office workers, or 80 percent of its capacity.88 It took time to get the system operating, and as late as December 1942, one employee complained: We, at the Pentagon, who work in the inner circles where there are no windows within 50 feet of our office, have learned to do without daylight, but unfortunately, we have not learned to do without air. We have been informed time and again that the engineers have tested the air and judged it to be fit for human beings to breathe. In their findings, perhaps, they forgot a most important factor—that the air conditioning is not working most of the time and that when more than 100 people work in limited space, whatever oxygen is present is very quickly used up.89 But by the summer of 1943, the system made the building the envy of local federal workers: “Word has got about that life at the Pentagon is closely akin to heaven, in comparison with the non-​air-​conditioned existence required of employees in less swank office buildings.”90 For some, it made offices more comfortable than home, while others blamed the air-​conditioning for their colds, although the Pentagon’s health 104

officer maintained that “air conditioning is beneficial to health and that it has no injurious effect on sinus[es] if it’s properly regulated.”91 The installation’s large scale led the US Weather Bureau’s senior meteorologist to say: “It is not too far ahead to think of considerable general control of the weather. Certainly, the War Department’s Pentagon Building proves the possibilities of air conditioning on a grand scale.”92 Air-​Conditioning in Washington Through Midcentury During World War II, air-​conditioning equipment was in short supply, and the industry directed itself toward defense-​related needs, including cooling for both buildings and ships, refrigeration of food, and many other urgent priorities. The US War Production Board asked the managers of department stores, theaters, hotels, and office buildings with air-​ conditioning equipment above one hundred horsepower to donate it to military production factories for the duration—similar to the way in which food, fuel, and many materials were rationed. Low-​temperature refrigeration enabled production of certain types of synthetic rubber for tires and other uses. Air-​ conditioning made possible the manufacturing of certain parts within close tolerances to help ensure the accuracy of bombsights and firing devices. It also facilitated the production of machine guns, ball bearings, and gunpowder, the loading of shells, the production and processing of photographic film, and the manufacture of lenses and fine optical instruments, among countless other applications.93 Control of temperature and humidity was essential to the perfect operation of time fuses on bombs and shells, and the fumes in explosives factories had to be removed to protect

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workers’ health.94 The government offered to pay iron makers to air-​condition their blast-​ furnace installations, because air-​conditioned furnaces produced more iron. Moisture control in the air blast also helped maintain uniform operations and iron quality. Almost all aircraft plants were air-​conditioned. All submarines used air-​conditioning, which also cooled the hull volumes of ships and their sealed gun turrets, in addition to refrigerating their food and medical supplies.95 Air-​conditioning thus proved itself essential to the war effort, even as the war brought a hiatus to the air-​conditioning of the capital city’s offices. In 1949–50 the House and Senate chambers were modernized again, with new ceilings and new systems of lighting, acoustic equipment, and air-​conditioning.96 In 1949, anticipating completion of the new Senate office building (later the Dirksen Senate Office Building), which would add about two thousand tons of cooling load, Congress authorized modernization of the air-​conditioning system centered on the Capitol. This system was expanded to serve more buildings, eventually including the original Library of Congress (Jefferson Building), its Annex (Adams Building), the Supreme Court, the original House (Cannon) and Senate (Russell) office buildings, and two later House office buildings (Longworth, 1929–33, and Rayburn, 1955–65), in addition to the Dirksen Building (1955–58). The plant’s refrigeration capacity expanded from 4,800 tons to 8,800 tons, and new distribution piping was added in a new walk-​through tunnel (1952–56). Although they shared steam for heating from the power plant, some of these buildings had their own refrigeration systems. But in a postwar upgrade in 1955–57, to save costs, each building’s equipment was converted for use with chilled water from the central

power plant.97 These structures were discrete neoclassical monuments, yet underground they had become one systemic entity, as a tunnel loop tied them all to the power plant far to their south (fig. 60). The expanded size of the Capitol area’s refrigeration plant and distribution system for chilled water forced engineers to rethink its relationship to condenser water supply. Since 1938 steam-​turbine drive pumps had drawn condenser water from the Anacostia River. The river water’s heat determined the mechanical refrigeration system’s capacity, since the hotter the water, the more energy and time it took to chill it to its required temperature of 40ºF. By 1956 the Anacostia water’s temperature at the pump suction rose above 90ºF on some days, with a consequent decrease in the refrigeration plant’s available capacity. The problem was accentuated because the water tended to be hottest on those days when the demand for chilled water for comfort air-​conditioning was greatest. In 1956 the ultimate cooling load

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Figure 60 Layout of the Capitol Hill buildings’ cooling system built 1955–57, showing the buildings connected by a new tunnel, with the number of gallons of chilled water per minute (GPM) to support the ultimate load flow (ULF), measured as tons of air-​conditioning in each structure. Each building’s then-​ current air-​conditioning load (P) is also noted in tons. From Air Conditioning, Heating, and Ventilating 53, no. 6 (June 1956): 68. © ASHRAE, www​.ashrae​ .org.

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required total condenser-​water circulation of 39,600 gpm. This would increase when more House and Senate facilities were built and added to the system. These factors led to the decision to abandon the Anacostia in favor of a large cooling-​tower installation, also located at the Capitol Power Plant. The cooling tower would recycle condenser water rather than discard it once it was heated, and condenser water would be cleaner and at a lower temperature than the river water.98 As of 1957, there was “very little sound scientific data to prove the percentage increase in office and factory workers’ efficiency and productivity, or the speed of recovery of hospital patients, or the improvement in the learning of students through the use of air conditioning.” The government had undertaken one study in 1946 in which a group of stenographers worked two weeks in a non-​air-​conditioned space and were then transferred to an air-​conditioned space, where, using the same typewriters, they increased their output by 21 percent.99 But by the mid-1950s the government and the air-​ conditioning industry began a large program of cooperation and research, and in 1956 the General Services Administration mandated the air-​ conditioning of most new federal office buildings, courthouses, hospitals, and post offices, whose heating and ventilation were “to bring all mechanical services in line with good commercial practice.”100 Not until 1960 were most of Washington’s federal buildings air-​conditioned.101 Its financial benefits were calculated and publicized. Before cooling became the norm for federal offices, however, the capital’s hot and humid summers could seriously disrupt the work of government. Local federal guidelines allowed for mass dismissals if the temperature hit 95ºF and the humidity was 55 percent or higher. In 1952 a 106

heat wave triggered dismissals that resulted in a total of 693,135 hours of work lost, costing the government approximately $2 million. In 1957 the General Services Administration found that productivity in offices increased by 9.5 percent when air-​conditioning was installed. In Washington, air-conditioning, “far from being a mere luxury . . . [was] essential for normal operating efficiency of personnel in a climate” where peak conditions of 106ºF dry-​bulb temperature and 60 percent relative humidity had been recorded.102 The experience of Washington’s many federal employees with air-​conditioning on the job was a key factor in raising demand for air-​conditioning in other settings. Department stores, theaters, hotels, and other commercial sites began to add air-​conditioning to enhance their competitiveness. One reporter noted in 1935: “The great forward strides in the science of air conditioning now place manufactured weather within reach of many. You don’t have to be a Senator now to keep cool in the Capitol.”103 The rationing of electric power and equipment during World War II slowed local adoption of air-​conditioning, but as early as 1942 the capital area’s Potomac Electric Power Company (PEPCO) became the nation’s first summer-​ peaking utility, meaning that more electricity was used in summer to support regional air-​conditioning than was used in winter to power heating equipment. Formerly PEPCO had experienced its peak demand on winter evenings, when heating and lighting loads were highest, but by midcentury, peaks came during midday in the summer—a change due almost entirely to air-​conditioning power needs. In this era electric companies saw air-​conditioning as a way to exploit previously unused summer capacities, and they discounted their rates to encourage its use.104 By 1953 Washington had

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more air-​conditioning per capita than any other city in the nation.105 In 1960 residential air-​conditioning was found in 21.4 percent of households in the District of Columbia, but by 1980 that figure had more than tripled, to 67.1 percent.106 In 1966 about 56 percent of PEPCO’s residential customers throughout the Washington metropolitan area, including the suburbs, had air-​conditioning of some type; by 1981 the number had risen to nearly 90 percent.107 Thus, what had begun in the 1920s as an effort to cool only the House and Senate chambers had expanded to encompass Capitol Hill, then transformed the federal workplace and soon the whole national capital region. Early Air-​Conditioning in the South and the Sunbelt Washington’s transformation anticipated air-​ conditioning’s effects in the region from the Old South through the Sunbelt, a term that came into use from 1969. As Raymond Arsenault has revealed, air-​conditioning’s capacity to mitigate the effects of southern climate was essential for the region’s evolution. As noted in chapter 1, Carrier’s technology for cleansing, cooling, dehumidifying, and circulating air was adopted first in textile factories, and a North Carolina textile engineer, Stuart Cramer, had coined the term “air conditioning” in 1905. By 1909 the technology had spread to the tobacco industry, and by 1920 to paper mills, breweries, bakeries, and other industries, paralleling the scope of its adoption in the North. As discussed in chapter 3, comfort cooling in the South first appeared in movie theaters in the mid-1920s. It was installed in southern and northern passenger railway cars from 1929. Air-​conditioning in publicly frequented buildings like department stores, retail stores, restaurants, and food stores was uncommon in

the South until after World War II. Among the first typically to adopt air-​conditioning were banks, while hotels usually limited its use to public areas and first-​floor restaurants. Most southern hotels installed air-​conditioning in guest rooms only in the 1950s or later. Beyond Washington, DC, the first air-​conditioned government buildings in the South were generally federal courthouses and military facilities. State and local governments, hospitals, and schools and universities were slower to adopt the costly technology.108 The earliest detectable surge in air-​ conditioning use in the South appears to have been in the mid-1930s. Then and in later decades, increases in its use were measured in terms of the annual number of new installations or the annual number of additional tons of refrigeration in different building types in a particular city. In 1934 a survey of activity in six cities from the Potomac to the Rio Grande (Washington, Louisville, St. Louis, Atlanta, Houston, and Dallas) showed that the number of installations in hotel, residential, office, and restaurant buildings had doubled since 1933, which represented a low point relative to previous years. For some cities, these were the first years in which numerical information was available. In 1934 the most rapid rise was in restaurants, which increased to almost three times the number of installations in 1933, as the Depression continued. By 1934, for the first time, air-​conditioning in the region appeared in beauty parlors, barbershops, hospitals, and radio stations. Among the cities surveyed, St. Louis had the largest total number of installations (150). But air-​conditioning in Washington increased over 1933 by 65 percent in the number of installations, and 233 percent in capacity, measured in horsepower. In 1933 air-​conditioning installations in Miami totaled

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four, with most of the horsepower operating in movie theaters, but there were an additional twenty in 1934, in many different types of buildings. In Houston twice as many installations were expected in 1935 as in 1934, with the highest number in beauty shops, cafes, and retail stores, and larger systems in theaters and office buildings. Air-​conditioning had been introduced in Houston in 1923 at the Second National Bank Building, and the city’s first major office building to have air-​conditioning was the regional home of the Humble Oil and Refining Company.109 As at Rockefeller Center in the North, expectations in the South during the Depression were that air-​conditioning’s widespread adoption would lift production in related industries. For example, the American Iron and Steel Institute calculated that more than six hundred thousand tons of steel were used for new air-​conditioning installations in 1934.110 One observer predicted in 1937: “The South has one of the greatest stakes in the development of air conditioning. It is becoming one of the major markets for air conditioning equipment and will supply an increasing amount of the raw and fabricated materials which enter into the manufacture of air conditioning apparatus.”111 This prophecy proved accurate after 1945, but even in the 1930s, air-​conditioning transformed other southern industries. Beyond installations in cotton mills from 1906 onward, by the 1930s air-​conditioning enabled the use of southern pine in paper manufacturing. Rayon could not be made without controlled indoor weather, and in 1939 more than half the country’s rayon plants, with more than 40 percent of national production, were distributed regionally from Maryland to Tennessee.112 Nowhere did large-​scale air-​conditioning assume a greater importance than along the 108

Gulf Coast, with its excessive heat and humidity in summers as much as two months longer than elsewhere in the country. Here air-​ conditioning advanced industrialization in the 1930s. The transformation of New Orleans in this period exemplified this process. By 1941, even before the city’s growth during World War II, this center of the South’s shipping and import trade had become one of the country’s most air-​conditioned cities, with nine out of ten of the city’s business buildings so equipped, as were 65 percent of all retail shops and a majority of theaters and other entertainment buildings.113 By 1946, when the air-​conditioning industry looked ahead to postwar expansion, the South remained a prime focus for growth. Its climate supported a largely agricultural economy. Before air-​conditioning, “industries would be forced to locate where the climate [was] best adapted to the particular type of manufacturing. Industry would be influenced by geography, regardless of the advisability of locating near raw materials sources, markets, convenient transportation facilities, or other major considerations in plant location.”114 But air-​conditioning could lessen the effect of climate by making the South more acceptable for manufacturing. As one manufacturer said in 1946, air-​conditioning was “one of the most significant developments for the South in its economic history, probably equaling or exceeding in its importance the invention of the cotton gin. It mean[t] that instead of being retarded industrially by climatic conditions, where in fact the heat has been a disadvantage for a matter of only a few months in the year, the South [was] suddenly placed in a position of full equality or advantage from a climatic standpoint.”115 Although less than 1 percent of the nation’s total factory space was air-​conditioned,

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50 percent of all first-​class factories in the South were projected to be air-​conditioned by 1960.116 With air-​conditioning, the South was at least as desirable as the North’s industrial centers, where heating was more of a problem. This had been demonstrated in wartime manufacturing when, with air-​conditioning and refrigeration rapidly distributed to southern plants, their output and quality were comparable to those of industries in the North. Instead of being retrofitted into older plants, a high proportion of systems had been installed in new buildings, with air-​conditioning integrated into the construction, lowering its cost. The South also had an advantage in its abundance of the raw materials upon which industry depended, and the region was nearer to varied sources of others in the tropics. As foreseen in the 1930s, industries relocating to the South in the postwar era included the manufacture of air-​conditioning equipment. In 1953 three producers headquartered in the North decided to build large new plants in southern states. Carrier Corporation said it would build a facility in Atlanta; Westinghouse was to build one in Staunton, Virginia; and the Worthington Corporation was building a plant in Decatur, Alabama.117 By 1953 the regional growth of air-​ conditioning for industry was stimulating ever more rapid construction of new electrical generating capacity to meet increased load demands in summer. The increasing capacities of these plants could, in turn, have a reciprocal effect in attracting additional industrial development.118 Until 1940 practically every air-​conditioning installation was electrically powered. But by then steam- and diesel-​powered installations were coming into locales where coal and oil were cheap.119 By the

early 1950s, in states like Louisiana and Mississippi, where natural gas was plentiful and inexpensive, it became a prevalent alternative to electricity in powering air-​conditioning.120 Gas-​powered chillers ranged from 3-​ton units for homes to 2,400-ton units for industrial plants, which offered the largest market for gas suppliers, who promoted air-​conditioning.121 Because of water and sewer shortages in most southern states, water-​cooled air systems usually required a cooling tower to recycle condenser water. But most air-​conditioning dealers disliked towers because of their maintenance problems. Thus, air-​cooled units came into increasing popularity for homes and businesses.122 The technology was also important for the South’s competitive future in education. The region had suffered from a higher rate of illiteracy, in part because of the economic value of children, especially boys, in a predominantly agricultural economy and their consequent withdrawal from school at a relatively early age. In addition, hot weather in the late spring and early fall had led to fewer active school days in southern states (in 1946, an average of 132 days per year in Mississippi versus 186 in New Jersey). But improving indoor weather conditions with air-​conditioning would enable lengthening of the school year, since, “[u]nquestionably, one of the largest single obstacles to greater educational advancement in the deep South [lay] in the physical conditions under which the faculty and pupils must work.”123 Even in the shorter term in most southern schools, the heat and humidity were often intolerable. By 1946 school boards recognized “the part air conditioning [could] play in increasing school attendance and raising the level of education in the South. This [was] of high importance at this moment because plans [were] now being

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formulated for the construction of a large number of public and high schools.”124 With its benefits for industrialization and education, the new technology made the South more like the rest of the United States in its diversity of economic activity and its attractiveness for residential migration. It made the South more socially diverse, lowered death rates, improved working conditions, increased productivity, led to a rising per capita income and standard of living, and accelerated development of institutions like universities and museums. By making the South less agricultural and more industrial, less rural and more urban, air-​conditioning made the region more attractive for investment. The South’s relative isolation, based partly on climate and attendant historic dependence on agriculture, had promoted a cultural regionalism that faded gradually after World War II. Vernacular elements that long aided passive cooling, such as high ceilings, continuous breezeways, broad eaves, and open porches, became less common.125 As elsewhere in the United States, residential air-​conditioning in the South was largely limited to homes for the wealthy until the development in 1951 of inexpensive, efficient window units. In 1955, according to census data, less than 2 percent of the nation’s housing units had any air-​conditioning, although another estimate in that year was that one out of every twenty-​two (or more than 4 percent) of American homes had some air-​conditioning. Yet by 1980, 58.5 percent of US residences had air-​conditioning, while the rate for several metropolitan areas in Florida and Texas was over 90 percent. From 1960 to 1980, the highest regional percentage nationally was in the West South Central census division (Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, and Oklahoma), rising from 27.2 percent in 1960 to 81.7 percent in 110

1980. Next highest was the South Atlantic region (Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida), where 76.1 percent of housing units had some air-​conditioning by 1980.126 In 1955 all the southern states (including Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky in the East South Central census division) accounted for more than 50 percent of air-​conditioning national sales.127 In 1957 the South had “proved to be the leading market for refrigerated air-​conditioning systems, and most experts agree[d] that the potential [was] still virtually unlimited,” both in terms of the market for equipment and the plants to produce it.128 Texas led the nation by a wide margin in sales of central, packaged, and window air-​ conditioning units. In 1955, 169,612 window units were sold there, the largest number of any state, out of a national total of 1,270,000 such units, whereas only about 30,000 had been sold in Texas in 1946. The state also led the nation in the use and manufacture of automobile air-​ conditioning. The state’s preferences derived from the fact that, as the University of Texas showed in exhaustive studies, the area through the middle of the state and up into Oklahoma had 2,300 to 2,900 hours during the year in which the temperature was above 80 degrees during the average summer, a longer period for such heat than in any other area of the nation.129 Houston’s postwar air-​conditioning led the state. Through 1945 the city had a total capacity of about 30,000 tons, but by 1949 Houston’s total had risen to about 107,000 tons, requiring about 120,000 horsepower daily. Most downtown business offices were air-​conditioned or in the process of acquiring air-​conditioning. One large office building had spent nearly as much for remodeling and air-​conditioning as the building had originally

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cost a decade earlier. More than 7,500 Houston homes were partially air-​conditioned, and more than 1,000 were fully air-​conditioned, with about 1,200 having systems of five tons or more. Since the war’s end, installation and maintenance of this equipment had generated more than 6,800 local jobs.130 By 1950 Houston’s increase in number of installations and tons of refrigeration made it the “best air-​conditioned city,” with large increases in that single year in tonnage for department stores, food stores, churches, office buildings, banks, hotels, the University of Houston, and individual homes, where the trend was steepest. The 7,441 tons of refrigeration for residential installations in 1950 was four times larger than the total in 1949. By 1955 the Houston Power and Lighting Company reported 1,524 residential installations totaling 6,908 tons, 944 commercial and industrial installations totaling 19,994 tons, and 56,453 window units totaling 58,588 tons.131 An engineer said, “In the Houston area, air conditioning is as much a part of life as heating is in the colder areas. It has been a long time since we have designed a heating system for the future addition of cooling,” as distinct from a system that included cooling from the start.132 The trend peaked with the opening of the Astrodome in 1965 as the world’s first air-​ conditioned stadium.133 By 1978 Houston, the country’s fifth largest city, spent $250 million annually for cool air.134 From 1940 to 2000, eight of the ten fastest-​ growing American cities were in the Southeast and Southwest.135 Air-​conditioning enabled this growth. Through the South the 1960 census recorded air-​conditioning in 18 percent of individual homes, but by 1970 half of homes and apartments were air-​conditioned.136 By the mid-1970s air-​conditioning was in more than

90 percent of the South’s high-​rise office buildings, banks, and apartments; more than 80 percent of its government buildings and hotels; about two-​thirds of its homes, stores, and hospital rooms; and about half of its classrooms. Virtually all new buildings were air-​conditioned, including shopping malls, stadiums, steel mills, and restaurants.137 In the history of air-​conditioning, the representative Sunbelt city is Phoenix, Arizona, where nearly three hundred manufacturing firms opened between 1948 and 1960, in addition to rapid growth from residential migration and tourism. As early as 1940 the Arizona Republic called the city “the air conditioning capital of the world.” By 1960 half of all new houses in Phoenix had air-​conditioning, although the technology was described in the city’s promotional literature as more pervasive than it was. By 1970 less than a third of houses in the urban Sunbelt had this amenity.138 Federal tax breaks aided the upward trend. In the 1950s and 1960s the Internal Revenue Service encouraged air-​conditioning by allowing for the deduction of its costs if it was certified to be medically necessary.139 By making the South and Southwest attractive for growth, air-​conditioning was a factor in these regions’ rising effect on national politics. It made intolerably hot places in the summer habitable and made some of them focal regions for year-​round settlement by retirees, new white-​collar industries, and other newcomers, often with political views that differed from those that predominated in their new hometowns. By 1964 the net annual migration of people from South to North that had been a demographic constant from the Civil War began to reverse, with swelling populations especially in Florida, Texas, and Southern California, making these the three most populous

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states by 2015. Between 1940 and 1980, warmer states collectively gained twenty-​nine electoral college votes, while the colder states of the Northeast and the Rust Belt lost thirty-​one. From 1900 to 1948, only two presidents or vice presidents hailed from southern states, but from 1952 through 2004, every winning presidential ticket included at least one such candidate. More diverse electorates arguably led to a southern regional shift away from the

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Democratic Party and to the South and Sunbelt’s rising influence in the Republican Party. Thus what began in Washington, DC, as the air-​conditioning of the Capitol in the 1920s contributed to profound change in national politics by the later twentieth century.140 In this context it is not surprising that the earliest tall office building to be fully air-​conditioned was the Milam Building in San Antonio, Texas, opened in January 1928.

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The First Air-​Conditioned Tall Buildings, 1928–32

Chap ter 5

T

he air-​conditioning of Washington, DC, was linked not only to the technology’s transformation of the South but also to its application nationally in office buildings as a major field of commercial comfort air-​conditioning. There has been consistent agreement that the first wholly air-​conditioned tall office building in the United States or elsewhere was the Milam Building in San Antonio, Texas, designed by George Rodney Willis and opened in January 1928, and that the second was the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society (PSFS) Building, designed by George Howe and William Lescaze from 1926 and opened in 1932.1 Yet less obvious is the relationship between these two designs, and the explanation for how the local climate and energy resources in San Antonio and Philadelphia prompted these buildings’ clients to innovate mechanically in then unprecedented ways, and each on such a large scale. As with other landmarks in the history of mechanical heating and cooling, the stories of the Milam and PSFS Buildings have much to do with the infrastructures of their respective cities and the stratagems by which their designers turned limitations into opportunities. Somewhat like the Pentagon, multistoried, multitenanted towers presented a problem different from that of the Larkin Building, which, like auditoriums and theaters, factories, and legislative halls, had comprised

q

a minimally divided interior. And the air-​ conditioning devised for the PSFS Building was related to its highly innovative interior and exterior architecture, which made it the first US tall office building in the International Style of modernism. But that style’s emphasis on glass walls did not always align with PSFS’s interior climatic needs. San Antonio and the Origins of the Mil am Building, 1926–28 As much as any single structure in San Antonio, the Milam Building defined local architectural modernity, in this case for a South Texas regional center that, in the 1920s, was seeking outside real-​estate investment (fig. 61). Of course, the region’s extreme heat was central to its image in the national imagination, as was San Antonio’s associations with the origins of Texas’s independence in the 1830s. The Milam Building’s owner-​developer was the Travis Investment Company, incorporated in 1922 (the centennial of the establishment of the American colony in then Mexican-​ruled Texas) and named for William B. Travis, a leader of the Texas movement for independence. The building was named for Col. Benjamin Milam, who commanded Texas troops at the battle for San Antonio in December 1835, during Texas’s war with Mexico. While leading the Texians during the city’s capture, Milam was killed, 113

Figure 61 George Rodney Willis (architect) and M. L. Diver (mechanical engineer), Milam Building, 115 East Travis Street, on the northeast corner of the intersection with Soledad Street, San Antonio, Texas, 1926–28, view from the southwest. Carrier Corporation Archives, Syracuse, New York.

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and he quickly became a martyr for his cause. Investors appreciated “the name of the new skyscraper” because it was “short, easily pronounced, easy to remember and easy to spell. It [had] no prejudices and [had] local historical value that [made] it fitting for San Antonio’s tallest building.”2 It would be built “within a stone’s throw of where the hero fell” and thus have the aura of a centennial memorial.3 The

Milam Building’s name made it “a monument to past glory—pillar of future progress.”4 Located at 115 East Travis Street, at the northeast corner of the intersection with Soledad Street, just west of the San Antonio River, which ran north-​south through its block, the Milam Building was part of its developer’s strategy for improving San Antonio’s center. The company’s holdings were in the city’s western core, and the building’s site was the largest and most central. Its capacity equaled one quarter of all available office space in the city’s other structures. An attraction to tenants seeking proximity to many business contacts was that more than half of San Antonio’s office space was within two blocks.5 Also within two blocks was a majority of all of the city’s first-​class hotel rooms.6 Costing nearly $2 million, this office tower was its developer’s largest project. The company’s general manager, Charles Millard, “spent a year in studying different plans for the new office building because [he] was determined to make it one of the outstanding buildings in the country.”7 The architect, George Rodney Willis (1879–1960), was from Chicago, where he had worked for Frank Lloyd Wright for four years, becoming head draftsman in Wright’s Oak Park studio before he apparently left late in 1902. His employment there overlapped with the early phase of the Larkin Building commission, which began in October 1902.8 San Antonio was then not yet competitive in attracting major corporate tenants. The first airmail plane arrived in the city only on 28 February 1928, a month after the Milam Building opened. The building was central to a broader civic project that aimed to link San Antonio more effectively to the larger state and national economy. Months after the structure opened, it was claimed that, with new firms constantly

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coming to San Antonio, “practically 85% of these firms locating in offices [were] locating in the Milam Building.” This meant that “there [were] more people, and consequently there [was] more business . . . in the Milam Building NOW than there [were] in any other office building in San Antonio.”9 With 750 offices on its upper floors, the Milam Building was more than 50 percent larger than any other office building in San Antonio, with a volume of more than 2,940,000 cubic feet and a floor area of 250,115 square feet.10 Its size attracted tenants who sought the largest number of proximate fruitful business contacts. Its maximal permanent population was about two thousand, while its floating population was to be about eight thousand daily.11 Of its initial tenants, more than forty used their offices either as their national, state, or district headquarters, demonstrating that “San Antonio [was] rapidly increasing in importance as a distributing center and that national mercantile and industrial concerns [were] not leaving San Antonio out of the expansion campaigns.”12 The Milam Building’s central twenty-​story tower rose between two flanking sixteen-​story masses to create a U-​shaped block above the second floor, with a court on the frontal, south side. It stood 280 feet tall and covered a lot 137 feet wide east-​west and 107.5 feet deep north-​ south. Not only was it San Antonio’s tallest structure, it was also the world’s tallest multistory concrete frame structure, saving on the cost of structural steel. It was “the tallest structure in the world built without fabricated steel,” meaning no rolled sections for beams and columns, as distinct from concrete’s steel reinforcing rods or steel mesh.13 Polished granite clad the piers of the first floor; cast stone (meaning cast cement) faced the second and third floors; light-​gray, cream, and buff brick with

cast-​stone trim clad the fourth through the sixteenth floors; and cast stone with Spanish Renaissance motifs ornamented the uppermost floors and central tower. A regional variant of the national trend toward historically inspired architecture for tall buildings, the Milam Building was designed “in accordance with the most advanced styles of Eastern construction.”14 The symmetrical massing with a central tower recalled the thirty-​two-​story Barclay-​ Vesey Building (1920–26), at 140 West Street, between Barclay and Vesey Streets, in New York City, designed by Ralph Walker of the firm of McKenzie, Voorhees, and Gmelin for the New York Telephone Company.15 The concrete frame and brick and cast-​stone walls increased the thermal mass, reducing heat gain in summer and heat loss in colder weather. Thick walls also evoked a local tradition going back to San Antonio’s origins in Colonel Milam’s era “as a village of one story adobe houses.”16 The massiveness conveyed its owners’ aspiration to a monumentality that surpassed earlier works, with the Milam Building “built as the Egyptians built, for the eternal centuries.”17 The Mil am Building’s Air-​ Conditioning System Air-​conditioning made the Milam Building attractive, especially to out-​of-​town firms whose personnel were not used to the local climate. The system not only regulated the building’s temperature and humidity year-​ round but also washed and purified the air. As its management claimed: “The chief reason why there are more tenants in the Milam Building than any other building in San Antonio is because of its air conditioning system.”18 Earlier office structures had had air-​conditioning and cooling for year-​round comfort for one or two floors, but the Milam Building would T he Fir s t A ir - Condi t ioned Ta l l Buil dings

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Figure 62 George Rodney Willis (architect) and M. L. Diver (mechanical engineer), Milam Building, one of the Carrier air-​handling units, showing the fan, dehumidifying water spray, and other features. From HPAC 1, no. 3 (July 1929): 174. © ASHRAE, www​.ashrae​.org. Figure 63 (opposite) George Rodney Willis (architect) and M. L. Diver (mechanical engineer), Milam Building, typical office floor plan (top), showing air distribution from an air-​handling unit (dehumidifier) in the mechanical room, behind the elevators, and typical section through the office floor (bottom), showing air supplied to offices from the duct over the corridor and exhaust returning from offices to the corridor near the floor. From HPAC 1, no. 3 (July 1929): 176, 178. © ASHRAE, www​.ashrae​​ .org.

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“be the first skyscraper in the world to use this system throughout.” In keeping with the Carrier Corporation’s rhetoric, the building’s air-​conditioning system would “manufacture its own weather,” hence “Every Day a Perfect Day—in the Milam Building.”19 More than any other feature, the air-​conditioning was to ensure that “representatives of national concerns unhesitatingly choose the Milam Building as a location in keeping with their status.”20 A completely air-​conditioned office tower had to have a system that addressed the special cooling needs of this type. Willis Carrier wrote that when air-​conditioning came to factories, and later to theaters and department stores, all “large undivided spaces, . . . seldom were there complications of variation in exposure in the space that was to be conditioned.” But with the Milam Building, “the first office building for rental occupancy [to be] completely conditioned . . . [there] was a new problem”: climate “control of a large number of separate rooms . . . each with somewhat varying requirements.”21

San Antonio has a high proportion of days with bright sunshine and clear air, so solar radiation was a leading factor, not heat generated in the building by people, lights, and so forth. In this tower honeycombed with offices, an average room had about 1/1,000 of the building’s volume.22 The aim was to make every office “equally desirable because every office [would] be equally comfortable at all times.”23 An office exposed to the sun would be 8ºF–10ºF hotter than an office with no direct sunlight. According to the theory of the time, the air required to cool an office when heated by the sun was about double that required to cool an office not subject to direct solar radiation. The air-​conditioning system had to have both the capacity and the flexibility to cool interiors with a high ratio of variable heat (from the traveling sun) to internally generated heat, which was relatively constant throughout the workday. Overall, in San Antonio, the hottest period of the day is usually from around 4:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. The one mitigating factor that eased design calculations was that locals were more accustomed to high temperatures, in both summer and winter, than workers in northern cities. Thus, in summer, the maximum office temperature was to be 80ºF, with a relative humidity not exceeding 55 percent. Temperatures were to be held 7ºF warmer than that found in the average air-​cooled theater, which was considered too chilled.24 The Milam Building’s moderately cooled air was “not chilled but conditioned.”25 The Carrier Engineering Corporation supplied all refrigerating and water-​cooling equipment, which was in the basement.26 Two refrigeration units together had a capacity of 375 tons. Since the building had 750 offices, the units’ capacity, if equally distributed, would provide the equivalent of one thousand pounds

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of ice per office per day. These units chilled water, which was pumped through pipes to be sprayed into air streams in the air-​handling units for the main public rooms, on the lower floors, and in smaller air-​handling units, on the upper, office floors (fig. 62).27 Eleven of these units served the whole building. Each supplied conditioned air, usually to two floors, through ducts in the furred spaces above the ceilings of the central corridors.28 As shown in the U-​shaped upper-​floor plan, these units were centrally placed between the toilets and the elevators behind the frontal light court (fig. 63, top). Three centrifugal pumps located in the basement lifted the chilled water to these units.29 City water was first used for the air-​ conditioning, but an artesian well was drilled behind the building in anticipation that the needs would be too great to rely on city water, which proved to be the case.30 By 1937 water for air-​conditioning was drawn from the nearby San Antonio River at a rate of 1,000 gpm, on the condition that it return to the river free of pollutants. In the 1950s owners lost permission to draw on river water and went back to city water. But this had to be recycled rather than discarded, necessitating a cooling tower.31 In either winter or summer, the air was given its proper temperature and humidity by drawing it through sprays of finely atomized water, as shown in an illustration of one of the Carrier dehumidifiers (fig. 62). The spray performed an important filtering function, especially given the dust in San Antonio’s air. Filtered air was new to public awareness: people were reminded “that it is as desirable to wash the dust and bacteria out of the air you breathe as to filter the mud and bacteria out of the water you drink.”32 Cities provided filtration plants for water, but air could only be filtered at individual buildings.33 Tests showed that the

Milam Building’s system eliminated 95 percent of the dust found in local air. On average, seven bushels of dirt were removed weekly.34 Filtering “eliminate[d] the pollen of flowers and weeds, the nemesis of hay fever sufferers,” one of whom experienced such relief that he persuaded the management to allow him to live in the building for several weeks.35 In the summer, T he Fir s t A ir - Condi t ioned Ta l l Buil dings

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Figure 64 George Rodney Willis (architect) and M. L. Diver (mechanical engineer), Milam Building, under construction, view showing air-​supply ducts beneath concrete beams. From HPAC 1, no. 3 (July 1929): 177. © ASHRAE, www​.ashrae​.org.

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spray water was chilled to 50ºF because physicians of the time concluded that air cooled to that temperature and then reheated to a comfortable 70º to 80ºF was able to hold the ideal amount of moisture for human health.36 Cooled dehumidified air or warmed humidified air then passed through the ceiling ducts, with grilles and dampers controlling its passage into occupied interior office spaces. Windows were double glazed and closely fitted for insulation.37 As Banham has noted, the cost of multiple air-​handling units was offset by the increased income from rentable floor area that would have been sacrificed if large vertical ducts had been needed to move air through more floors served by fewer units.38 In order to limit the size of distributing ductwork and thus maximize rentable space, Carrier and other systems engineers for office buildings forced air at high velocity through smaller ducts and conditioned it close to the point of delivery.39 An air-​conditioning system’s success ultimately depended on how well the cooled air was circulated through the building, for,

as one contemporary wrote, “[n]o matter how good the equipment in the basement or in the apparatus room is, if the air is not distributed properly the results will not be satisfactory. . . . Wherever there is trouble with a system, four times out of five it is due to faulty air distribution.”40 The main air-​supply ducts were overhead in each corridor. An interior view of the building under construction (fig. 64) shows the ducts hung below the concrete beams. Ducts of galvanized iron sheets were painstakingly assembled on site and later plastered underneath to match the office ceilings; due to the depth of the ducts, corridor ceilings ended up ten to twelve inches lower than the office ceilings.41 The ceilings were not like later modular suspended ceilings, integrated with lighting and ventilating apparatus. The corridors were used for return air, exhausted into them from the offices near the floor. Because of the need to counter changing heat loads through the day, the ducts in each side had to have sufficient area to carry enough air when the sun shone on that side, or about 75 percent of the total volume of air handled in the building. In this era before electronic controls, the engineer in the basement, in order to shift the bulk of the air from one side to the other, had to operate motorized air dampers in the ducts. Or, on cloudy days, he could adjust the flow so that it was equally divided between the sides. This method of responding to variable load due to changing sun was called “group volume control.”42 While this system handled variable loads in large volumes on either side, both automatic and manual devices controlled warm and cool airflow for individual offices. From the main supply ducts, branches served each office (fig. 63, top), with the air-​supply duct placed in the corridor wall near the ceiling

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(fig. 63, bottom). In some offices the supply duct continued into the room, above the ceiling, to a central diffuser (fig. 65). Also, each grille had a slide that enabled the tenant to close off part or even all of the air if desired, and to depend on outdoor air admitted through an open window. But opening windows in summer was an impulse that the superintendent had to correct in tenants for whom air-​conditioning was new. In August 1928, during the first summer of operation, a new tenant complained that his office was too hot and that opening the window did not seem to do any good. The superintendent’s instruction to close it “was strange advice to the new tenant, who had not acquainted himself with the novel facts concerning the new office building, as it [was] strange information for almost everyone who hear[d] it.”43 Costs and Benefits of the Mil am Building’s Air-​Conditioning System The total cost of the air-​conditioning system fully installed was $230,000 in 1928 dollars, or less than eight cents per cubic foot.44 This figure was about one-​ninth of the building’s total cost of nearly $2 million.45 Yet the system’s net cost was lower because of the savings it enabled by obviating the need to provide other equipment. Since the system provided winter heating as well as summer cooling and conditioning, there was a considerable savings in eliminating direct radiators and piping, except for those offices facing the cold exposures, which were supplied with individual heating units. Direct steam radiation, which was omitted from most offices, would have cost about $100,000.46 Perhaps the most visible savings enabled by the cooling system was the elimination of electric ceiling fans in each of the 750 offices, long “considered standard equipment

in office buildings of the south.”47 The omission represented a savings of about $30,000 for fans and wiring, and tenants were spared their operational cost.48 Their absence spoke vividly to a local audience of the building’s nonregional modernity. A private office gave no hint of South Texas but could be in any part of the country, in keeping with the owners’ aim of attracting tenants from beyond the South (fig. 65). The interior was finished in plaster ceilings above walls with wood paneling and classical moldings and had traditional furniture and fixtures, all of whose surfaces could be kept relatively dust-​free. A circular air diffuser in the ceiling, with an ornamental soffit, was the only sign of the air-​conditioning system. No stylistic or conceptual link connected the conventional interior to the concrete frame and the ductwork that structured and served the space.

Figure 65 George Rodney Willis (architect) and M. L. Diver (mechanical engineer), Milam Building, office interior, with an ornamental air diffuser in the ceiling. Carrier Corporation Archives, Syracuse, New York.

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Later modernist architects of the midcentury would link these two realms. As with factories, the leading argument for air-​conditioning in offices was its assumed capacity to increase productivity through enhancing workers’ comfort. Office buildings could create ideal environs for myriad tenants. As for air-​conditioning in the Milam Building, one observer wrote: “All of us know that we do more and better work when we feel good; when we are comfortable; when conditions are just right. There is not yet a way to measure absolutely, or relatively, the improvement, but we know it is there and when one considers the great number of people in our modern skyscraper—many of them spending a third of their time there—the results are tremendous.”49 Eight months after it opened, the Milam Building, with 565 occupants, had considerably more tenants than any other office building in San Antonio. They were a wealthy group, whose collective purchasing power as firms and individuals was estimated at $10 million, making relocation there an attractive option for those with services or merchandise to sell.50 By 1 February 1929, the first anniversary of the building’s opening, it had nearly eight hundred occupants, rendering more than a hundred commercial and professional services, with about five thousand daily visitors. This was more people than in any other building in the Southwest. A large percentage of the early tenants were firms in the oil and gas industries. The Milam Building had filled up faster than any other building ever opened in San Antonio.51 Months after it opened, one lawyer said about renting in the building: “[T]he deciding factor was the prime efficiency of the building provided by the modern air-​conditioning system. Being able to work in a constant comfortable temperature undisturbed by noise, drafts and dust, every day sees 120

more work accomplished with less fatigue and more real enjoyment.”52 Investors agreed that properly air-​ conditioned offices, like those with adequate daylight, would bring in higher rentals and that tenants were glad to pay the difference. This amounted to a few cents per day per office, and “a ten percent or fifteen percent increase in rentals is not at all exorbitant for the benefit derived therefrom.”53 Owners also believed that, with air-​conditioning, fewer offices would be vacant throughout the year. From a financial standpoint, this was a key issue, because even a marginal increase in occupancy meant that overall revenue would more reliably cover fixed and variable operating costs, so that rental income beyond this was nearly all net profit. Hence air-​conditioning worked as a tipping factor in the minds of investors, who would evaluate a building that had it as more likely to be full and to have high rental values, thus likely to yield a desirable rate of return on their capital. These expectations were realized in the Milam Building’s first eight years of occupancy, before it was sold to new owners late in 1935. At that time the building’s manager, M. A. Snyder, said that during the years of the Great Depression the Milam had enjoyed a higher occupancy rate than the average first-​class structure in San Antonio. Of the air-​conditioning, he reported, “We have found it expensive, but the expense has been justified.” To support this claim, he had collected testimonials from tenants, some of which read: “Offices are worth 50 percent more with air-​ conditioning.” “Thirty percent more efficiency in the Milam building.” “Be willing to pay $20 to $30 more per month for same office space, makes work a pleasure.” “My rooms are like springtime, an ideal atmosphere.” “It means an increased number of visitors during the hot

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summer months.” Air-​conditioning increased the revenue from office space 10 to 35 percent.54 In 1990 a former employee recalled people lining up on summer days to eat at the building’s cool cafeteria.55 In its early years the building was privileged space for empowered tenants. Its developers also promoted it as a tourist attraction in a San Antonio so sultry that office workers often wore thick wristbands to absorb ink-​smearing perspiration.56 In the summer of 1938, the American Society of Heating and Ventilating Engineers chose San Antonio as a desirable location for study of comfort conditions for office workers. Selected for the study were the air-​conditioned offices of the six-​story San Antonio Public Service Company, which were first air-​conditioned in that summer.57 Most employees (86 percent) responded affirmatively to the question “Do you think that spending the day in an air-​conditioned office enables you to withstand the prolonged summer heat better than your friends and associates who are not in air-​conditioned offices during the day?” Two-​thirds had a favorable perception of the general effectiveness of air-​conditioning, with some remarking that it enabled them to be comfortable, that it helped with their sinus trouble, and that they did not experience their annual hay fever. One wrote: “I think that the benefits have been very noticeable in myself and my fellow employees in that our energy does not appear to lag in the afternoons during a long, continued hot spell as it did before the installation of air conditioning.” Overall the study verified that “the harmful effects of heat are cumulative, and that prolonged hot weather is not accompanied by the usual run down feeling when relief from the heat can be experienced through the hottest part of the day.”58 The study, sponsored by air-​conditioning engineers, thus echoed responses to the Milam Building.

The Phil adelphia Saving Fund Societ y Building: Description and Chronology The Milam Building’s air-​conditioning was quickly influential as the start of a trend. Just eighteen months after its opening, Ruel McDaniel reported in Scientific American: “Many engineers who have seen this Texas building predict that within five to ten years it will be the exception for a modern office structure to be erected without equipping it with its own weather-​making plant.”59 Just before his death in March 1932, Col. William A. Starrett, the contractor who built the non-​air-​ conditioned Empire State Building in 1930–31, wrote: “Conditioned air will be as much in demand by tenants of office space in the future as central heating is today.”60 Industrial plants and then movie theaters had led the air-​ conditioning industry to its first peak, in 1926– 28. But the field’s comeback from the Depression of 1930–33 was not in industry, whose plants were running part-​time, or in movie theaters, which by then were either already equipped or could not afford it. Instead, by 1935 new business came from office buildings, restaurants, and retail establishments. And, as noted earlier, air-​conditioning appeared in passenger railroad cars from 1929.61 In office buildings, the Milam’s successor was the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society (PSFS) Building, designed from 1926 by George Howe and from 1929–30 by Howe and his partner William Lescaze, and built in 1931–32. This structure adapted the Milam’s technical system, but PSFS went beyond it in integrating air-​conditioning with a modernist exterior and interior aesthetic. The client was James M. Willcox (1861–1935), president of the society (1924–34) and chair of the building committee. It was the only realized American tall building T he Fir s t A ir - Condi t ioned Ta l l Buil dings

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Figure 66 George Howe and William Lescaze (architects) and Leslie S. Tarleton (mechanical engineer), Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building, southwest corner of Twelfth and East Market Streets, Philadelphia, 1926–32, aerial view looking southwest. Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, Delaware. Philadelphia Saving Fund Society and Western Savings Bank photograph collection, acc. no. 1993.302, Hagley ID: 93302_box 6_048; image digitally altered from the original.

featured in the International Style exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1932. As the country’s first and oldest operating savings bank and then still one of the three largest, the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society (from 1982 the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society) sought to build its city’s tallest, largest, and most appealing office building. The bank then held $310 million in savings accounts and of all the 122

savings banks in the country had the largest number of depositors (more than 450,000).62 Its modern building, completed for about $7,421,000, rose thirty-​six stories on the southwest corner of east-​west Market Street and north-​south Twelfth Street, two full blocks east of city hall (fig. 66).63 The building’s 560,000 square feet included shops and stands on a subway level, stores on the street floor, the banking hall on the second floor and mezzanines, and three more floors, through the fifth, devoted to banking operations, the lowest of which, just above the hall, was intended for executive offices. Above were twenty-​six floors for high-​ class office tenants, below an executive suite on the thirty-​third floor (fig. 67). By the late 1940s the building housed two hundred firms with 3,700 employees who daily received an average of 10,000 callers.64 By the 1970s, 2,000 people worked there daily, before PSFS closed operations in 1993 and its building became a hotel.65 The PSFS Building has been the focus of major historical studies by William Jordy and Robert Stern, just as it received critical praise when it opened. More recently Emily Thompson has thrown light on the PSFS Building’s interior acoustic materials.66 These accounts note air-​conditioning’s importance to the building’s conception and success. When it opened, it was “the largest building of its type to be fitted with equipment for complete air conditioning,”

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including all interior spaces but toilet rooms and elevator lobbies.67 The net area conditioned was 345,860 square feet, requiring an estimated 350,000 cfm when fully occupied.68 From an art-​historical perspective, the building’s modernism was identified with its innovative visual style. Yet, as its manager wrote six years after its completion, “the slogan ‘Nothing More Modern’ was adopted by the P. S. F. S. Building for its rental campaign. What made it ultra-​modern was its air-​conditioning system.”69 Willcox gave the commission for design of the building to the Philadelphia firm of Mellor, Meigs, and Howe early in 1926. Then the bank’s main office was further east, at Seventh and Walnut Streets, where it had been since 1869. Catering to middle-​class depositors, PSFS had chosen to locate in the city’s retail district. Yet by the 1920s, as retailing moved westward, the bank acquired a large property at Twelfth and Market Streets, initially for a branch bank.70 The site’s value was such that a revenue-​ generating tall office building above the branch bank was soon considered. Under Willcox, the skyscraper project moved forward again early in 1929, and in later March Howe supplied four schemes. The second scheme, dated 20 March, was the seed of the final design.71 On 1 May 1929 Howe entered into partnership with William Lescaze (1896–1969), who assumed a key role in the design during its final phase. The economic decline following the stock market crash in October 1929 delayed the project.72 When active work resumed in December, Lescaze sketched the main banking hall’s cantilevered curved glass corner. The building committee approved Howe and Lescaze’s final design on 10 December 1930 and authorized them to proceed with working drawings. One account notes that all of the society’s twenty-​five managers protested the

design, but Willcox, ultimately convinced of its virtues, supported it and was “persuasively persistent.”73 The first working drawings were filed in January 1931, and excavation began in February. Foundations were completed on 29 July 1931, and final working drawings were submitted on 14 September.74 At first, PSFS’s leaders had approved air-​conditioning only for

Figure 67 George Howe and William Lescaze (architects) and Leslie S. Tarleton (mechanical engineer), Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building, floor plans, indicating the mechanical floor as the twenty-first rather than the twentieth. From AF 57, no. 6 (December 1932): 486; drawings not attributed.

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the basement and ground-​level stores, second-​ floor banking hall, executive offices on the third through the fifth floors, and the thirty-​ third-​floor executive suite. But on 12 August, late in a stifling summer, when the steel frame had been erected through the twentieth floor, the building committee held a “prolonged discussion regarding air conditioning the entire building,” as the architects had initially recommended.75 Without much difficulty they found space for the additional ducts and equipment, indicating that they had planned for complete air-​conditioning as they had first advised.76 The first tenants moved in on 1 June 1932, before the whole building opened on 1 August 1932. The PSFS Building was initially only a branch office of the bank, but it later became the head office. The need to make the PSFS Building attractive to high-​class tenants was greater because it was not in the financial district, on South Broad Street, but in the central shopping district, on East Market Street.77 Its competitors included the twenty-​nine-​story Fidelity-​Philadelphia Trust Company Building (123–51 South Broad; 1927–28), designed by Simon and Simon as the city’s largest office building, and the thirty-​story tower for the Girard Trust (28–30 South Broad; 1930–31), by McKim, Mead, and White. Neither had air-​conditioning. As the PSFS Building’s mechanical engineer wrote: “With unusual far-​ sightedness, it was the feeling of the Society that the time was not far distant when air conditioning would be as vital a factor in the equipment of a modern building as are the heating or the electrical wiring systems. Furthermore, the severity of present rental competition, exaggerated by the present economic stringency, drove home the thought that complete conditioning would provide the rental agent with a powerful sales argument. Complete conditioning, 124

therefore, was viewed as an essential, to be had if the cost would permit.”78 The Original Scheme for Air-​ Conditioning the Lower Floors of the PSFS Building Through design and construction into the late summer of 1931, the plan had been to condition all air supplied to the spaces from the basement to the fifth floor. Above this height, at the sixth-​ floor level, setbacks occur on both the east and west sides of the building. They were to ensure that no later office towers on either side would cut off adequate daylight. Since the building’s east side is along Twelfth Street, the setback there is less than that along the west side, where the PSFS site directly adjoins neighboring properties. Below the sixth floor, the floors are much greater in width and length (132 feet wide east-​west, 164 feet north-​south) than the office floors in the tower above (63 feet wide east-​west, 132 feet north-​south). The longer and broader lower floors, when subdivided, would have less access to outside air for ventilation in warmer months. Their greater depth meant that air-​conditioning was essential below the office tower.79 In the initial scheme, when air-​conditioning was confined to floors below the sixth, most mechanical apparatus was planned for the subbasement, as seen in a cross section (fig. 68, a). This level originally had two two-​hundred-​ton compressors.80 Above the subbasement, the fan gallery, which housed six air-​handling units, occupied part of a third mezzanine above the banking hall, at the level of the main trusses spanning east-​west above the hall (fig. 68, b). These trusses had to be 16.5 feet deep because they supported the office-​tower floors above. Their great depth served as the “lung cavity,” where the ventilation machinery for the

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building was housed. Placing the machinery within the main trusses made use of what might have been wasted space.81 As Howe wrote to Willcox in July 1930, the trusses’ depth “provide[d] just the right amount of space to house most conveniently the ventilating equipment required for the store and banking hall.”82 The decision to air-​condition related to the decision about the heating system—that is, whether the PSFS Building should have its own steam plant or purchase steam from the Philadelphia Electric Company. Large buildings depending wholly on purchased steam were common in New York City but rare in Philadelphia. Other large local buildings purchasing steam included boiler-​room space and a chimney as safeguards in case the local utility proved unreliable in the future. Yet ultimately PSFS agreed that no provision should be made for a future boiler plant. PSFS built the first large building in Philadelphia to take this step. They felt that the dependability of the local modern public utility made such a precaution unnecessary and therefore economically improvident. This decision made air-​ conditioning the lower floors more affordable.83 The decision to air-​condition the whole structure had another major consequence for the PSFS Building’s relationship to the city’s utilities. The tremendous additional load on the water mains brought about by the demand for condenser water led the engineers to conclude that it was neither wise nor economical to depend on the city’s system as the source of this water. Midsummer, when the need for air-​conditioning was greatest, was also the season during which pressure in the city mains was lowest, owing to the fact that fire hydrants were frequently opened to provide street “shower baths.”84 To provide an adequate supply of condenser water, the decision was

d

Figure 68 George Howe and William Lescaze (architects) and Leslie S. Tarleton (mechanical engineer), Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building, east-​west cross section looking south, showing (a) the subbasement, with cooling equipment for floors below the sixth; (b) the fan gallery, housing air-​conditioning units at the level of the trusses above the main banking hall; (c) the midtower mechanical floor; and (d) the cooling-​tower level, with roof signage. From AR 106, no. 4 (October 1949): 92; drawing not attributed; graphic additions by author.

c

b

a

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taken to drill two deep wells beneath the subbasement. In midsummer, city water temperature ran 75ºF to 80ºF, whereas well water was between 55ºF and 60ºF. The use of cooler well water for condensing the refrigerant thus effected a notable economy in the operation of the cooling plant. Also, it was anticipated that the rapid trend toward air-​conditioning would introduce a severe burden on the city supply mains, which PSFS sought to relieve as much as possible.85 The assumption was that, in the initial scheme for air-​conditioning only the lower floors, condenser water would not be recooled and recirculated in a closed system. Instead, such water, once used for condensing and heated in this process, would leave the building, and a fresh supply of condenser water would be drawn from the wells. Only when the decision was made to cool the whole building were cooling towers introduced on the roof to cool condenser water and thus allow it to be recirculated. The Final Scheme for Air-​ Conditioning the PSFS Building’s Tower According to the building’s manager, a decision not to air-​condition the upper floors would have reduced initial costs, interest to be paid on investment, and operating expenses, but the building would have had little to offer tenants that was different from or better than what other first-​class buildings offered. The decision, therefore, was taken to incur the additional initial and operating expenses of air-​conditioning the whole tower in order that rental income might be increased, because PSFS would be offering tenants uniquely well-​ equipped quarters. When this decision was reached, in late summer 1931, study of the plans revealed that the necessary vertical ducts and 126

fans would occupy some 150 square feet on each upper floor above the fifth. This duct space would have no exterior exposure and would therefore be inferior for rental purposes, in an era when proximity to natural light still determined the value of rentable square footage in office buildings. Howe and Lescaze had made provision for machinery and a pipe loft on what many accounts call the twentieth floor, which was given over entirely to air-conditioning equipment and storage (fig. 68, c), in a zone where structural-​steel wind bracing made the space undesirable for other purposes. There was ample space on this floor for two air-​handling units, one to serve floors six through nineteen, and the other, floors twenty-​one through thirty-​ three. Fresh air for both units was taken through an opening on the east side at the twentieth floor. Main air-​distributing ducts on this floor supplied up- and down-​feed risers to tower floors above and below.86 As Banham has noted, distributing conditioned air from a level midway up the tower, rather than from units at the top or bottom, ensured that no vertical ducts would have to be so large in cross section that they notably decreased rentable office-​floor area.87 So the loss of rentable area to mechanical systems on the twentieth floor was offset by the gain in rentable square footage from smaller risers on the other floors.88 In November 1931 Carrier obtained the contract for the whole PSFS Building, considered “one of the first office buildings in the East built for rental purposes to provide Summer cooling and Winter humidifying for all tenants.”89 Air-​conditioning the tower necessitated a substantial increase in the building’s mechanical capacity. The original system, designed to air-​condition only from the basement through the fifth floor, could supply 162,000 cfm of air, cooled by refrigeration in the summer.90

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The two additional air-​handling units on the twentieth floor delivered 104,000 cfm.91 Thus, the tower’s air-​conditioning load, from the sixth through the thirty-third floor, was only about 65 percent of the load for the basement through the fifth floor, where the floor areas and volumes were larger.92 To air-​condition a typical tower office floor, cooled air from the units on the twentieth floor passed both up to floors above and down to floors below through a vertical supply duct in a “booster-​fan room” near the south end of the office tower, as shown near the south center in a plan of air distribution for a typical rental floor (fig. 69, a). From the vertical supply duct, the cool air passed to one of two fans, located next to each other, from which it circulated in horizontal ducts set in the ceilings of the offices on either side of the central corridor. The plan shows larger ducts on the west side, to respond to the afternoon’s higher cooling loads from solar radiation. Ducts decreased in size farther from the booster fan room; along the ducts were supply vents at intervals that decreased farther from the fan room, near the windowed corners. The air was discharged horizontally from these vents, specially designed outlets facing both out toward the building’s periphery and in toward its central spaces, as shown by tiny arrows on the plan (fig. 69).93 Multiple outlets permitted flexibility in partitioning offices, whose floor plans would change as tenants changed. Outlets were designed to deliver air at a low temperature, making it possible to reduce the amount of air handled, with a consequent reduction in duct size.94 As the engineer wrote, “Great care has been taken in the design of the air distribution in the spaces concerned, as one of the chief difficulties to date in air conditioning has been the successful avoidance of cold drafts.”95

a

E

W

After the decision in the late summer of 1931 to air-​condition the whole building, doubts about relying on the city for the air-​ conditioning system’s condenser water also led to the decision to install cooling towers on the roof above the thirty-​third floor. The need for cooling towers atop the structure inspired the redesign of its crown. There the cooling towers were screened within a triangular walled space, two legs of which formed a continuous

Figure 69 George Howe and William Lescaze (architects) and Leslie S. Tarleton (mechanical engineer), Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building, plan of air distribution for a typical rental floor, with horizontal ducts for offices on either side of a central corridor, and a return grille (a) in the west wall of the booster-​fan room. From Heating and Ventilating 29, no. 1 (July 1932): 29. © ASHRAE, www​.ashrae​.org.

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Figure 70 George Howe and William Lescaze (architects) and Leslie S. Tarleton (mechanical engineer), Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building, view from the northeast, showing the granite facing and corner window of the main banking room. Photo: Jeffrey E. Klee, 2006. Figure 71 George Howe and William Lescaze (architects) and Leslie S. Tarleton (mechanical engineer), Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building, view of the tower midsection from the east, showing vertical limestone-​ clad columns, horizontal matte-​brick spandrels, recessed aluminum window frames, and four bays of air intake louvers on the twentieth floor. Sandak, Inc., image no. 139159.

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folded billboard bearing on each outer face the initials PSFS, rendered in modernistic typography, with letters twenty-​seven feet high and fifteen feet wide (figs. 66 and 68, d). The signs had to be tall enough to enclose not only the cooling towers but also the fans that blew air over the towers’ banks of plates to cool condenser water flowing over them. The

background of the red neon signs was painted cobalt blue. This may have alluded to the cooling towers the signs enclosed. The east-​facing sign was angled to the north for maximum visibility from the Delaware River Bridge.96 The sign is visible from more than twenty miles on a clear night. The owners at first doubted the propriety of such a sign, in an era when companies presented themselves with their full names rather than in abbreviations. But since the society’s full name was undecipherable from any distance, the bank acceded to simply “PSFS.”97 The result was a dynamic asymmetry, consistent with the asymmetrical office tower and banking hall, with its curved glass northeast corner (fig. 70). The decision to air-​condition the tower was made when the frame had reached the twentieth floor, so any changes in this level due to its mechanical role were limited to its exterior. In the building as built, the architects changed this floor to include just one row of horizontally proportioned windows, set between brick spandrels thicker than those on the office floors above and below (fig. 71). Yet with the inclusion of two air-​handling units taking in fresh air on this level, air-​intake louvers appeared in place of windows in four bays of this floor’s east face. Thus Howe was true to his modernist conviction that a change in interior function should register as a change in exterior form. As he said in 1931, buildings of the new architecture “are conceived literally as living bodies with articulated skeletons, enclosing internal volumes filled with vital organs and covered with a thin skin or envelope. They are no longer sculptural forms carved in an inert mass of masonry, but breathing organisms with throbbing hearts, giant lungs, and mighty tendons. This is the architecture of natural order, with a new aesthetic ideal.”98

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Air-​Conditioning and Interior Design of the PSFS Building’s Banking Hall The inclusion of air-​conditioning affected the PSFS Building’s interiors far more thoroughly than its exterior. Howe and Lescaze’s modernist spaces are renowned for their elegant materials and meticulous detailing.99 The major public interior was the large second-​floor banking hall, whose principal elements are the sweep of its curved glass northeast corner window and the squared marble-​clad columns in two lines sixty-​three feet apart that support the sixth-​ floor trusses, which in turn uphold the nearly thirty office floors above (fig. 72). Polished marble, glass, and metal surfaces presuppose a sealed volume wherein air-​conditioning limits accumulation of dust. Unlike the Milam Building’s office interiors, those of the PSFS Building had acoustic tile as the visible ceiling below the structural trusses. When the hall was remodeled in 1949, its new ceilings were suspended below interstitial space in which to locate lighting and air ducts.100 Air was supplied through slots and baffles generally incorporated into the design of the lighting system. These slots are visible in figure 72, above the lower ceiling plane atop the columns. At first glance, the columns’ massive breadth appears consistent with their structural function. The eye assumes their full cross-​sectional area to be necessary for the great loads they carry. But the marble veneer enclosed not only a structural steel column but also a vertical air duct that provided a path for return air pulled into the duct through the intake slots.101 On each column the marble cladding alternates between dark Belgian black marble on one side and Carrara white marble on the next, like the black and white marble of the walls. The column faces’ alternating marble colors suggest that the column is partly hollow, not wholly solid. Thus the architectural

solution for the columns in the banking hall derives from both their structural role and their mechanical function. The banking hall’s most striking feature—its tall curved glass corner cantilevered over the glass-​fronted shops on the street level below— is perhaps the motif most associated with the International Style (fig. 70). Lescaze’s corner was plausibly inspired by the works of Erich Mendelsohn.102 But this expanse of glass in a tall space, as the most dramatic instance of the building’s overall large glass exposure, complicated the air-​conditioning, since it exposed the banking hall’s large volume to inordinate solar heat gain. Some early photographs show curtains drawn over the whole east wall, presumably to reduce the heat load and glare from the morning sun. The solar gain would increase the air-​conditioning load for this area relative to the rear of the second floor and to the inner first, second, and third mezzanines

Figure 72 George Howe and William Lescaze (architects) and Leslie S. Tarleton (mechanical engineer), Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building, main banking hall, looking northeast toward the curving corner glass wall, showing structural columns with vertical risers and alternate sides faced with polished marble, the original acoustic-​tile ceiling without downlights, and air diffusers in slots above the lower ceiling plane atop the columns. From Architectural Review 73, no. 3 (March 1933): 104. Photo: Richard T. Dooner.

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so much as compensate for that form’s thermal difficulties.

Figure 73 George Howe and William Lescaze (architects) and Leslie S. Tarleton (mechanical engineer), Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building, recording thermometer in ground-​floor show window. From Refrigerating Engineering 33, no. 103 (January– February 1937): 10. © ASHRAE, www​.ashrae​.org.

around its south and west sides, which were originally bank offices. Most of these spaces would have been warmed through midday and afternoon. So their hourly loads would be quite different from that of the banking hall (fig. 72). As with the banking hall and its rear mezzanines, north and east walls on the third, fourth, and fifth floors above “embody large exposures of glass so that the character of the load in an outside office differs greatly from that of an interior office with no exposure.”103 Yet all offices had to receive their quota of air, so a booster fan was installed to increase the cool air along the sunlit glass north and east walls. Thus the modernist preference for externally dynamic, asymmetrical glass-​enclosed volumes made demands on an air-​conditioning system that was to ensure uniform interior conditions whether near or far from glass walls. The system did not determine the exterior form 130

Air-​Conditioning Costs and Operations of the PSFS Building To attract tenants and keep them satisfied and enthusiastic, educating those who were not used to air-​conditioning was nearly as important to the building as the technology that controlled interior climate. The building’s marketing, through its rental agent, emphasized “the perfect comfort at all seasons, better health, greater efficiency of both employers and employees, fewer mistakes and the good impression the delightful air-​conditioned offices make on visiting customers.” To impress the thousands of people who passed inside daily, a large thermometer legible at a distance was placed in a ground-​floor window (fig. 73). It showed the comfortable indoor temperature on the twenty-​first floor and the outdoor temperature where observers stood. After the building opened, there was “on a hot day . . . always a group watching with fascination as the recorder show[ed] the change from July heat outside to May weather inside. . . . Tenants [had] in some cases started out to see customers, discovered how hot it was, and gone back and telephoned the customers to come and see them where they could talk in comfort.”104 The PSFS Building’s air-​conditioning, like that of the Milam Building, was praised as a boon to hay-​fever sufferers in autumn, when the regulated interior atmosphere reduced the allergy-​inducing pollen levels inside to less than 1 percent of the level in the outside air.105 This exemplified a national trend toward promoting air filtering and conditioning as a way to protect hay-​fever sufferers and asthmatics.106 This benefit was especially meaningful to James Willcox, who suffered from hay fever

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and whose estate, Pleasant Run, near suburban Berwyn, was not air-​conditioned; nor were any of the convenient hotels. For years, Willcox’s illness was so bothersome that he and his wife annually went to Europe during the height of the Philadelphia hay-​fever season. Yet in the last of his early autumns before he died, late in 1935, the seventy-​three-​year-​old Willcox could not go abroad, because his wife was ill in late August. Initially he stayed with her at home through the pollen season, but as soon as she improved, in September, he moved into the PSFS Building. During the day he worked at his desk, in the southeast corner of the main banking floor. At night he walked up one flight to a room that used to be a men’s lounge, where he lived and slept in the company of his valet. Only once, during a rainy spell one evening, did he try to leave, to see a movie at Nineteenth and Market. But the theater’s cooling system was shut off that night, and Willcox began sneezing so much that he disturbed the audience and had to leave. Afterward, he stayed in his building twenty-​four hours a day, seven days a week, and friends visited him there. The publicizing of this behavior heightened local awareness of the benefits of his building’s air-​conditioning.107 Once the air-​conditioned PSFS Building opened, in June 1932, tenants were “unanimous in their endorsement of this feature. With the building already renting at a rate more rapid than any other competing building in the city, the Society [was] congratulating itself upon its foresight in spending between $450,000 and $500,000 for refrigerating machines, dehumidifiers, ducts, and fans.”108 The system cost more than 6 percent of the building’s total cost of about $7,421,000, a notably lower percentage than at the Milam Building. In the summer of 1933, PSFS conducted an intensive

advertising campaign, featuring the building’s four distinct advantages: (1) central location, (2) excellent light, (3) convenient garage, and (4) air-​conditioning. Then a questionnaire was sent to a thousand Philadelphia businessmen as prospective tenants, asking them which feature most appealed to them. Ninety percent of those replying said that it was air-​conditioning.109 Over its early decades, the PSFS Building remained near fully rented. Even during the Depression, the office space was 92.8 percent occupied.110 In the late 1940s some firms had had applications for office space on file for as long as five years, because the tenant turnover was so slow.111 A major change in the PSFS Building’s operations came when it was transformed from a branch office into the bank’s head office. Daily traffic through the main banking hall increased from about 1,250 persons in 1933 to about 2,500 in 1949, with a related increase in tellers and other staff and in machines, all of which increased the cooling load. Originally, the general lighting was indirect, coming from incandescent lamps concealed above the long air-​conditioning baffles just beneath the ceiling. This approach yielded relatively few foot-​ candles at counter levels, so individual counter lamps provided local high-​intensity lighting (fig. 72). But by 1949, with the increased heat-​ generating human traffic, an effort to contain operating costs forced building managers to minimize the cooling load from artificial lighting. Also, in the banking hall, by then far more crowded, the original local lamps were occupying a disproportionate amount of valuable counter space. To reduce the air-​conditioning load appreciably, the owners disconnected the original general lighting, removed the counter lamps, and installed recessed lensed downlights in a new suspended ceiling integrated T he Fir s t A ir - Condi t ioned Ta l l Buil dings

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Figure 74 George Howe and William Lescaze (architects) and Leslie S. Tarleton (mechanical engineer), Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building, interior of the main banking hall, looking south, showing lensed downlights in the ceiling, installed in 1949. From United States Investor 60, no. 46 (12 November 1949): 51. Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, Delaware. Manuscripts and Archives Department, Box 88, Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Records, acc. no. 2062, Hagley ID: 20100223_085.

with diffusers for conditioned air (fig. 74). This transformed the ceiling’s original planar surface of acoustic tile (fig. 72). Reflected in the polished marble walls, these lights supplied thirty-​plus foot-​candles at counter height.112 As elsewhere, the visible architecture thus responded in part to the demands of invisible air systems. Although integrating light fixtures with air diffusers in the ceilings did not work as planned, “[t]he point which is historically relevant here is that in these combined diffuser/​ lamp types of installation, architects and engineers were working together to exploit the lost volumes of the ceilings and beginning to treat the ceiling-​surface as a multi-​purpose membrane of concealed power.”113 Transformation of interior architecture in response to air-​ conditioning would be a focus for innovative design for decades. It would preoccupy Frank Lloyd Wright, who took a different approach for the SC Johnson Company in Racine, Wisconsin, soon after the PSFS Building opened.

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Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Windowless” Buildings for SC Johnson Company and the Air-​Conditioned Tower Ch ap ter 6

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right’s capacity to surprise his contemporaries was vividly apparent in the later 1930s with the completion of Fallingwater in 1937 and his SC Johnson Company Administration Building in 1939, in Racine, Wisconsin, prior to his research tower for the same company, designed from 1943 and opened in 1950 (fig. 75). As innovative structural and spatial forms, Wright’s buildings for Johnson are unique works of modern architecture. Both have been extensively analyzed in terms of their structural design, especially Wright’s use of what he called the “dendriform,” or “lily pad,” column as the main motif of the administration building. He developed this principle in the form of the research tower as a treelike structure with a “taproot” foundation and central vertical trunk-​like core out from which its floors are cantilevered. Both buildings were conceived and realized as demonstrations of Wright’s lifelong ideal of an organic architecture, meaning modern construction that is analogous to a living form in nature. Less known in modernist historiography is the innovative system of heating and cooling that Wright devised for the Johnson buildings in collaboration with a series of mechanical engineers, equipment manufacturers, and SC Johnson as a client. The Johnson buildings’ mechanical systems were as central to their conception as their structure, since Wright’s

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aim was the creation of ideal spaces for office and laboratory work. The structural and environmental systems were related within Wright’s overall concept of his modern architecture as organic form, meaning all aspects of a building—spatial, structural, material, and mechanical—constituted a unity. This idea is dramatically conveyed by the great workroom for hundreds of clerical employees, mostly women, on the main floor, above and around which is a mezzanine with offices for department heads and junior executives, as shown in a view of 1939 looking southwest (fig. 76). Yet this canonical image had a broad context in its era’s thinking about air-​conditioning as a new constituent component and distinguishing mark of modernity in the built environment. The historical rhetoric surrounding Wright’s Johnson buildings is largely, though not wholly, uncritical, so a range of sources need to be compared to assess their innovations. The “Windowless” Office Building in the 1930s In the Larkin Building (discussed in chapter 1), Wright had been working with the concept of the sealed, air-​conditioned office building thirty years before the Johnson buildings. Yet by the 1930s the development of air-​conditioning systems in the United States had given rise to the idea of a “windowless office building,” 133

Figure 75 Frank Lloyd Wright (architect) and Westerlin and Campbell (mechanical engineers), SC Johnson Company Administration Building, 1936–39, and Research Tower, 1943–50, Racine, Wisconsin, view from the southwest, showing circular “nostrils” on the northeast and northwest sides of the administration building’s roof, with St. Mary’s Hospital in the background to the east. Courtesy SC Johnson, SCJ-11636-810. Figure 76 Frank Lloyd Wright (architect) and Westerlin and Campbell (mechanical engineers), SC Johnson Company Administration Building, interior of the main workroom, looking southwest, 1939, showing air-​supply ducts around the mezzanine parapet across the room. FLWA, photograph no. 3601.059. Artwork all rights reserved. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York).

a structure whose systems of artificial lighting and air-​handling enabled walls without windows. For Wright and his contemporaries, the SC Johnson Company Administration Building presented a prime opportunity to explore this novel type. As Wright said in 1937: “This 134

new Johnson building . . . is a highly developed synthesis of form and idea—more highly developed than has been possible in the past because it is a building without windowed walls. It consists of a great workroom breathing from above through two ‘nostrils’; a building having dignified character and appropriate proportions, so complete in itself that it should be in no way inferior in harmony to the ancient cathedral.”1 Upon its completion, Victor Walters, the mechanical engineer who installed its heating, ventilating, and cooling, wrote: “Basically the windowless office building presents a primary problem in air-​conditioning and heating, and since the design of the Johnson Building called for windowless construction, Mr. Wright developed his plans with several unique angles. Inevitably air-​conditioning becomes a fundamental consideration in modern building planning although the Johnson Building embodies features which may have a vital effect on the distinct trend toward windowless construction.”2 In the mid-1930s the idea of the windowless building dependent on air-​conditioning had

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migrated from its origins in factories to office buildings, and Wright’s design emerged in the context of this national experimental trend. By 1937 at least two well-​known examples of the windowless office building had preceded Wright’s building for Johnson. The closest to Racine was the National Aluminate Corporation’s headquarters at 6221 West Sixty-​Sixth Place, in Chicago’s Clearing Industrial District, opened in March 1937 but no longer extant (fig. 77). Founded in 1928 as the union of two earlier local firms, the corporation sold the ion sodium aluminate to treat water. It eventually made widely used water-​treatment chemicals for cities, railroads, and industrial power plants, specializing in materials for treating feed water for locomotives and stationary boilers. It also produced water softeners for domestic use and an automobile-​radiator cleaner.3 Demand for its varied products hardly subsided in the Great Depression, and the corporation did a record business in 1936, which was surpassed in 1937. Its new building was two stories in height, 135 feet wide by 100 feet deep. Its walls, with curved corners, were faced in white terra-​cotta with decorative bands near the top. Vertical motifs recalling piers accentuated the projecting mass of the central entrance. The building housed general and private offices, general and special laboratories for research, a lunchroom, a recreation room, a library, and other functions. The decision to build a new headquarters derived from the inconvenience of scattered private offices, laboratories, and general offices for the company’s two hundred employees, whose concentration was disturbed by whirring airplanes, rattling trucks, and other noisemakers in the huge surrounding industrial district.4 These conditions moved the company’s leaders to commission the new building, with

Ambrose C. Cramer as architect and Robert E. Hattis as consulting engineer. The client urged windowless construction with air-​conditioning for five major reasons. First, in the industrial district, nothing was to be gained from windows that would have to be kept closed to shut out noise, dust, and odors and through which the view was not inspiring. Second, in the company’s existing offices there was great discomfort from heat in summer and cold drafts in winter. In summer, windows increased the cooling load, and in winter, humidification was problematic because of condensation. Windows would thus handicap air-​conditioning, as they had in the PSFS Building. Third, while windows provided light, the inside light they provided was uneven and unreliable. When the sun shone, the glare was objectionable, and often the sunlight was inadequate or absent altogether. Fourth, to benefit from natural light from windows, buildings were designed to be shallow with respect to outer walls and often required light courts, bays, or other devices. This entailed costly exterior wall

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Figure 77 Ambrose C. Cramer (architect) and Robert E. Hattis (mechanical engineer), headquarters of the National Aluminate Corporation, 6221 West Sixty-​ Sixth Place, Clearing Industrial District, Chicago, 1935–37, now demolished. From J. T. Meek and Robert E. Hattis, The Modern Way to Job Concentration (Chicago: National Aluminate Corporation, 1937), n.p. Courtesy of the Canadian Centre for Architecture; photograph not attributed.

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Figure 78 Ambrose C. Cramer (architect) and Robert E. Hattis (mechanical engineer), headquarters of the National Aluminate Corporation, laboratory interior. From Compressed Air Magazine 45, no. 12 (December 1940): 6309; photograph not attributed.

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surface disproportionate to the square footage of usable floor space, increases in heating and cooling loads, and a waste of portions of the property not covered by the building. A windowless building could be made a solid square or rectangle with a minimum exterior wall surface and the greatest interior compactness. Finally, windowless construction could be 20 percent less costly than conventional windowed construction. Complete insulation and minimal heat loss or heat gain through glass areas meant substantial savings in heating and air-​conditioning operating costs. Hattis estimated that, were it not for the need to admit outside air for ventilation, the building could be heated in –10ºF weather by the heat from the lighting alone.5 To meet the client’s expectations, Cramer designed a building that he announced in August 1936 would be Chicago’s first wholly windowless air-​conditioned commercial structure.6 Housing offices and laboratories near the corporation’s factories, the building resembled

Wright’s for Johnson in its program and context. Both facilities had continuous insulated walls and occupied almost their entire sites, with no light courts. Yet National Aluminate’s environmental systems differed from Wright’s in several ways. First, its lighting was wholly artificial, with no skylighted ceilings or translucent glazing of the kind for which the SC Johnson building became famous. Artificial light was praised over daylight for its evenness and constancy as a means to enhance workers’ comfort and efficiency (fig. 78).7 As brightly lit rooms are more cheerful and facilitate speedier work with no loss of accuracy, high lighting intensities (twenty foot-​candles or more) were chosen.8 One visitor wrote: “Having always felt that an office without windows would be the nice way of being buried alive, the writer was amazed at the lack of interest he, individually, showed in this loss. After a few moments, the psychological effect was gone. Substituted was a refreshing quiet, the concentration provoking the restfulness of it all. No hot sunrays to dodge. No window blinds to follow the course of the changing sun.”9 Second, at National Aluminate, instead of SC Johnson’s emphasis on communal work halls, each of the private offices had a thermostat, and the temperature would be regulated to suit each person’s own needs. Each space had its own individual cooling system, so that ducts had the number of an office on them. Windowless construction and insulation reduced heat losses in winter, to the point where, with high heat gains for lighting and other internal sources, some rooms might require cooling while others required heating. Heat from electric lights in most spaces was more than enough to take care of much-​reduced heat losses through well-​insulated walls and roofs, even in extreme cold weather. With large

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heat-​producing devices and heat from lights and occupants, laboratories required cooling even in winter. Other interiors with no heat losses also required some cooling. Thus air-​conditioning had to (1) maintain variable temperature conditions required by the feelings and habits of occupants and (2) provide heating or cooling alternately due to variable conditions of use in spaces and to outdoor weather.10 To meet these criteria, the basement had two heating and cooling plants, each with its own extensive ductwork to serve half the building, although in an emergency they could be cross-​connected, so that either one could take care of the whole building (fig. 79).11 An elaborate system of individual ducts supplied each of the sixty-​three air-​conditioned spaces, and each duct had both a heating coil and a cooling

coil to respond to its room’s heating and cooling needs (fig. 80). Like contemporary geoexchange systems, each air-​conditioned space had a thermostat that either sent cold well water through the cooling coil designated for that space or circulated hot water through that space’s heating coil. Two wells about three hundred feet deep delivered 53ºF water to the cooling coils by means of electrically driven turbine pumps. The system could supply about ninety tons of refrigeration.12 Under maximum cooling conditions, the water’s temperature rose 20ºF after it cooled the air. Yet once warmed, the well water was not pumped to a cooling tower for reuse. Instead, after flowing through the coil, the water was discharged into the city sewer. The company thus paid for neither equipment to chill water nor cool water taken

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Figure 79 Ambrose C. Cramer (architect) and Robert E. Hattis (mechanical engineer), headquarters of the National Aluminate Corporation, basement plan, showing separate heating and cooling plants and ductwork for east and west sides. From Heating and Ventilating 34, no. 6 (June 1937): 32. © ASHRAE, www​ .ashrae​.org.

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Figure 80 Ambrose C. Cramer (architect) and Robert E. Hattis (mechanical engineer), headquarters of the National Aluminate Corporation, basement mechanical room, showing, in the distance at left, the blower serving the trunk line, on the ceiling; the supply plenum chamber, on the floor; and, above, individual heating and cooling coils and risers to individual rooms. From Heating and Ventilating 34, no. 6 (June 1937): 31. © ASHRAE, www​.ashrae​.org.

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from the city’s water system.13 But, as did NBC for its studios, it made an extraordinary investment in room-​specific controls. Its engineer noted, “There is probably more sheet metal duct work per cubic foot of building volume in this building than in any other conditioned structure serving a comparable purpose.”14 The system devised for the National Aluminate Corporation’s building received much notice among engineers and architects. In 1947 it was reported: “[T]en years of operation have proved the experiment to be a successful answer to the distracting problems of noise and dirt that are normally considered inevitable in the heart of a busy industrial district. That the general health and productivity of office personnel have improved in these quiet and pleasant surroundings is a certainty.” Also, “there [was] little doubt that the modern, clean, and efficient appearance of the building—both inside and out—[had] performed a public relations service that must be credited with more than a few product sales,” although this had

been a minor factor in promoting the building’s construction. Personnel turnover had decreased, and employees seemed to take pride in their company’s office. Thus it was not surprising when a postwar expansion took the form of an office addition incorporating equipment and construction details that were practically duplicates of the original building, which had been deemed an experiment.15 One known influence on the origins of the SC Johnson Administration Building was the earlier new windowless office building of the Hershey Chocolate Corporation at 19 Chocolate Avenue (Route 422) in Hershey, Pennsylvania, construction for which began in the fall of 1934 and was finished in the spring of 1936, after a public open house in December 1935.16 The building served for more than forty years as the corporate headquarters for Hershey Chocolate and was renovated in 2013–15 for continuing use by its operational offices. Its original innovative environmental design made it nationally prominent at the time of its completion. As Jonathan Lipman has recounted, in the spring of 1936 Herbert Johnson was seeking ideas for new facilities, and he had visited Hershey. Like his own company, it was privately held, and its founder’s concern for his workers’ well-​being was legendary.17 Johnson’s home and his office in the old SC Johnson administrative building in Racine were air-​conditioned with domestically scaled equipment from the Kelvinator Company, though this system he thought “would not be suitable for the new [SC Johnson Company Administration] building.”18 Initially, as Johnson recalled, there was no thought of a new office building. Instead, the plan was to remodel and expand an existing structure. In this period the company asked the local Racine architect J. Mandor Matson (1890–1963) to work on at least four schemes

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for expanded office quarters.19 As Lipman recounts, Johnson, on his return from Hershey, commissioned Matson to design a new office building that was to be “air-​conditioned, artistic, and uplifting.”20 By August the Chicago representative of the York Company had access to the Hershey building’s plans “and made complete plans of [Matson’s] scheme.”21 Carrier Corporation’s Chicago office also consulted on his designs and reminded Johnson in August, after learning that Wright had been commissioned in Matson’s stead: “For the past 3 or 4 months we have been assisting Mr. Matson in preparing the air conditioning layout for your new office building, and at the present time, have a complete set of drawings giving the sizes of duct work, outlet, air conditioning equipment, etc.”22 Ground was broken on Matson’s building in July 1936, but as Lipman recounts, a lack of enthusiasm for his design coincided with a recommendation to pursue Wright. Johnson visited Wright at Taliesin on 21 July and showed him Matson’s plans, which Wright dismissed, and he drew Johnson’s attention to the Larkin Building of thirty years earlier.23 On 23 July, Johnson wrote to Wright: “Although we have invested $4640 in the work of Architect Matson to date, I am today instructing him to discontinue his work and I am now asking you to proceed with plans and sketches of a $200,000 office building for us in Racine.”24 Thus, within days, Wright had won his largest recent commission. The SC Johnson Company Administration Building’s Heating and Air-​Conditioning Wright had initial plans for the new building in the company’s hands by 9 August 1936, within twenty days after his first meeting

with Johnson.25 He told his client that he was consulting with (unnamed) air-​conditioning experts.26 On air-​conditioning, Wright had the following to say: To me air conditioning is a dangerous circumstance. The extreme changes in temperature that tear down a building also tear down the human body. Building is difficult in a temperate zone, where you have extreme heat and extreme cold. . . . The human body, although more flexible, is framed and constructed upon much the same principle as a building. . . . if you carry these contrasts too far too often, when you are cooled the heat becomes more unendurable; it becomes hotter and hotter outside as you get cooler and cooler inside. After years of summering in Wisconsin and wintering in Arizona, he reasoned: “The less the degree of temperature difference you live in, the better for your constitutional welfare. If one may have air and feel the current of air moving in on one’s face and hands and feet one can take almost any degree of heat.” Discussing his passive cooling methods in hot dry or humid climates, Wright seemed to be speaking in opposition to the rhetoric of Carrier and similar companies: “Even in cold climates air conditioning has now caught on because the aim now is to maintain the degree of humidity for comfort within, no matter what is going on outside. I do not much believe in that. I think it far better to go with the natural climate than try to fix a special artificial climate of your own. Climate means something to man. It means something in relation to one’s life in it. Nature makes the body flexible and so the life of the

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Figure 81 Frank Lloyd Wright (architect) and Westerlin and Campbell (mechanical engineers), SC Johnson Company Administration Building, sectional perspective by Vernon Swaback, from Olgivanna Lloyd Wright, Frank Lloyd Wright (New York: Horizon Press, 1966), 157. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York).

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individual invariably becomes adapted to environment and circumstance.”27 Given the context of Wright’s statements, from his book titled The Natural House, he may have been speaking about private houses, since he included air-​conditioning in his tall buildings, including the nineteen-​story H. C. Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma (1952–56), which housed both offices and apartments. Yet Wright rejected air-​conditioning and instead proposed a system of natural ventilation for his unbuilt one-​story scheme of 1932 for the Capital Journal newspaper plant at Salem, Oregon, which he cited as the source of his dendriform-​ column design for SC Johnson.28 His client, editor George Putnam, had requested good ventilation but not air-​conditioning. As Wright described Capital Journal’s nearly all glass walls: “There [are] no expensive windows in this wall but free and effective ventilation is had by an offset at the ceiling and near the floor through which breezes may blow but rain cannot enter and dust is not likely to come.”29 By contrast, the SC Johnson building would be windowless and sealed. Yet Wright invoked the idea of interior climate rather than the term “air-​conditioning.” As he wrote to Johnson of the heating system modeled on East Asian radiant floors: “You make a natural climate instead of an artificial condition.”30 The building’s renowned structural and material innovations—the lily-​pad columns and the Pyrex glass tubing—both had environmental implications. The columns’ engineering had been developed by William Wesley Peters and Mendel Glickman, following Wright’s initial drawings.31 The column crowns, eighteen and a half feet in diameter, form the solid areas of the building’s roof, with the tubing originally placed between the column crowns to create the translucent ceiling. Tubing also

formed a tall clerestory above the brick walls around the mezzanine level. A corresponding band of tubing called a “horizontal rift,” in the lower wall, just below the mezzanine floor level, lit the space below the mezzanine gallery around the first floor (fig. 81).32 The total tubing was about forty-​three miles long, consisting of two-​inch- and one-​inch-​diameter tubes.33 As originally designed, this daylighting was to be the only lighting for the great hall. Environmentally, the roof had pluses and minuses. Unlike an ordinary roof, “the Johnson roof, with its insets of glass tubing in two layers, [let] in light, diffuse[d] it, save[d] many kilowatts of electric power.”34 Yet the ceiling could not be used for heating or air-​conditioning ductwork or any other horizontal utility lines. Also, the slender shafts of the columns, although hollow through their cores for drain pipes, could not, in most cases, be used for vertical distribution of heated air, as Wright had done with hollow structural concrete columns in his Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois (1905–9), and his Annie M. Pfeiffer Chapel for Florida Southern College at Lakeland (1938–41).35

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The Pyrex tubing played a dual environmental role. Patented by Corning Glass Works, Pyrex glass would not discolor and would resist extremes of temperature.36 In addition to forming the ceiling between column crowns, the tubing encircled the whole building at the top of the wall, forming a cornice. Both levels of horizontal tubing provided “just a warm glow of gentle light which eliminate[d] the necessity of any artificial lighting save on the darkest, gloomiest days.”37 On the upper level, an air space between inner and outer bands of tubing acted as a thermal insulator (fig. 81). Ideally, in the tubular bands, “three dead air spaces result[ed]—one in each tube and another wide section between the two layers of tubes.”38 If sealants worked, then the tubing not only cut down on heat loss in winter and heat gain in summer but also helped to prevent condensation in winter, often a problem in windowed buildings.39 The abundance of natural light reduced the cooling load from electric lights and cut their electrical load to 350,000 watts.40 To emphasize the natural light, photographs of the new workroom in 1939 were taken without artificial illumination (fig. 76). Some employees recalled having good natural light, yet others complained of glare, and so, as Wright advised, Aeroshades (hanging blinds composed of thin wood strips, then made by a Wisconsin company) were installed on the clerestory. Although he planned for no artificial light in the tubular glass, incandescent lights were inserted around the edges of the circular columns’ “pads,” between the ceiling’s upper and lower layers of tubing, and between the clerestory’s inner and outer layers.41 Another key factor for environmental controls was the brick wall’s construction. So far as possible, exterior and interior walls were of the same “Cherokee-​red” facing brick. The

walls consisted of three-​inch asphalt-​dipped cork insulation in the center, 1.5 inches of concrete on both sides, and 2.5-inch interior and exterior brick, dovetailed to bond with the concrete. Steel reinforcing rods ran vertically and horizontally in the cavities between the cork core and the exterior and interior brick surfaces, where concrete was poured.42 The walls had no cavities that could serve as spaces for running ducts or pipes, nor did the interior walls have outlets or registers for moving air. Yet since the walls were insulated and had no windows, there was “virtually no heat loss, which guarantee[d] low maintenance costs,” likely meaning low operating costs.43 Combined with the dead air spaces within and between the Pyrex glass tubes, the “not less than 3-in. of cork insulation in the outside walls and ceiling, plus the complete absence of doors or windows, with the exception of the protected main entrances, result[ed] in a building with a minimum of heat transfer, reducing the heating load in winter and the cooling load in the summer. Absence of doors and windows, the heavy cork insulation, and the air spaces in the light sections also insure[d] complete elimination of street noises.”44 Of course, in order to retain its insulation value, the glass tubing’s mastic joints had to remain completely weather tight. Samuel R. Lewis, the heating, ventilating, and air-​conditioning engineer for the later research tower, recalled, “Where the perimeter of one hollow tube touched the outsides of tubes above and below it, a special elastic non-​hardening cement is employed, similar to putty at the edges of conventional flat glass panes. There may be some occasional leakage of windblown rain between the tubes where the seal has failed, but this has not proved unacceptable.”45 Yet sealing of the glass tubing

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proved difficult. The administration building’s projected heat leakage was low, but, as built, it was not. In 1957 the top layer of tubes was replaced with rooftop skylights made of angled flat sheets of fiberglass in aluminum frames, and the bottom tubes that made up the ceiling were replaced with specially molded plastic sheets whose pattern of ribbing replicated the tubes’ profile.46 Installation of artificial incandescent lights in the ceiling between the upper and lower layers of tubing, and in peripheral clerestories, also affected the air-​conditioning. It was reported in 1940 that while the insulated walls and column crowns reduced heat loss and gain through these opaque surfaces, “the cooling load for summer operation was increased substantially by the installation of almost twice the usual wattage for lighting, but, with an occupancy load, the system functioned very satisfactorily.”47 Wright’s innovative choices for the great workroom’s structure and lighting led him to favor an unconventional heating system of radiant heat emanating up through the floor, as in his Usonian houses. But unlike the small Usonians, the Johnson Building’s great hall for clerical staff was 128 feet north-​south by 228 feet east-​west. The building’s original program included space for fifteen departments with 130 employees plus department heads. The building was finally planned to accommodate a 50 percent expansion of the workforce, to about two hundred employees, but by 1954 Wright’s mechanical engineer noted occupancy greater than five hundred.48 The main room would be the largest open area he ever built. To heat so large a space with hot water, as one might in a house, would have required high pressure and much energy to pump the water through its elongated courses of supply and return. Thus, for the Johnson Building, “it was decided to use 142

steam at sub-​atmospheric pressure. . . . There is less internal corrosion of the piping system with steam at less than atmospheric pressure, and there would also be considerable sediment and other foreign matter deposited in the pipes over a period of years if water was used.”49 This choice responded to the workroom’s twenty-​one-​foot-​high ceiling, which made it hard to heat the space via more conventional methods of convection (meaning warmed air) or conduction (meaning radiators).50 Instead, the heating came mainly from about 7,500 feet of welded galvanized wrought-​iron steam piping, with lines laid four feet apart in a nine-​ inch layer of gravel under the main floor.51 The steam came through piping laid in a tunnel from water-​tube boilers in the factory’s coal-​ fired boiler plant, located across north-​south Howe Street to the west of the administration building. The heating had to be adjustable in different parts of the large hall, to avoid overheating some areas while underheating others over the work day. Thus the room had six zones, thermostatically controlled and synchronized with the sun’s movements.52 Under the floor were five hundred feet of piping laid in the six zones: one small east-​central zone, one small west-​central zone, two large zones on the east side, and two on the west side.53 Each zone had two thermostats laid in the floor, which linked to an instrument in the basement that averaged their readings and operated a steam valve to hold the zone’s average floor temperature to between 60ºF and 75ºF.54 For the space above the heated floor, the term “air-​conditioning” did not refer to simple mechanical air cooling but rather to the total year-​round ventilation program, which included heating, washing, and humidifying fresh air in winter and cooling, washing, and dehumidifying air during the hot summer

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season.55 The building was air-​conditioned throughout, with fresh air drawn in through two circular ten-​foot-​diameter shafts, or “nostrils,” as Wright called them, symmetrically placed on the roof of the penthouse north of the great workroom (fig. 75). These shafts were the building’s only air intakes, each serving one of two zones for the air-​conditioning, one on the east and one on the west. Each zone had a compressor, cooling coils, fans, and controls. One engineer wrote: “The division of the building into East and West sections permits compensation for the relatively high sun effect encountered because of the large glass areas and the low flat construction of the roof,” which warmed differently through the day.56 Since each nostril served half of the building, each “contain[ed] air conditioning and heating equipment, and the air circulation distribution ducts.”57 Each nostril’s circular area was divided to house the equipment performing these functions (fig. 82). In winter, fresh air passed through a bank of preheating coils. This was mixed with a percentage of return air, after which the entire volume of air passed through the air washer and then over a bank of reheating coils before leaving via a Sirocco fan unit.58 Summer cooling and air-​conditioning similarly mixed fresh air from the outside with return air introduced from a pipe in the nostril. This mix was then passed over the dehumidifier and there cooled via coils using direct expansion of Freon as the refrigerant. This meant that the compressed Freon in coils would cool air directly, rather than chill water, which would normally be used to cool air. The cooled and dehumidified air was then passed through the washer before being blown into the ducts for passage to the interior spaces. The two Sirocco fans, one in each nostril, had a combined capacity to circulate 260,000 cubic

feet of conditioned air per hour. Two reciprocating refrigeration machines compressed the Freon-12 from a low-​pressure vapor to a high-​pressure vapor. After the refrigerant liquefied in the condenser, it then passed through an expansion valve into the evaporator, where it removed heat from the air passed over the evaporator coils. Each compressor had a refrigerating capacity of fifty tons.59 The two compressors were on the ground level at either end of the carport north of the great workroom (one on each side, corresponding to the nostril above) (fig. 83, b). Each compressor was visible through a plate-​glass partition, continually reminding employees of the company’s commitment to their comfort (fig. 84). Yet their location outside, in the carport, eliminated “all possibility of noise or vibration being transmitted to the office space.”60 Freon refrigerant lines ran from the compressors through

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Figure 82 Frank Lloyd Wright (architect) and Westerlin and Campbell (mechanical engineers), SC Johnson Company Administration Building, plan of “nostril,” showing the arrangement of heating, cooling, ventilating, and air-​conditioning equipment. From National Engineer 44, no. 1 (January 1940): 20. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York).

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service tunnels and up through the nostrils to the dehumidifying coils to cool incoming warmer air.61 At Wright’s insistence, presumably to maintain the unity that he thought was conceptually essential to the whole design, air movement involved few freestanding sheet-​metal ducts. Rather “the air distribution system [was] completely built into the structure by masonry ducts,” including both supply and exhaust plenums cast integrally with the concrete floors 144

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of the mezzanine around the great workroom (fig. 83, c, d), so that the ducts were “an integral part of the building construction.”62 Sheet metal was used only for various transition pieces. The masonry ducts supplied air “through specially designed outlets which deliver[ed] the air at a comparatively low level without noise or drafts.”63 Supply air grilles are visible on inwardly convex east- and west-​end brick balcony parapet walls of the lobby’s mezzanine (fig. 83, a; fig. 85). The convex brick screen projecting from the mezzanine’s north wall into the lobby shields a speaker, recalling the pipe organ that Wright once envisioned on the mezzanine’s bridge to the lobby’s south.64 The company and engineers praised the system. Although the building was only occupied from May 1939, the heating and air-​conditioning had operated from October 1938. With a floor temperature of 72ºF for heating, “the building was maintained at comfort zone conditions, the five [sic] control zones functioning in perfect coördination. The air distribution system [had] been balanced, and the original air volume calculations exceeded slightly in actual practice.” Most impressively, “[t]hough the cooling load was increased substantially by the installation of lighting of almost twice the design wattage, the summer air conditioning system, with an occupancy load, functioned satisfactorily.”65 It took “the air in at the top and circulate[d] it through the ducts to every room.”66 It “regulate[d] the humidity and [brought] the desired temperature quickly to the degree desired in any part of the room.”67 The building’s power machinery required a total of about 200 kw, mainly for air-​conditioning equipment, exhaust fans, and elevators.68 Wright’s building signified the company’s commitment to innovation. The firm had

weathered the Depression largely through its ability to recruit capable engineers who developed superior wax-​related products. As Samuel Johnson, Herbert’s son, said: We became a different company the day the building opened. We achieved international attention because that building represented and symbolized the quality of everything we did in terms of products, people, the working environment within the building, the community relations and—most important—​our ability to recruit creative people. When we get a really good person, he or she walks into that building and looks around, having worked for other companies, and suddenly comes to the conclusion that this place and this organization is interested in innovation, in new ideas and in the people who work in that enclosure. Over the years, we have been able to employ the most creative people who respond to that building. It’s been a very favorable thing for the company.69 In 1960, more than two decades after it opened, the building attracted seven thousand visitors a year, and the company believed it gave “a clear image of a corporation that dares to be different. For several years the company used the building in its trademark.”70 But the building’s environmental amenities were likely also intended and received as evidence of the company’s legendary concern for its workers. In April 1938 it was estimated that the heating and air-​conditioning would cost $50,000 of the building’s estimated total cost of about $500,000.71 In 1946, more than half a century after its founding, the firm had never had a labor stoppage. It had low absenteeism and, before World War II, an annual labor

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Figure 83 (opposite top) Frank Lloyd Wright (architect) and Westerlin and Campbell (mechanical engineers), SC Johnson Company Administration Building, plan at the level of the mezzanine (upper half) and ground floor (lower half), showing the location of (a) air supply grilles in the lobby and of (b) the compressor flanking the carport, and (left) section through great workroom, showing (c) the supply plenum for circulating air through the mezzanine floor and (d) the exhaust plenum. From AF 68, no. 1 (January 1938); graphic additions by author. Similar to FLWA, drawing nos. 3606.010 (plan) and 3606.016 (section). The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York). Figure 84 (opposite bottom) Frank Lloyd Wright (architect) and Westerlin and Campbell (mechanical engineers), SC Johnson Company Administration Building, compressor on the ground level, at end of the carport north of the great workroom, visible through plate-​ glass partitions. From National Engineer 44, no. 1 (January 1940): 14.

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Figure 85 Frank Lloyd Wright (architect) and Westerlin and Campbell (mechanical engineers), SC Johnson Company Administration Building, entrance lobby, looking northeast, showing two grilles for supply air ducts in the convex east mezzanine wall. The convex projecting screen in north wall at left shields a speaker. Courtesy of SC Johnson, SCJ-3858-57.

turnover rate of 1 percent. The Johnson plan for employee benefits included bonuses, pensions, continuing education, sick benefits, group life, medical, and dental insurance, and other services far beyond legal requirements even in then-​labor-​friendly Wisconsin.72 Employees had 146

“unusual security and continuity of employment, for it [was] against the policy of the company to lay off employees because of lack of work.”73 Distinctive was the program of profit sharing begun in 1917 and maintained annually, except for 1931 and 1932. As Herbert Johnson wrote to Congress in 1946, endorsing a resolution in favor of a federal tax program to encourage development of bonus payments to employees: “Profit sharing promotes co-​operation between labor and management and increases production through elimination of such strife.” The company hired an outside firm to survey workers’ attitudes and solicit concerns anonymously, including grievances about architectural issues, such as the lighting. As Herbert Johnson said: “[M]y father had the idea of bringing the employer and worker together. . . . [W]hen people get proper wages and proper working conditions they don’t feel the need to organize to fight for what they want.”74 Wright’s interior climate was keyed to both workers’ comfort and managers’ quest for efficiency. As a contemporary wrote: “[T]here are no windows to gaze through, drafts to distract, noises to disturb, glare to bring headaches, or shadows to bring eye-​strain and fatigue.”75 As the company’s treasurer and general manager, John R. Ramsey, who had worked with Wright, concluded: “[W]e believe the building fulfills Mr. Johnson’s ambition to extend the long-​standing company policy of doing everything in our power to bring

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comfort, efficiency, healthful surroundings and environment to every company employee.”76 The air-​conditioning system had been central to this aim. In a report issued after the first cooling season, in the summer of 1939, company executives claimed that employees were producing from 15 to 25 percent more work “through a more efficient arrangement of departments, more efficient desks, air conditioning, lighting, and other intangibles which have a direct bearing on efficiency of the workers.”77 On the air-​conditioning, all department heads agreed: “There is no doubt in our minds that during the summer months this can be credited with a large percentage of increased production over buildings without cooling.” The advantages of air-​conditioning, as enumerated in 1939, were manifold: (1) “Machine operation errors have been greatly reduced. (2) Absenteeism among the employees is reduced. (3) Hot weather fatigue was negligible during the last summer. (4) Daily production of work is practically constant regardless of outside atmospheric conditions due to controlled temperature and humidity within. (5) It is possible for employees to maintain a better personal appearance. (6) Employees put in more nearly a 100 percent working day.” A sealed building with washed air resulted “in an easier job of maintenance and a healthier place in which to work.” As at the Milam and PSFS Buildings, “during the hay fever season many . . . employees hated to leave the building, for during working hours they found great relief due to the air conditioning.”78 Thus was the new technology presented in the related terms of productivity and well-​ being, as these conjoined from a corporate perspective. The SC Johnson Administration Building is cited as Wright’s first imagined or built design that exhibited streamlined form, in two senses

of the term. Wright himself used the streamlining metaphor to describe his building, but he was citing the term after it had developed in contemporaneous discourse about design and architecture. From an art-​historical perspective, a streamlined aesthetic, meaning sleek forms that appear to offer the least resistance to airflow, was being developed for automobiles, railroad engines, and airplanes from the early 1930s. As Norman Bel Geddes wrote, “An object is streamlined when its exterior surface is so designed that upon passing through a fluid such as water or air the object creates the least disturbance in the field in the form of eddies or partial vacua tending to produce resistance.”79 Yet the term “streamlined” also more generally characterized an object or process that was either (a) reduced to essentials, lacking anything extra; (b) effectively organized or simplified; or (c) improved in appearance or efficiency, or modernized. It was likely this broader set of related meanings, which were akin to his concept of an organic architecture, that Wright invoked when he said of the Johnson building: “It was high time to give our hungry American public something truly ‘streamlined,’ so swift, sure of itself and clean for its purpose, clean as a hound’s tooth—that anybody could see the virtue of this thing called Modern. Many liked it because it was not ‘modernistic,’ but seemed to them like the original from which all the ‘streamlining’ they had ever seen might have come from in the first place. As a matter of fact, the word ‘streamlined’ had been first applied to buildings by the architect of this one.”80 Wright perhaps referred to his description dated October 1936, where he had implied that streamlining, like the European International Style, was a superficial stylization that did not fulfill his organic ideal of architecture as integrated form:

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Everyone interested in building uses the term “Modern Architecture.” Usually the term means something streamlined from the outside—that is to say something smooth and flat, all ornament omitted, the corners cut out for window openings and gas pipe railings put on wherever they will ride. The thought in the building does not change. “Modernity”—so called— is achieved as the new look of something old rather than the new look of something really new. Nevertheless, there is a type of thought-​built building that is modern because it is better in every way than the old building. A higher ideal of what a building should be is behind the conception, and a more complete science is behind the execution of the building. The ideal is organic character throughout; the suitable thing in the most suitable way, all considered.81 As Lipman has noted, among the important exterior design decisions that Wright made to introduce a streamlined aesthetic into the Johnson building was his shift of the penthouse’s geometry from a rectangular structure aligned with the main workroom below to a symmetrical trapezoidal volume with forty-​ five-​degree-​angles and rounded corners that extend out southeast and southwest from the circular nostrils (fig. 75). In the final plan, “Wright replaced the U-​shaped penthouse with a far more plastic form that acknowledges the circular shape of the mushroom-​column petals and links the carport to the main mass of the building. . . . The Johnson building’s profile is no longer static, but rather that of a sinuous creature—its skin stretched over living organs. An intimate fit has been established between the building’s interior spaces and its external form.”82 148

In addition, Wright rounded the corners of the main workroom, so that the rounded corners of the penthouse’s newly angled crowning masses would echo those of the larger mass below (fig. 75). Wright’s changes to both the penthouse’s and workroom’s exterior forms effectively extended the circularity of the crowning nostrils into the whole of the building below. In other words, the nostrils, which he cited as the functional focus of the windowless concept, became the keynote of the architecture’s larger streamlined aesthetic. These round emblems of the air-​conditioning system atop the tiered masses accorded with the reshaping of those masses. On the interior, the consistent circularity of the columns, the balconies, and even the furniture’s curved edges unified it all stylistically. But their family of rounded forms was also visually consistent with the fluidity of moving conditioned air as the innovation that redeemed a windowless interior as a comfortable workplace. Environmental Architecture for the SC Johnson Company Research Tower, 1943–50 Herbert Johnson first wrote to Wright about construction of a new laboratory in October 1943. Earlier that year Johnson’s director of research, Dr. J. Vernon Steinle, had produced a detailed proposal for new laboratories, to enable the company to dramatically expand its new product lines, both wax and nonwax. Steinle proposed that the laboratories be planned as a U-​shaped two-​story addition with a full basement around a court north of the administration building.83 Johnson noted to Wright: “[T]here will be a large amount of piping and wiring because of the nature of the work being done in the laboratories. The building should be air-​conditioned.”84 In 1936 Wright

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had proposed a tower for expansion, and he later claimed that Johnson revived this idea in their early conversation in 1943. Wright argued that a tower would eliminate corridors and provide more net usable space than a spread-​out two-​story building. He recalled that he “had seen several of the meandering, flat piles called laboratories, ducts running here, there and everywhere and a walkaround for everybody.”85 Wright and his assistants completed a first set of detailed plans by February 1944, with an exterior rendering to follow shortly.86 The tower was modified between these initial drawings and public presentation of the final project in March 1946. Wright’s assistants had nearly completed a definitive set of architectural and structural drawings by January.87 According to Lipman, final drawings, with mechanical plans, were largely done by the end of 1946, but construction did not begin until November 1947.88 Over this nearly four-​year design period, Wright worked with his Taliesin assistant Wesley Peters and Mendel Glickman as engineers for structural design, Samuel R. Lewis of Chicago for heating and cooling engineering, and superintendent Ben Wiltscheck, who had earlier been the administration building’s contractor. Lewis had assisted Wright with the mechanical systems at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo.89 Such consultants were paid from Wright’s fee. This enabled him to coordinate structural and mechanical choices to serve his architectural aims. He wrote to Johnson that “engineering, decorating and landscaping” were included in his fee, as he, unlike other architects, “always include[d] that extra service to protect the scheme of the building.”90 Wright wrote in 1939: “Creation must occur by single-​ minded mastery on the part of the creator of the building, and that alone is organic building. We cannot in organic building have a group of

specialists. . . . So I believe an architect should learn the principles underlying the installation of electricity, he should know what constitutes good plumbing, he should be able to invent and arrange and bring all this together as a complete organism. We are talking of an entity when we speak of an organic building.”91 As Wright stressed, the tower’s design would harmonize with the administration building in its structural concept. The tower’s floors, cantilevered off its central shaft, echo the idea of the administration building’s dendriform columns (fig. 86). The tower’s sole support would be a central tubular shaft, like the hollow upper shaft of the dendriform columns. Glass tubing would also follow from the earlier masterwork. As Wright tried to reassure Johnson at the outset: “No technicalities are involved because we use what we have already worked out and know all about.”92 A major effort was the design of the mechanical systems to rise through the main shaft. These would include not only steam supply and return for heating, direct and alternating electric current, and plumbing for hot and cold water, but also air-​conditioning ducts, illuminating gas (a synthetic mixture of hydrogen and hydrocarbon gases to get bright shining flames), distilled water, carbon dioxide or nitrogen, and compressed air for the laboratories.93 Steam-​supply and steam-return pipes were kept in a separate riser in the side of the stairway.94 Wright preferred the tower to the two-​ story-​loft laboratory because of the tower’s more efficient distribution of fluids through its shaft, which reduced the length of utility lines relative to a horizontally spread building of similar square footage. He argued that “a daylight research laboratory would be great hung to a tall central stack—say eighteen floors with direct access to the stack for retorts and heaters

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Figure 86 Frank Lloyd Wright (architect) and Samuel R. Lewis (mechanical engineer), SC Johnson Company Research Tower, section showing taproot foundation, basement “machinery room,” central air shafts, and penthouse for exhaust fans. From Engineering News-​Record 144, no. 4 (6 April 1950): 36. Similar to FLWA, drawing no. 4401.094. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York).

and vapor—dead air-​spaces between floors overhead to avoid the expense and ugliness of miles of ducts.”95 The shaft would be the tower’s vertical corridor, obviating a need for horizontal halls: “All laboratory space was then net and in direct connection with a horizontal duct-​ system cast in the hollow, reinforced-​concrete floors, all connected to the vertical hollow of the stack itself. . . . Like the cellular pattern of 150

the tree trunk, all utilities and the many laboratory intake and exhaust pipes run up and down in their own central utility grooves.”96 Steinle asked Wright to take the plans and “attempt to place the ‘vital organs’ of [the] structure as nearly in place as they can ever be.” He continued, “I will then advise you as to what ‘vital fluids’ are necessary to make these organs function. But I will be looking for those anatomical drawings showing the flow of the life blood and nervous system of our building.”97 More than half of the air-​conditioning load came from the solar effect on the glass. The rate of heat loss in winter would also be largely determined by the glazing, although the low angle of winter sun and the more direct transmission of its warmth through the glass eased heating loads. As one consultant wrote: “With very little stretch of the imagination this building can be compared with a human being;—it is tall, not very large around, and has considerable ‘skin’ area for the volume enclosed. Humans radiate or absorb heat through the skin, but unlike humans, the building cannot put on more clothing in the winter to keep out the cold. All of the cold penetrating into the building must come thru the ‘skin’; therefore, if we can keep the ‘skin’ warm, the building will be warm.”98 This required a large square footage of steam heating pipes along the low parapet walls on each floor to compensate for the heat lost continuously through the glass above. The problem of heating would be compounded by the windows’ height of nearly thirteen feet, from the brick parapet on one main floor up to the next main floor, past the intervening mezzanine (fig. 87). To limit heat loss, the tower, unlike the administration building, would have a second layer of one-​quarter-​inch-​thick plate glass set three inches inside the Pyrex tubing to help insulate the laboratory floors.99 The plate

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glass was pivoted so that it could be opened for cleaning, since the laboratories produced fumes that condensed on and fogged the glass walls.100 Low winter temperatures on the glass’s inner face cooled the air along the glass, setting up “down draft” just inside the windows. This unusual condition demanded supplementary radiant heat supplied from hot-​water pipes for fin radiators embedded in the circular brick parapet walls on the outer face of each mezzanine floor near the glass (fig. 87, a).101 In the final design for the research tower, Wright “actually planned [that] several phases of the air conditioning system would become an integral and necessary part of the construction.”102 Because of the glass exterior, the four quadrants experienced peak heating and air-​ conditioning loads at different times of the day. Thus the central shaft was originally projected to contain a separate riser for hot-​water and cool-​air supply and return in each quadrant.103 The final design, however, had only one central air-​supply plenum but two exhaust plenums on opposite sides, as seen in Wright’s plan for the structural core of a typical floor (fig. 88). In this drawing, south (the direction of the administration building) is to the left. Both vertical support and lateral bracing for the whole tower would depend on the mass of the central shaft alone. Its diameter was to support the square main floors (forty feet on a side, ca. 1,260 square feet in area) and the circular mezzanine floors (thirty-​eight feet in diameter; ca. 900 square feet in area). The plan shows how the central supporting core is divided into five separate shafts, or risers, that, with their mutually supporting concrete walls, form an irregular rounded shape: (1) the central supply plenum for warm or cool air, (2) a circular shaft housing the elevator, (3) a U-​shaped shaft with the fire stair, (4) a circular toilet room with a U-shaped

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pipe chase toward the central shaft, and (5) two exhaust plenums. The shaft also contained nearly two dozen supply pipes for the varied utilities that serviced the building, but these pipes (not drawn in plan) were set around the perimeter of the shaft and separated from its fresh airflow by sheet-​metal partitions. To free work areas, these central-​shaft “pipelines serving plumbing, heating and air conditioning, and all apparatus supply needs [were] confined to a minimum of space. Direct take offs at each of the fourteen operating floors eliminate[d] the complex hookups usually found in laboratory buildings. More than 1700 valves [were] used in tower service lines.”104 A construction photograph from the south shows these shafts (fig. 89). Cantilevered out from this core, the floors were open, permitting flexible arrangement of laboratories. As Wright told Johnson:

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Figure 87 Frank Lloyd Wright (architect) and Samuel R. Lewis (mechanical engineer), SC Johnson Company Research Tower, partial section showing (a) radiant heating panels, (b) floor supply plenums, and (c) an exhaust plenum. From Engineering News-​ Record 144, no. 4 (6 April 1950): 36; graphic additions by author. Similar to FLWA, drawing no. 4401.083. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York).

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Figure 88 (opposite) Frank Lloyd Wright (architect) and Samuel R. Lewis (mechanical engineer), SC Johnson Company Research Tower, structural diagram of a typical tower floor, initialed by Wright on 1 April 1946, showing (1) supply, (2) elevator, (3) fire stairs, (4) toilet, and (5) exhaust plenums. FLWA, drawing no. 4401.066; graphic additions by author. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York).

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“We want a building so good for its purpose and so much better adapted to it in every way that no business man could ever understand how we arrived at it.”105 As the mechanical plenum, the tower’s shaft was difficult to design. The tower as a whole was the first large cantilevered structure to be built with a hollow concrete core, providing the first practical test of Wright’s structural idea. At 156 feet high above the ground, it was then “the tallest building ever built without foundations directly under the side walls. Because the base of the tower is not visible from nearby streets, only those who enter the courtyard around it can appreciate the unorthodox design of the tower, which, because it dwarfs its supporting column, almost seems to hang in the air.”106 Plans show that the central shaft was thirteen feet across its narrowest diameter on the ground floor. The distribution of four concrete shafts around the central one ensured that the tower’s dead weight would not be eccentrically loaded. The shafts carried the whole eight-​thousand-​ton building on walls that varied in thickness from seven to ten inches.107 A contemporary noted, “while engineering calculations for this type of structure might appear quite simple, in actual practice they are not—there are no handbooks or tables to use.”108 If the clustering of the shafts served a dual purpose of structural support and air handling, then the same functionality obtained in the design of the floors. As one account noted, “the integration of the construction and air conditioning in the tower resulted from the cantilever principle that Wright used in the design.”109 Another went further, saying that Wright “included air conditioning systems as an integral part of the construction. Instead of requiring strong support, as is frequently the

case, the design of the several systems actually [lent] strength to the structure.”110 Each floor consisted of a separately poured lower slab and upper slab, with the hollow space between forming a plenum for distribution of fresh air (fig. 87). Piping and conduits were set in the hollow core atop the lower slab. Such use of each floor’s hollow depth was to avoid suspended ceilings below, where lateral utilities were normally installed and reconfigured independently of the structure. Hollowing the floors to include utilities served Wright’s theoretical ideal of an organic architecture as the integration of all the parts, structurally and spatially. Yet to achieve these refinements meant a protracted, hence costlier, building process. The intricate arrangement of shafts in the tower’s core followed from the final scheme for air-​conditioning. Lewis designed the mechanical systems so that the tower would be heated and cooled with air fed up its central shaft from air-​handling units in the basement “machinery room” to the tower’s north, as shown in a section of the built tower (fig. 86). This room also held a York 375-ton centrifugal compressor, which supplied Freon for chilling water that in turn cooled the tower’s air.111 Fresh air near the ground was drawn through a filter into the basement machinery room. During the winter, the air-​handling unit heated the filtered air with coils carrying steam from the factories’ boilers to the west. Air was humidified as well as heated to 65ºF. In summer, outside air was not only cooled to 60ºF but also dehumidified. A fan at the basement level propelled the air into the central core’s supply shaft. There would “be no recirculation at any time and . . . the amount of air supplied [would] exceed the amount exhausted so that the building at all times should be under a very slight pressure.”112

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Figure 89 Frank Lloyd Wright (architect) and Samuel R. Lewis (mechanical engineer), SC Johnson Company Research Tower, construction, June 1948, view from the south, showing (1) supply, (2) elevator, (3) fire stairs, (4) toilet, and (5) exhaust plenums. Courtesy SC Johnson, SCJ-13037-45; graphic additions by author.

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Warmed or cooled air blew from the shaft through plenums cast in the tower’s floors. It then passed to work areas through ceiling diffusers of which each was combined with a lighting fixture, designed by Wright for the tower (fig. 90). There were twenty-​four diffusers on each floor. Air was exhausted through two fourteen-​inch square grilles at the base of the core’s wall, on the opposite northwest and southeast sides of the central supply plenum of each floor, linked to the two exhaust shafts (fig. 87, c; fig. 88, 5; fig. 89, 5). Certain experiments conducted by SC Johnson’s chemists and engineers required fume hoods to vent contaminated air and noxious odors. To move air differentially through these spaces, pressures varied on each floor and were controlled by automatic dampers and exhaust grilles. But the fume hoods did not have a separate exhaust system. The main system

combined vitiated air from all laboratories and fume hoods. This was then a legal practice, though it was later prohibited in order to lessen the danger of combustion or explosion.113 Two exhaust fans on the tower’s top (fifteenth) floor drew used air up from occupied spaces and forced it out the tower’s roof.114 Not only was exhaust air not reused, but heat was not recovered before the air was expelled, as lack of heat recovery was typical of the period.115 When the tower opened, in November 1950, three years after building began, the tower itself, its courtyard, and their connections to the administration building had cost $3.5 million, or about five times the original estimate.116 In terms of building codes, the most serious early problem was the lack of a sprinkler system. Wright had objected to the incongruous appearance of sprinklers on the ceilings. Johnson’s fire-​ insurance company agreed to insure the tower without sprinklers for a high premium, yet later a system was installed.117 Concern for evacuation in case of explosion led the company to ban combustible material from the tower, inconveniencing chemists, who worked with combustibles elsewhere. In the 1970s, firewalls were added to provide fire-​resistant zones on each floor for employees who might be unable to evacuate down the stairs.118 Photographs of the working laboratories published at the time of their dedication show the openness of the cantilevered floors, with the curvature of the mezzanine echoed in that of the glass tubing, especially as it turned a corner (fig. 90). In the minds of some researchers, the spatial openness promoted interaction. For others, the cantilevered floors were isolating.119 The images have a surreal aura, accentuated by the small number of people visible in them and by the glass tubing, which made it impossible to see out. This impression

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of solitary research was not fictive, in that only about fifty people actually worked in the tower when it opened, or about three on each floor.120 The glass walls enveloped the scientists in a translucence that both illuminated the interior and isolated it from direct visual contact with the outside. The glass tubes were originally joined with Neoprene strips that functioned as caulking. Yet these gaskets failed when the Neoprene hardened, and leaks were a continuing problem.121 Even when water leaks were controlled, the tower’s unprecedented walls of glass tubing were unable to keep out winter cold and yet trapped summer solar radiation to the point where the mezzanine levels were oppressively hot. More staff and equipment also increased air-​conditioning loads. Light-​ refracting tubes produced so much glare that researchers were issued sunglasses until curtains were installed inside some windows.122 Counterbalancing the problems was the tower’s success as a symbol of corporate commitment to innovation. It also became a civic landmark that reminded Racine of the company’s commitment to stay there. At its opening, the company proclaimed that, like the administration building, the tower, “in which beauty and function are so spectacularly combined, [would] prove an inspiration to the men and women who work[ed] in it.”123 As one employee recalled in 2009: “Environmentally, it was a terrible building, with heavy heating bills in winter and heavy air conditioning bills in summer.” Yet “there was a real pride in working in the Tower. There’s nothing like it in the world, and we were working in it.”124 The need for expanded research facilities, combined with the tower’s difficulties, led to the decision to close it in 1981 and to move the labs and some administrative offices into the seven-​story former St. Mary’s Hospital building one block to the east in 1982

(fig. 75).125 Wright thought that the tower would follow from the administration building’s ideas, but as he wrote to Johnson at the outset: “A good building isn’t like anything else. It is never a perfected thing because it is a pioneer never really completed if it is a great building. Only the petty routine job is ever finished. And that is finished because it was finished so very long before it was ever started that it is now only for dead ones.”126 Wright was, in part, deflecting criticism of the earlier administration building, whose experimental construction had resulted in agonizing delays, high costs, and unresolved problems with the heating and cooling within the envelope of glass tubing. But in both Johnson buildings he achieved an integration of novel mechanical systems into the architecture’s spatial, visual, and structural form. His streamlined surfaces visually convey the

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Figure 90 Frank Lloyd Wright (architect) and Samuel R. Lewis (mechanical engineer), SC Johnson Company Research Tower, view of laboratory floor showing air diffusers in the ceiling. Courtesy SC Johnson, SCJ-10373-810.

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otherwise invisible importance of moving air. Other architects had developed the windowless office building, but they often created, as for the National Aluminate Corporation, masonry shells with no natural interior light. In the Johnson buildings, Wright reinvented the windowless type, creating workspaces that were better illuminated and apparently more open to the outdoors than many windowed buildings. His client, Johnson, had provided the impetus to devise optimal air-​conditioned interiors. But Wright reinterpreted that aim to create unprecedentedly inventive architecture, and his integration of mechanical systems into his aesthetic inspired such later modernists as Louis Kahn. Kahn was reportedly much moved by his first visit to a Wright work, the SC Johnson Administration Building, in the fall of 1959, when Kahn was creating his influential solution for a laboratory structure, the A. N. Richards Medical Research Building at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia (discussed in chapter 8).127 Wright’s Rogers L acy Hotel Project, 1945–47: Windowless Translucence Wright’s penchant for experimenting with glass as a translucent envelope led to his unbuilt design for a high-​rise hotel in Dallas, made for a group of investors headed by Rogers E. Lacy, a project that began in late 1945 and ended with Lacy’s death in December 1947.128 The Lacy Hotel was to be air-​conditioned, representing a national trend for this building type. As of 1937, only 0.5 percent of rooms in larger American hotels and only 10 percent of their public spaces were air-​conditioned. Yet by the early 1960s, after a postwar boom in the construction of new hotels, more than 60 percent of US hotels had at least some air-​ conditioning.129 Lacy’s was to be Dallas’s first 156

modern high-​rise hotel and “the nation’s first postwar luxury hotel,” a variation on the windowless skyscraper whose architectural effect depended on air-​conditioning.130 In its combination of new materials, spatial form, and mechanical scheme, the Lacy Hotel project went beyond the Johnson Research Tower, whose design proceeded in the same years. Both projects preceded Wright’s H. C. Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma (1952–56), also air-​conditioned.131 Wright’s scheme developed through July 1946, and the definitive preliminary set of plans is dated 18 August (fig. 91).132 Lacy first saw them on 21 August and liked them very much, although he decided to wait to build.133 The lowest twelve stories would occupy the entire square site, two hundred feet on a side. Above these would be a penthouse of six stories in the southeast corner. Near the east side would rise a slender tower of twenty-​nine stories, making forty-​seven floors in total. The twenty-​nine-​ story tower above would contain residential apartments with glass walls of diamond-​shaped panes five and a half feet high, four and a half feet wide. Each pane would include an inner and an outer surface of eighth-​inch-​thick plate glass, with a quarter-​inch-​thick central translucent plastic sheet.134 Wright asserted: “This will stand up against all weather, cold or hot, and provide a shadow-​proof translucence without transparency. The rooms will let in a wall of daylight unless the occupant wishes to draw the curtain against the outer wall. In each room there will be several louvres 20 × 30 inches to permit a look outside should anybody be so foolish as to want it.” Outer walls of each floor would project four inches beyond those of the floor below: “From this I will get my effect of texture, that of iridescent fish scales. The slight projections will cause the glass to

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dry immediately in the event of rain. It makes the glass drip-​proof and stainproof. There will never be need of cleaning or otherwise treating the outer walls.”135 For his part, Lacy admitted: “My clients were afraid a windowless hotel would be forbidding.” Yet he came around: “I believe we have conquered this. The Lacy Hotel will sparkle like a jewel.”136 Like the translucent Johnson tower, the Lacy Hotel’s windowless residential tower would be centrally air-​conditioned. As in the Johnson buildings, in the later Price Tower as Wright originally planned it, there were to be no ducts, because “spaces between floors and walls [would] serve as conduits for the made weather.”137 The main spatial and structural feature for the air-​conditioning system would be an enormous vertical exhaust vent opening 350 feet above street level. The vent was likely sized to serve as the main exhaust stack for the two underground levels of automobile garages. Wright was concerned about the vent’s position, as his associate William Wesley Peters vetoed a suggestion that it be moved to relocate elevators.138 Wright wrote: “I like the impression of soaring height created by the outward trend of all the glass wall shells contrasting with the inward slope of the heavy masonry shaft. You see there is no mass to consider except the great vent shaft which cleans out the whole building and keeps it clean. That great masonry mass also stabilizes the entire

Figure 91 Frank Lloyd Wright (architect), Rogers Lacy Hotel project, Dallas, Texas, perspective by John H. Howe from the northeast, with east-​west Commerce Street on the right and north-​south Ervay in the foreground, dated 18 August 1946. FLWA, drawing no. 4606.001. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York).

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structure enabling us to rise fifty or sixty stories without too much vibration—if any. . . . The usual vibration of a fifty-​story building would be here nullified by the masonry vent shaft if not wholly eliminated.”139 The Lacy Hotel’s huge stack not only served as a capacious exhaust vent for the air-​ conditioning system but also as a structural anchor for the steel cantilevered tower, bracing it against lateral wind loads.140 The outward taper of these glass surfaces was countered by the inward slope of the massive concrete vent stack, whose crowning prow pointed eastward and, as seen from below, up in an acute profile. This monumental feature marked the

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air-​conditioning system in a region that was then avidly adopting the new technology (see chapter 4). The continuous iridescent glass walls contained spaces that depended on an internal flow of air represented by the great vent, whose towering angular concrete mass would have defined the hotel on Dallas’s skyline. If Wright’s Lacy Hotel had been built, it would have been among the first major realized glass-​walled towers, the signature type of postwar midcentury modernism. But that distinction belonged to a series of other projects built by American architects slightly later, all of whom struggled with how best to combine large glass walls with air-​conditioning.

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Air-​Conditioned Glass Buildings in the Mid-​Twentieth Century Ch ap ter 7 Wright’s buildings for SC Johnson were related to, yet conceptually and stylistically distinct from, modernist American architecture of the mid-​twentieth century associated with the then-​dominant International Style. But in terms of air-​conditioning, Wright’s work shared with its contemporaries the challenge of managing interior climate within an architecture of glass surfaces. Defining images of midcentury architecture feature the steel-​ and-​glass modernism of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill; Pietro Belluschi; and others. Their aesthetic of glass walls forced their collaborating engineers to develop approaches to air-​conditioning that were visually, spatially, and functionally compatible. Glass towers such as theirs were unlike the interwar tall buildings that were still largely enclosed in masonry and had discrete window openings. Even the PSFS Building was as much an essay in brick, limestone, and polished granite as an enclosure of glass. This chapter revisits the midcentury modernist canon of the tall building from the perspective of how mechanical systems enabled the new style by creating habitable interiors behind glass walls. Accomplishing this feat of controlled environments within a context of nascent technologies was challenging.

q

The First Postwar Modernist Tower: The Equitable Building, Portl and, 1943–48 Before air-​conditioning became prevalent in postwar glazed apartment buildings, its use grew in office buildings. Periodic surveys of larger office buildings in the United States and Canada, including both retrofitted and, over time, new buildings, found air-​conditioning in 10 percent of buildings in 1941, 16 percent by 1951, and 30 percent by 1955.1 By 1956 Charles Fenn, vice president of Carrier, claimed that “[v]irtually every major office building constructed since World War II had full air conditioning,” including sixty new structures in New York City alone.2 The earliest major realized glass-​and-​metal tall building in the United States or elsewhere was Pietro Belluschi’s Equitable Building in Portland, Oregon, designed from 1943 and opened in 1948 (fig. 92).3 Among the most aesthetically and materially innovative works of its time, it was also mechanically progressive in its approach to air-​conditioning and related energy and water needs. According to Meredith Clausen, the Equitable Savings and Loan Association from the later 1930s wanted a new building on a half city block that it owned in Portland’s downtown, at 421 SW Sixth Avenue, on the southwest corner of the

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Figure 92 Pietro Belluschi (architect) and J. Donald Kroeker (mechanical engineer), Equitable Building, 421 SW Sixth Avenue, Portland, Oregon, 1945–48, view from the southeast. Photo Art Studio, Portland. Equitable Savings and Loan Association Collection, Oregon Historical Society, Portland, box 5, mss 2353.

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intersection with Stark Street, with its broad east flank on Sixth Avenue extending south to Washington Street. Equitable, then led by its chairman, Ralph H. Cake, as Belluschi’s client, was an organization that stressed regional commitment and savings education as a public mission. As Belluschi wrote of postwar office buildings in 1943: “Our assumptions were

affected by the peculiar circumstances found in our northwest region—cheap power and tremendously expanded production of light metals for war use, which will beg for utilization after the emergency.”4 He also explored sealed double-​paned windows to minimize heat loss, and individual air-​conditioning units under windows. To find a new way to minimize cooling loads, Belluschi studied heat-​absorbing glass, whose green tint addressed the problem of glare. He focused this research on the design of the Equitable Building from January 1943 to the fall of 1945. After the politically connected Cake took the plans to Washington, DC, and obtained the first permit for construction of a large commercial building in the country after World War II, site clearance began in May 1946, and the building opened on 1 January 1948. Standing on a plot two hundred feet long by a hundred feet deep, the new building had twelve full rentable stories above the street, rising to two hundred feet, or just below the city’s height limit. Since the building’s length of two hundred feet matched its height, the broad east elevation was a perfect square. Its rectangular volume had eleven bays along the main street wall and was three bays, or sixty-​two feet, deep through its full height, with a two-​story portion to the site’s rear, on the west. The structure began visibly at the sidewalk with freestanding squared piers of the high-​strength reinforced concrete used for the whole frame. With the exception of the ground-​floor piers, clad in solid, richly grained polished pink marble, exterior piers and floor beams were clad in silvery rolled aluminum panels, one-​quarter inch thick. In each bay the concrete sill above the floor, mandated by code, was clad with dark green cast aluminum. It was the country’s first all-​aluminum-​clad building. Above shop

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windows set back from the piers on the street and mezzanine levels, the walls were rigorously planar, with sills, moldings, bolts, hinges, and other details projecting no more than seven-​eighths of an inch. The structure framed the glass in the same plane, unlike a curtain wall, with glass set forward of the structure, as in the later UN Secretariat or Lever House. The introduction of heat- and glare-​ resistant-​glass windows in the Equitable Building highlighted the role that air-​conditioning had played in the development of double-​ paned windows since the 1920s. In winter, air-​conditioning provided humidification, but in buildings with single-​pane windows, this resulted in condensation on the glass’s inner surface. This challenged glass and window manufacturers to control condensation of water vapor on glass through a wide range of room temperatures. In 1934 Libbey-​Owens-​ Ford Glass Company began to produce Thermopane, a type of double glazing that reduced heat loss through windows by about 50 percent and prevented inside frost and condensation in cold weather. Two panes of glass were fitted to each window sash, with a dehydrated air space in between to reduce the flow of heat and cold. The technology developed until by 1950 the glass industry produced a variety of heat-​ absorbing polished plate glass that reduced glare. In the Equitable Building, Belluschi worked with the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company to manufacture large, seventy-​square-​foot sheets of its Solex, the first polished plate glass that both absorbed heat and reduced glare. He was compelled to use a sea-​green tint, the only nonclear color available.5 Among Belluschi’s collaborators was a mechanical engineer, J. Donald Kroeker, whom Belluschi and his client requested to design what was then known as a reverse-​cycle

heating and cooling system, or heat pump, which performs a sort of reverse refrigeration (fig. 93) (discussed in the appendix). The client, Cake, reportedly knew of the advent of heat pumps in England and requested such a system for his building as the first of its kind in the United States. Kroeker and Belluschi collaborated on a version of it for the Oregonian newspaper building in central Portland, also opened in 1948. This and the Equitable featured the world’s two largest such installations.6 While air-​conditioning uses a refrigerant to convey heat from indoor air to outdoor air, a heat pump uses a refrigerant to convey heat from outdoor air or underground water to indoor air. A heat pump uses a refrigerant to warm, rather than cool, indoor air. Since the cycle of the heat pump reverses that of ordinary refrigeration, the same equipment can be used for both heating and cooling, with adjustable valves determining which function the unit performs. In summer, the system can function for air-​conditioning by reversing the flow of the refrigerant. The heat pump’s popularity was limited, not for mechanical but for economic reasons. In order to produce a given quantity of heat for a building, it was less expensive to burn coal, oil, or natural gas directly than to buy electricity for a heat pump to produce the same amount of heat. In other words, in a relatively cold climate, a huge quantity of costly electricity would be needed to adequately warm a building with a heat pump. However, the economics of heat pumps were more advantageous in moderate climates, where the heating load in winter would approximate the cooling load in summer. In such a climate, the same equipment could operate year-​round to adequately heat and cool a building. If the winters were not so cold, then the cost of electricity for the heat A ir - Condi t ioned Gl a ss Buil dings

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Figure 93 Heat pump for summer cooling (top) and winter heating (bottom). From AF 85, no. 5 (November 1946): 161. Photograph by Roger Sturtevant; drawings not attributed.

pump would ideally approximate the savings accrued from not having a conventional heating system with separate equipment. A heat pump’s economic viability also depended on its locale’s having a relatively low cost per kilowatt hour of electricity. In the Equitable Building, the concept of the heat pump was viable because the Pacific Northwest then had both an intermediate climate and a low cost for electricity. Also, as a large consumer of current, a heat pump for such a major building received the benefit of reduced electric rates. Finally, a heat pump could be coupled to storage tanks of water, from which it could draw heat at any time or in which it could store heat for future use. This storage feature allowed the heat pump to use current during those daily periods when the utilities were not supplying their maximum output, such as at night, when off-​peak electric output was sold at lower rates. Thus, low regional electric rates, reduced rates for large-​ scale consumption, and further reductions for off-​peak power use combined to make the heat pump financially competitive with coal- or oil-​ fired equipment in heating a building.7 The engineers described the Equitable Building as the country’s first “non-​utility office building to use the heat pump” and “the first completely air-​conditioned building in the Pacific Northwest.”8 The reversible heat pump and refrigeration system provided year-​round air-​conditioning, with automatic switching over from heating to cooling and vice versa as needed. The building took a pathbreaking risk in having no conventional boiler to provide 162

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steam heating and no connection to an external municipal steam system. Cooling the building’s 212,000 square feet in hot summer weather (including temperatures over 95ºF and high outside dew points) required a normal cooling capacity of about 530 tons. Because Portland’s winter climate is relatively mild, the normal heating need was close to half this amount, equal to about 300 tons of refrigeration, with local temperatures between 10ºF and 65ºF. Thus a refrigeration system that in summer had a 530-ton cooling capacity would, if reversed as a heat pump, have ample capacity to heat the Equitable Building without the need of conventional steam heating.9 During the system’s first full winter of operation (1948–49), one of the worst on record, the heat pump did the job at a lower cost than estimated and at less than half the cost of ordinary coal or oil heating.10 Complementing the heat pump were associated mechanical features developed by Kroeker and his colleague Ray C. Chewning in collaboration with Belluschi and the client. If the same system was reversible for heating and cooling, then there had to be independent sources of supply for hot water in winter and chilled water in summer. To meet this need, water at two different temperatures came from wells of different depths, making the Equitable Building among the first taller structures in the country to adopt a form of geoexchange for its heating and cooling needs. In summer, water at 57ºF from a 510-foot-​deep cold well conveyed coolness to indoor air via condensed refrigerant. In winter, the water at 62.5ºF and 64.5ºF from two 150-foot warm wells conveyed heat to indoor air via the same refrigerant. This water was warmed by heat coming off the cooling equipment during the cooling season and stored for reuse during the heating season. Heat was also recovered from exhaust

air in winter and used to heat ventilation air. Together these features (recovery of by-​ product heat from cooling equipment and of exhaust air’s heat in winter) resulted in a one-​ third reduction in heating requirements.11 Once the system was chosen, the next question was how to optimally distribute the air in the offices. The building was zoned according to exposures, including zones on the east to handle heating requirements caused by shading from a tall building across Sixth Avenue. Eleven zoned thermostats controlled air-​mixing on the different sections of each floor, so that during intermediate fall and spring seasons, cooling could be provided for several zones, and heating in others, depending on their orientation.12 Since office floors needed mechanical flexibility to accommodate repartitioning for different tenancies over time, air distribution by means of ducts was concealed in furred ceiling spaces with many small diffusers to minimize drafts (fig. 94). Their slots could blow the air four ways, three ways, or two ways (fig. 95). Such flexibility in diffusion from any outlet placed minimum restrictions on partition placement. Air returns were placed near windows to remove cold air during heating. The returns included both slotted window sills and small grilles near the floor. Both ceiling diffusers and near-​floor return grilles are visible in a view of a typical office (fig. 95). The Equitable was also the first major building to use cold-​cathode lighting tubes. Set below the ceiling, their color balance was much closer to daylight than fluorescence, and their low voltage reduced air-​conditioning loads. Nearby perforated air-​return surfaces in the ceiling kept the lighting ballasts cool.13 Furred underfloor cavities were recirculation plenums. One hundred percent outside air could be brought in by manual controls when the outdoor A ir - Condi t ioned Gl a ss Buil dings

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Figure 94 Pietro Belluschi (architect) and J. Donald Kroeker (mechanical engineer), Equitable Building, typical office floor plan (top) and air-​duct scheme (bottom), showing ceiling supply outlets and window-​sill exhaust. From AF 89, no. 3 (September 1948): 100, 103; based on drawings prepared by the offices of Pietro Belluschi, FAIA (top), and J. Donald Kroeker (bottom).

temperature was 60ºF to 75ºF and the dew point was below about 55ºF. This option was viable in Portland, where the average monthly temperature falls in this range. On many days from March to November, outside air could be used exclusively for at least half the day.14 These features made for both minimal equipment sizes and energy efficiency over time. After a year in operation, the air-​conditioning, combined with the artificial and natural lighting, was credited with reducing worker fatigue, hay fever and other respiratory ailments, and headaches.15 164

The Equitable Building’s mechanical innovations were extraordinary, and they played a role in shaping its exterior. Belluschi made his window glass as flush as possible with the aluminum cladding of the concrete frame, as if to announce by this detail that the building was hermetically sealed to facilitate its air-​ conditioning (fig. 92). The aluminum panels cladding the concrete spandrels could be read as signs of the air-​distribution systems encased inside each office bay behind the panels. The Equitable Building‘s modernist facade thus signaled the air-​conditioning system that made it

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mechanically unprecedented in the Portland of 1948, or anywhere else at the time. The system’s efficiencies in saving operating expenses were consistent with an ethos of thrift in the Equitable Savings and Loan Association, whose sign originally crowned the building. The United Nations Secretariat Building: Its Gl ass Facade and Air-​Conditioning, 1947–50 Strictly speaking, Belluschi’s Equitable Building did not have a curtain wall. Rather, a grid of aluminum-​clad concrete columns and beams with sills framed its large sheets of glass in the same plane. A curtain wall, as the term has been conventionally used since the 1950s, is an enclosure of glass suspended as a continuous surface outside the structural frame. Additional characteristics include thin-​profile window frames, modular glass, and a lack of masonry between glass sections.16 In the mid-​twentieth century, the modern glass curtain wall as a continuously enclosing screen of glass beyond the structural frame first appeared in Wallace Harrison and Max Abramovitz’s UN Secretariat Building, for which design began early in 1947 and construction finished in 1950 (fig. 96). The building was at the center of debates about modernism and, in particular, about larger glass-​walled buildings that depended on air-​conditioning. Formed at World War II’s close as a peacekeeping organization, the UN decided to maintain its headquarters in the United States following an invitation from Congress late in 1945. After a competition between cities, its location was settled when, in December 1946, the General Assembly ratified the choice of a Manhattan site along the East River from Forty-​Second to Forty-​Eighth Streets, which had been purchased for the UN by John D. Rockefeller Jr. earlier that month.

The UN campus was New York City’s largest building project after Rockefeller Center, to which it was then compared.17 As Victoria Newhouse and George Dudley have described, it was assumed that architects from different member countries would participate in the design of the UN’s buildings, with an American heading the team. On 2 January 1947, the UN’s first secretary-​general, Norwegian lawyer Trygve Lie, appointed Harrison director of planning for the UN permanent headquarters.18 Lie and Harrison soon appointed a board of design of ten architects from member countries, including most famously Le Corbusier of France and Oscar Niemeyer of Brazil. These architects met daily from 17 February through early June 1947 and soon decided that the UN headquarters should contain three main buildings: the General Assembly Building, the Secretariat Building, and a Conference Building for councils and committees. By May, a preliminary consensus on the site plan and building massing had A ir - Condi t ioned Gl a ss Buil dings

Figure 95 Pietro Belluschi (architect) and J. Donald Kroeker (mechanical engineer), Equitable Building, typical office interior. Photo © Ezra Stoller / Esto.

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Figure 96 Wallace Harrison and Max Abramovitz (architects) and Syska and Hennessy (mechanical engineers), United Nations Secretariat Building, on the East River, north of East Forty-​ Second Street, New York City, 1947–50. Photograph by J. Alex Langley, published in AF 93, no. 5 (November 1950): 102.

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emerged around a scheme mainly by Le Corbusier, although modified by Niemeyer. Within this site plan, Wallace Harrison led in the development of a definitive design, “Scheme 53,” for the Secretariat Building, which would tower above the General Assembly Building and the adjacent low rectangular Conference Building on the UN’s seventeen-​acre

campus. While some of the earlier schemes had included multiple towers, the singular built Secretariat Building was a symbol of the organization’s aspiration to world unity.19 The modernist style bespoke desire to create an institution for a global postwar human future. Harrison said in 1947: “For the people who have lived through Dunkerque, Warsaw, Stalingrad and Iwo Jima, may we build so simply, honestly and cleanly that it will inspire the United Nations, who are today building a new world, to build this world on the same pattern.”20 Harrison and Abramovitz designed a rectangular slab with thirty-​nine ​stories above street level and three stories below. As built, it is 544 feet high, 287 feet long, and 73 feet wide, originally with 5,200 heat-​absorbing operable, double-​hung windows above 5,200 glass spandrels fronting low opaque walls below the windows. The windows light 840,000 square feet of space.21 To ensure a maximal amount of sun and natural light, the design board decided that the building’s main east and west elevations would have glass curtain walls. The narrow north and south end walls would be faced with gray Vermont marble. At the time the building’s design took shape in 1947, before it was presented to the General Assembly in September, no completed tall office building had either a glass infill wall like the Equitable’s or a glass curtain wall like the Secretariat’s. The building’s east and west curtain walls were almost 10 percent of its total cost, and their every aspect received rigorous attention to achieve technically optimal performance.22 To assess heat gain, Harrison initiated several studies by his collaborating mechanical engineers, Syska and Hennessy, to determine the number of hours of sunlight the building might expect each year and what measures could be taken to minimize unwanted solar effects. The

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Secretariat Building was given a more north-​ south orientation, in order to minimize the shadow it would cast on the UN campus site, conceived as a sunlit expanse of verdure.23 This orientation also avoided blocking the narrow site from Forty-​Second Street, on its south.24 Aligned with Manhattan’s grid, the Secretariat Building’s orientation was twenty-​nine degrees east of north, so that its west wall would actually face northwest and thus not be as directly exposed to the sun as a wall facing due west (fig. 97, 1). Still, this wall was of greatest concern, because in New York City summer cooling loads peak at about four in the afternoon. As built, the broad northwest wall gained 122 Btu per hour per square foot of glass. Thus engineers designed for the corresponding maximum cooling load of 2,300 tons predicted to occur in late July (the “installed tonnage” shown by curve number 1 on the graph at right in figure 97). When the Secretariat Building opened, “the planners believe[d] they [had] installed enough capacity to insure summer comfort for all workers.”25 Air-​conditioning and heating cost about $3 million in 1950 dollars, or $6 per square foot, compared to $4.50 to $5.00 per square foot for local office buildings, which averaged 22 percent of their facades for light openings, or under a third of the Secretariat Building’s 68 percent. For the testing of the building’s exterior glass walls, Harrison again turned to Syska and Hennessy. In their office, Edward J. Benesch was in charge of the project. Their heat tests, with an experimental setup of single-​pane plate glass versus double-​layered heat-​resistant Thermopane, oriented as they would be in the Secretariat Building, showed that use of Thermopane resulted in interior temperatures ten to fifteen degrees lower than those behind the plate glass. Thus, though 50 percent more

expensive, Thermopane, with its distinctive blue-​green color, was at first chosen to moderate heat and cold on the Secretariat Building’s west side, with clear plate glass imagined for the east. For aesthetic unity, it was later decided to use the more expensive Thermopane on both facades. Yet Thermopane was ultimately eliminated from the specifications,

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Figure 97 Wallace Harrison and Max Abramovitz (architects) and Syska and Hennessy (mechanical engineers), United Nations Secretariat Building, alternative orientations and their respective peak air-​conditioning loads through the summer months: (1) as built, 29 degrees east of north; (2) due north-​south; (3) long wall facing southwest along Forty-​Second Street; (4) long wall facing due south. Study by Syska and Hennessy for the UN Headquarters Planning Office. From AF 93, no. 5 (November 1950): 108.

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Figure 98 Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill (architects); Gordon Bunshaft (chief designer); and Jaros, Baum, and Bolles (mechanical engineers)—Lever House, Park Avenue, Fifty-​Third to Fifty-​Fourth Streets, New York, 1950–52, section through a Carrier Conduit Weathermaster window unit, with the outdoors at right and indoors at left, showing the location (a) of a dwarf wall of cinder block faced with wire-​glass. From Refrigerating Engineering 61, no. 4 (April 1953): 389. © ASHRAE, www​ .ashrae​.org.

a

due in part to its cost premium over single-​ thickness Solex plate glass, which also absorbed heat.26 The Solex glass’s green tint blocked infrared rays and reduced the internal temperature by 10ºF relative to clear glass when the sun shone.27 Also, windows on both sides were not sealed but instead operable sliding sash, for which the layered glass was too heavy. The windows, framed in nonoxidizing aluminum mullions backed by steel, enclosed the enormous east and west walls. The only solar protection was dark-​gray interior venetian blinds for all the offices.28 These decisions about the windows shaped the air-​conditioning system and also had major consequences for the building’s environmental performance.29 The Secretariat Building’s system was among the largest early applications of the Carrier Conduit Weathermaster System, or air-​ conditioning units under individual windows. As noted in chapter 4, the system was first brought out in the spring of 1941, before Pearl 168

Harbor, and used in only eight buildings during World War II, including the Pentagon (1942). To circulate 100 percent of the air required for cooling, earlier systems in the Milam and PSFS Buildings had large air-​handling units on upper floors to perform all air-​cooling. The cooled air was distributed vertically between floors and then horizontally through ceiling ducts on each floor to individual offices (as discussed in chapter 5). But a Weathermaster system had only small ducts for a limited supply of primary air cooled at a central plant and then brought to the window unit, as shown in a diagram for such a unit in the slightly later Lever House in New York City (fig. 98). These 6.5-inch-​ diameter tubular ducts for primary air were no larger than an ordinary steam pipe, or one-​ seventh to one-​ninth the cross-​sectional area of low-​velocity air ducts, thus saving space.30 The flow of primary air induced secondary room air into the unit, where it passed over hot or chilled water pipes to reach the desired temperature. In multiroom buildings, larger air handlers occupied much rentable space, the value of which might equal 20 to 30 percent of the cost of the air-​conditioning installation. In a fifteen-​story building, larger air handlers might occupy an area equal to an entire floor. The Weathermaster’s small cabinet unit in an individual room occupied less space than an ordinary radiator (fig. 99). This resulted in a gain of 15 percent in rentable space, or in a forty-​story building like that for the UN Secretariat, the equal of about two extra floors.31 Housing 4,400 workers, the Secretariat Building had four thousand Weathermaster units along the outer windows, supplied with high-​velocity air to cool peripheral offices within twelve feet of the windows, while low-​ velocity air was supplied through larger ceiling ducts for the central office areas (fig. 100).

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Syska and Hennessy presented at least five schemes for placing the units along the exterior walls.32 After many experiments with different numbers of units, it was decided to place six Weathermaster units along the outer walls in each twenty-​eight-​foot-​long seven-​window structural bay between the columns (fig. 101). At every other unit were hand-​operated controls. One editor noted, “[S]uch a luxurious standard, with individual controls at every second window unit, is enforced on the UN by the contiguity of Icelanders and Abyssinians in the same building, each with his own idea of thermal comfort.”33 Many individual controls gave the design unusual flexibility, because the bays were used for offices of different sizes that could change from year to year, as floors were subdivided depending on organizational arrangements.34 The purpose of the system was to make conditions “climatically perfect,” so that “United Nations employees, who come from many different climates, [would] be able to walk to any of the individual controls and by a simple adjustment, regulate the temperature to their liking.”35 To serve personnel with widely varied ideas of comfort, the temperature range for private offices was wider than usual, with the window units providing a spread of more than 12ºF.36 The building’s core also had individual thermostats that enabled control of temperature and humidity. Though it is hard to fathom today, one aim was to provide sufficient air changes to make smoking possible for all chambers.37 Carrier’s experts promised that “occupants of adjoining offices [would] be able . . . to maintain any temperature they [chose]. What would happen if, say, an Ecuadorean and an Icelander shared one cubicle, the experts did not say.”38 The issue was a concern for delegates who were

then still meeting in the UN’s interim headquarters in the former Sperry Gyroscope Company’s factory at Lake Success, Long Island. For months after taking up work there in August 1946, most delegates expressed dissatisfaction with the “blasting air-​conditioning” and the “windowless offices.”39 They complained about it in committee meetings where diplomats from New Zealand, India, Iraq, Iran, and Nicaragua had sat side by side. A New Zealand delegate “once threatened to wear mittens to meetings unless something was done about the A ir - Condi t ioned Gl a ss Buil dings

Figure 99 Wallace Harrison and Max Abramovitz (architects) and Syska and Hennessy (mechanical engineers), United Nations Secretariat Building, outside wall of typical office, view (left) and section (right), showing the air-​conditioning ducts supplying high-​velocity air to the Weathermaster units under window sills. From Progressive Architecture 31, no. 2 (February 1950): 66. Photograph by Gottscho-​Schleisner; drawings not attributed.

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Figure 100 Wallace Harrison and Max Abramovitz (architects) and Syska and Hennessy (mechanical engineers), United Nations Secretariat Building, half plan, thirty-second to thirty-eighth floors, showing high-velocity ducts for window units and low-velocity ducts for interior offices, with lighting fixtures and air diffusers. From AF 93, no. 5 (November 1950): 109. Figure 101 Wallace Harrison and Max Abramovitz (architects) and Syska and Hennessy (mechanical engineers), United Nations Secretariat Building, under construction, showing piping for the Weathermaster window units. From Heating and Ventilating 46, no. 12 (December 1949): 60. © ASHRAE, www​ .ashrae​.org.

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icy blasts, which he called ‘violent Antarctic blizzards.’ ” A French representative “customarily arrived at the sessions clad in a sweater and white blanket clearly marked ‘US Medical Corps.’ ”40 These conditions remained a bother during the organization’s five-​year residency at Lake Success, when the UN was just beginning to establish its procedures amid an array of postwar international tensions. There was real concern that the organization would not prove viable, and the air-​conditioning became a flash point for dissatisfactions that had multiple causes. After a vociferous session of the Political and Security Committee in May 1947, Trygve Lie ordered that all references to complaints about the “blizzard” conditions created by the air-​conditioning be cut out of the verbatim report. It was the first time that the text of an important UN public meeting had been amended.41 The leadership promised that something would be done, and Lie surely recalled such concerns when working with Harrison and Abramovitz on the new Secretariat Building. As the first of the new UN buildings to rise on the East River site, the Secretariat Building

would have “the largest air-​conditioning system ever equipped with individual controls.” The president of the Milwaukee company overseeing the equipment’s installation asserted: “Office temperatures . . . must never be a ‘barrier to United Nations harmony.’ ” The manual controls would enable virtually every occupant to select their own weather indoors. There was naturally concern about the high initial cost of such a system, since, unlike a commercial landlord, the UN could not recover those costs from paying tenants over time. The large up-​front cost would have to be justified in terms of lower-​than-​normal operating costs. It was stressed that in addition to providing convenient individual controls, installations of the Weathermaster system in other buildings through 1949 had “been demonstrated to cut heating costs as much as 25 per cent or more.”42 As contemporaries noted and as Banham later discussed, the calculations for the building’s cooling load, even with its orientation away from the afternoon sun, were 2,300 tons, only one hundred tons less than if its afternoon wall had been facing due west. The sun’s power and the building’s height provoked

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Harrison and Carrier jointly to develop a scheme that grew from the system used in the PSFS Building, where air-​conditioning equipment had been divided between the basement and one intermediate upper floor. Refrigeration and air-​conditioning equipment in the Secretariat Building’s third basement supplied chilled water for the entire UN campus and conditioned air for the first-​basement offices and the ground-​floor entrance lobbies and council chambers (fig. 102). Above, three floors (the sixth, sixteenth, and twenty-​eighth) had air-​handling equipment that distributed filtered, cooled, and dehumidified air to intervening floors above and below. The mechanical floors’ locations followed from the need to limit the size of chilled water risers and air-​conditioning ducts. Each such floor also held other equipment, like elevator machinery. When the Secretariat Building opened, about 26 percent of its net area was used as mechanical and service space.43 On average, each system supplied ten floors, or five above and five below. Thus the sixth floor’s mechanical room served the second through tenth floors; the sixteenth floor served the eleventh through twenty-​first floors; and the twenty-​eighth floor served the twenty-​ second through thirty-​third floors. The pipe gallery in the topmost thirty-​ninth floor supplied the floors just below (fig. 102), including the penthouse apartment of the UN secretary-​ general. Projecting vertical louvers outside the glazing mark these mechanical floors along the east and west fronts, as does a screen for rooftop equipment (fig. 96).44 Thus, as little as possible was done to disrupt the image of the UN Secretariat Building as a prismatic tower, in accord with Le Corbusier’s preference for pure geometric forms. Benesch wrote, “The unique exterior architectural pattern of the

Figure 102 Wallace Harrison and Max Abramovitz (architects) and Syska and Hennessy (mechanical engineers), United Nations Secretariat Building, diagram showing intermediate floors for distribution of air-​conditioning. Photograph by J. Alex Langley, published in AF 93, no. 5 (November 1950): 108.

building at the 6th, 16th, 28th, and 39th floors, disguises the various fresh air intakes and exhaust air discharges.”45 The building’s Weathermaster system exemplified the trend of the 1950s, when engineers A ir - Condi t ioned Gl a ss Buil dings

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Figure 103 Wallace Harrison and Max Abramovitz (architects) and Syska and Hennessy (mechanical engineers), United Nations Secretariat Building, view from the north, 25 August 1952, showing Consolidated Edison Company Power Plant nine hundred feet to the south. United Nations Photo Library, Photo Reference Number: JG, 57011.

nationally were gradually changing their design criteria in favor of increasing use of high-​ velocity air distribution. As noted in chapter 5, high-​velocity air at the Milam Building reduced shafts and furring spaces and cut down on floor-​to-​floor heights without changing ceiling height. For tall office buildings, high-​velocity air effectively provided greater flexibility of design and reduced building costs. This quality became ever more valued as the cost per pound of air-​conditioning ducts and the cost per cubic foot of building space approximately tripled between 1930 and 1956. High-​velocity systems were also quieter and more easily adapted to individual room control, as with Weathermaster units. The use of larger windows, plate-​glass walls, and higher-​intensity electrical illumination all increased cooling loads, which in turn demanded larger, higher-​capacity air-​conditioning systems. In office buildings, rentable area and usable spatial volume were held at a premium to ensure a maximal return on investment. As the cost of space to enclose mechanical components rose, the virtues of 172

high-​velocity air proved more attractive, even if it was more costly in energy consumption.46 For the UN Secretariat’s air-​conditioning, even the most careful efforts could not control its building’s atmospheric context along the East River. This was then still mainly an industrial district whose pollutants determined the quality of the air taken into the building’s system, which pulled in smoke and obnoxious gases that commercial office buildings on Park Avenue or Broadway did not. As the Secretariat Building was being occupied in 1950, Trygve Lie voiced objections to the particle- and fume-​ laden air that was wafting toward the building’s air intakes from the waterside electrical generating plant of the Consolidated Edison Company, between Thirty-​Fourth and Forty-​ First Streets, nine hundred feet to the south of the UN site (fig. 103). The plant burned coal to generate electricity, and its smokestack was seventy-​five feet lower than the Secretariat Building, so emissions drifted directly up and toward the building’s air intakes. In June 1950, as the Secretariat Building rose, Lie had complained to New York’s mayor, William O’Dwyer, that the plant’s gas and smoke nuisance was so bad as to create a “serious and potentially dangerous condition.”47 The UN encouraged the utility to replace coal with natural gas, a smokeless fuel. Yet clean-​burning gas would produce a preponderance of water vapor that might also cause difficulties with the air-​conditioning, because its dehumidification load would be increased.48 The Secretariat Building’s air-​conditioning apparatus included air washers, but the commission thought that these would not protect it from discoloration inside and that emissions would stain and blacken the pristine exterior. Most critically, Lie foresaw that the air-​conditioning system would carry smoke and gases into the principal

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council chambers.49 City officials were concerned that the emissions would damage the marble cladding on the end walls. In response, the power company suggested that the UN consider the possibility of waterproofing or other protection for the marble facing.50 Acting mayor Vincent Impellitteri referred the problem to Robert Moses, the city construction coordinator, who was to confer with the UN and Consolidated Edison.51 The UN leaders saw the situation in part as an opportunity to demonstrate their ability to mediate disputes and reach an amicable understanding with Consolidated Edison. At a meeting where Moses presided, the UN agreed to relocate the intakes of its air-​conditioning system in the  new Secretariat Building below the thirty-​ninth story, down to a level where danger from sulfur dioxide fumes was considered negligible. It also agreed to study the idea of installing new air filters to trap impurities from the power plant. The power company consented to investigate the possibility of burning pulverized anthracite coal instead of soft, bituminous coal, which emits large quantities of sulfur dioxide. It also agreed to take more sulfur dioxide– concentration readings on the thirty-​ninth floor.52 These and other negotiated compromises saved the Secretariat Building architecturally and environmentally. Its surfaces and services had needed political support to survive.53 The Secretariat Building’s great glass walls and its dependence on large quantities of air-​conditioning were criticized almost from the moment the plans were unveiled. On 19 November 1947 Le Corbusier wrote to Warren Austin, a senator from Vermont and chairman of the Headquarters Advisory Committee, recounting his efforts to realize the glass wall equipped with brise-​soleil, or fixed exterior sun shading, which he had

long advocated and experimented with in his own building designs. Le Corbusier wrote, “I affirm that it appears to me senseless to build in New York, whose climate is terrible in summer, glass wall sections that are not equipped with brise-​soleil [sunbreaks].”54 The closest built precedent in his oeuvre was his Cité de refuge, or hostel for the Salvation Army, in Paris (1929–33). In 1928 Le Corbusier had devised the mur neutralisant as a double-​skin facade that included an air-​conditioning circuit to improve comfort and efficiency, made possible through improved insulation. This was his version of the glass curtain wall, which he called le pan de verre, imagined for the south facade of the Cité de refuge. Financial constraints had made it impossible to include air-​conditioning with cooling. With the overheating produced by the airtight glass wall, mechanical ventilation proved to be deficient within a week of the building’s inauguration. In 1935, after a long dispute in which Le Corbusier fought against operable windows, the Seine Prefecture condemned the Cité de refuge’s infractions of the building code and ordered such windows to be installed, but this was not done until 1948. Then Le Corbusier offered to rebuild the airtight glass wall of the building, incorporating the operable windows, but he also proposed brise-​soleil over its entire facade, to limit heat gain.55 In 1947 Le Corbusier persisted with the idea of brise-​soleil to protect the UN building’s facades from the sun. In a meeting of the board of design on 6 March 1947, he spoke of “uninterrupted glass with sunshades outside” and argued that “[s]ome sort of brise-​soleil, or sunshade, should be placed outside the glass to protect occupants from the sun and meet problems of natural light.”56 He had used precast concrete for the brise-​soleil of his first A ir - Condi t ioned Gl a ss Buil dings

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Unité d’habitation, in Marseilles, whose design was begun in 1946, before Le Corbusier went to New York in February 1947. This famed building had mechanical ventilation, including winter heating and summer cooling of filtered air. In his book on the new Unité, Le Corbusier asked, “What is it that modern technology has to offer?” First on his list was “[a]ir conditioning, by which air is brought to the right temperature, renewed and its humidity controlled.”57 While there was a worry that brise-​soleil would be impracticable in New York’s climate because of snow and ice forming on their surfaces, Le Corbusier’s concerns for the UN Secretariat Building proved well founded. Soon after occupancy, problems developed due to heat gain and glare through the east and west facades. These were most acute on the building’s east side, where additional light reflected off the expanse of the East River was considerable and where no buildings provided shade. The occupants experienced discomfort, and the wall suffered from air and moisture infiltration, condensation that led to energy loss, and visible deterioration of its structural elements, including the steel behind the aluminum window mullions. By 1980 solar film had been installed on the east wall’s windows, except for the crowning thirty-​eighth floor, to reduce air-​conditioning costs in summer and heating costs in winter. But the internal darkening effect and external mirrorlike appearance drew criticism and discouraged the film’s installation on the building’s west side, facing Manhattan.58 In 2010 the UN campus, including its outmoded mechanical systems, underwent its first full renovation.59 The curtain wall was wholly rebuilt, with all glass fixed and designed to match the spectral characteristics of the original. The new walls have insulated double-​ thickness panels of laminated glass with a 174

low-​emissivity coating to reduce solar heat gain and a blue-​green tinted substrate on outer glass panels. Overhaul of the mechanical systems included daylight dimming of artificial lights, demand-​control ventilation, a computerized building-​management system, and a revamping of the central refrigeration and heating plant for the whole UN campus. These changes were to cut its total energy use by at least 50 percent, its heating and cooling energy use by 65 percent.60 Every effort was made to ensure the restored glass curtain wall’s viability indefinitely. The Secretariat Building’s materials and systems, which represented the most advanced thinking of the mid-​twentieth century, were renewed, both to preserve the building’s iconic image and to meet twenty-​first-​century standards of sustainability. Lever House: Air-​Conditioning, the Curtain Wall , and the Corporate Image, 1947–52 A comparably influential model of curtain-​wall construction in relation to air-​conditioning was Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill’s Lever House, at 390 Park Avenue between Fifty-​ Third and Fifty-​Fourth Streets in Manhattan, designed and built from 1949 to 1951 as the American headquarters of Lever Brothers (fig. 104). This British soap-​manufacturing firm also made and marketed food, toiletries, and cosmetics, which were by then produced in air-​conditioned plants. While Lever House and the UN Secretariat Building presented similar architectural images, they used different curtain-​wall assemblies with different approaches to air-​conditioning. The twenty-​ four-​story Lever House is much smaller than the thirty-​nine-​story Secretariat Building, whose seventy-​three-​foot-​wide floor plan is also much deeper than that of the Lever House

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Figure 104 Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill (architects); Gordon Bunshaft (chief designer); and Jaros, Baum, and Bolles (mechanical engineers)—Lever House, New York, view from the southeast, 1952. Wurts Bros. / Museum of the City of New York, X2010.7.1.9874.

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tower, with its fifty-​three-​foot width. Lever House was the first building to have a glass curtain wall that wrapped around its end walls, unlike the Secretariat Building’s marble end walls. The Secretariat used operable, double-​ hung windows, while the Lever House was hermetically sealed as a means of limiting its air-​conditioning load. The resulting sheer plane of reflective glass was to give the walls a clean look befitting the headquarters of a soap company. As its founder said, “The mission of our company . . . is to make cleanliness commonplace.”61 In its sealed exterior, Lever House followed the Equitable Building, yet they adopted different solutions to air-​conditioning, partly because climate and utilities differed in Portland, Oregon, and New York City. Also, Lever House’s form was constrained by zoning rules specific to Manhattan. In 1947, before the Lever commission came to Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, Nathaniel Owings, of the Chicago office, described what he called “The Office Building of Tomorrow,” which included a number of ideas that he proposed to realize in Chicago if given the opportunity and that were soon incorporated into Lever House. Among its features, Owings cited “complete all year round air conditioning behind fixed, flush continuous windows. The sealed sash and the acoustical treatment of the ceilings will provide sound control. . . . Permanent external sunshade controls will extend over all windows on the south. The office building shaft will be oriented with a long axis running east and west giving north and south exposures to most of the space. The building will be 60 feet by 160 feet in floor plan.”62 Speaking further of its construction, he said: “[W]e can pre-​ fabricate a combination window and spandrel, since we are using fixed sash, with the unit air conditioner enclosed as an integral part of it, all 176

of which can be literally ‘snapped’ on the building frame—beam and column. . . . Our exterior would then be a flush, unbroken surface of glass and metal, except on the south exposures where concrete sunshades, as extensions of the floor slabs, would appear.”63 Perhaps thinking of the Weathermaster, Owings imagined: “The air conditioning is of a unit type . . . with conduit supplying the refrigerant, all heating and cooling of air done within the unit in place under each window—no ducts used, which saves considerable money and simplifies construction—gives complete flexibility of control for partitioning and conditioning of the air. It also eliminates the objection of having any air condition[ing] fixtures in the ceiling.” He concluded: “We believe that the office space should be a simple, flexible, rectangular plan with the thinnest possible skin and the maximum amount of glass, that all the known scientific devices for control of sound, temperature, humidity, and natural light are mandatory, not just desirable.”64 Except for features like projecting concrete sunshades on the south wall and a wholly ductless air system, Owings had foretold Lever House. In his firm’s New York City office, Gordon Bunshaft was the partner in charge of design, and William S. Brown was his administrative partner. They worked closely with Lever Brothers’ American president, Charles Luckman, who had trained as an architect in the United States before the Depression. All participants were enamored of European interwar modernism, and Luckman commissioned Lever House as a departure from New York’s earlier masonry-​clad, spire-​crowned Art Deco skyscrapers. Unlike most other earlier Manhattan tall office buildings, Lever House served exclusively as its owning corporation’s headquarters. It had no rental office space to generate income and meet the site’s high land costs.

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Lever Brothers thus chose to build no higher than required for its own corporate needs, to house twelve hundred employees.65 The built tower’s upper floors are open lofts extending east from a rear, west service core confined by other structures (fig. 105). Floors house executive office areas along the walls, flanking central secretarial areas. To observe zoning laws, the tower and its service core are set in about forty feet from the north building line. Rooftop cooling towers and elevator equipment are screened by an extension of the curtain wall in aluminum panels above the office floors (fig. 106). Cut through this curtain-​wall extension, just above the topmost regular floor, is a horizontal slot for ventilating the cooling towers (fig. 104). Lever House’s curtain wall was originally blue actinic single-​pane Solex glass, meaning its color would be photochemically activated by solar radiation, so that it would reduce the solar heat load and minimize glare for occupants when the sun struck it, but at other times would remain more transparent. The blue-​green tinted glass was chosen because it was then among the few colors available for heat-​absorbing, or solar, glass, like the green-​ tinted glass on the Equitable Building. Framed in stainless-​steel mullions, rather than the aluminum on the UN Secretariat Building, Lever House’s glass extended around the north, east, and south sides, and partly around the west (rear) through its nineteen stories. The curtain wall was unprecedentedly thin and fragile for a building of this size, and its continuity and transparency made the mass of Lever House appear weightless, an effect enhanced by the two-​story base’s elevation on stilt-​like columns. In the daytime, the curtain wall’s reflective sheen, especially along its broad south-​facing flank, gave the building greater lightness

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Figure 105 Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill (architects); Gordon Bunshaft (chief designer); and Jaros, Baum, and Bolles (mechanical engineers)—Lever House, typical upper-​floor plan, with rear mechanical service area (a). From AF 96, no. 6 (June 1952): 107.

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relative to surrounding masonry-​clad skyscrapers. This effect was heightened at night, when interior light made the curtain wall transparent. A survey had shown that sealed windows would yield substantial savings in original cost A ir - Condi t ioned Gl a ss Buil dings

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Figure 106 Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill (architects); Gordon Bunshaft (chief designer); and Jaros, Baum, and Bolles (mechanical engineers)—Lever House, bird’s-​eye view of the roof, showing cooling towers in the background, window-​washing equipment on the south side, and the exhaust fan (a) in the foreground. From Plant Engineering 6, no. 7 (July 1952): 69; photograph not attributed.

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relative to operable windows, an annual savings in interior and exterior cleaning, and a further savings in heating and air-​conditioning, owing to the reduction of infiltration.66 This last factor loomed large in New York, because of its high average wind velocity of seventeen miles per hour. A tall building also induced a “stack effect,” whereby, as was true of the Milam Building and others earlier, the tendency of warm air to rise causes variations in

a building’s static air pressure. The stack effect can induce undesirable infiltration at low building levels and exfiltration at high building levels. For all of these reasons, Lever Brothers had insisted that the glass exterior be completely sealed, resulting in a savings of 30 percent on the cost of the windows. For mechanical engineering, Bunshaft and his team at Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill collaborated with the venerable New York firm of Jaros, Baum, and Bolles. The Carrier Corporation supplied the air-​conditioning equipment, installed by another company. A Carrier engineer termed Lever House “New York’s first hermetically sealed office building.” He went on to rhapsodize, “Complete year-​round control of temperature and humidity liberates the architect from conventional window design and points the way toward office buildings and homes of the future in which windows will be used only for light and view.”67 Lever House’s fixed windows of heat-​ absorbing plate glass set in stainless-​steel frames were a radically large investment in 1952, costing considerably more for its 1,404 windows than for ordinary sash windows. Stainless-​steel frames cost about 20 percent more than aluminum, and double-​glazing added $135,000, with special window-​washing machinery costing $50,000 (fig. 106). But this yielded savings of $90,000 on the up-​front cost of the air-​conditioning, and reductions in its operating costs of $3,600 per year. An additional $1,000 was saved annually due to the reduction in hot- and cold-​air leakage. Fixed windows cost 30 percent less to install than operating windows, and this saving covered the cost of the window-​washing system, which in turn saved $2,000 annually on conventional washing bills and reduced maintenance costs by cleaning the building’s entire surface. The

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building’s renown attracted 782 applicants for employment in it the day after it opened, and Lever reported significantly less worker turnover (37 percent less in 1958) than other large companies in the New York City area. The advertising value of the building for a soap company was large. It was professionally estimated at between $7 million and $25 million, equaling the building’s cost.68 Like the Equitable Building, Lever House presented a new challenge to its mechanical engineers because, “with such an expanse of glass, heat from the sun [was] so intense that cooling must be supplied even in winter when the outside temperature [was] 40ºF. However, when the sun passe[d] behind a cloud, offices require[d] heating within a few minutes.” Unlike the UN Secretariat Building, “further complication [was] caused by shadows of surrounding buildings, which move[d] across the face of Lever House, making heating necessary in some offices while adjacent rooms require[d] cooling. Thus, it [was] important to have an air conditioning system capable of heating or cooling any office at a moment’s notice.”69 To meet these requirements, and to furnish adequate ventilation at all times, Lever House, like the UN Secretariat Building, had a Weathermaster system for its outer zones: one for the sunny, southern side, one for the northern side. There was a window unit at every window on the south side and a double unit for every window pair on the north side. Moreover, between fluorescent lights near the center of the office floors was a line of ceiling diffusers that supplied high-​velocity air separate from the window units (fig. 107).70 Above acoustic-​tile ceilings were return air plenums that linked to the air shaft in the rear service area (fig. 105, a), which in turn connected to an exhaust fan atop the building (fig. 106, a).

The building had 870 Weathermaster units, with four in a typical bay along an outer wall. As at the Secretariat Building, Lever House’s Weathermaster units had two means of controlling temperature: the primary air (cooled by chilled water in one main air handler on the second floor) and the water coils in each unit (fig. 98). Their design was based on close study of air-​conditioning loads, including heat generated by people, lights, solar radiation, and outside air temperature. Indoor air temperature controlled the water temperature in the coils, and the flow of air over these coils cooled or heated the primary conditioned air with which it mixed. By this means, the primary air and the water coils together could balance the transmission of heat gain or heat loss through a window based on what its orientation was, whether the sun was out, how many people were in the office, and how many of the lights

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Figure 107 Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill (architects); Gordon Bunshaft (chief designer); Jaros, Baum, and Bolles (mechanical engineers); and Raymond Loewy (interior designer)—Lever House, office interior, looking east, showing central air diffusers in the acoustic ceiling, 1952. Photo © Ezra Stoller / Esto.

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Figure 108 Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill (architects); Gordon Bunshaft (chief designer); and Jaros, Baum, and Bolles (mechanical engineers)—Lever House, view of the air intake facing Fifty-​Fourth Street, 2015. Photo: author.

were on.71 As its engineer wrote, “This [the Weathermaster system], in effect, places an insulating blanket around the exterior of the building. The other variable loads handled by the unit—namely, sun, electric lights, and people—are absorbed by the cold water coil.”72 Bunshaft and his collaborators’ major technical achievement was to create a sealed building that was habitable in New York City’s climate, with its extremes of heat and cold, unlike the milder weather in Portland. As had been argued from the early 1930s, sealing a building reduced noise and dust from the outside. To decrease the cooling loads, the interiors had fluorescent lighting, which is cooler than incandescent, although the heat build-​up within fluorescent luminaires required dedicated ventilation to remove it, apart from the ventilation system for the interior space as a whole. Fluorescent lighting layouts were also preferred for their adaptability to more-​open offices.73 Unlike the Equitable Building’s cathode fixtures set below the ceiling plane, Lever House’s luminaires were covered by glass diffusing lenses flush with the acoustic ceiling (fig. 107). The plan allowed all employees access to windows, on which venetian blinds were provided to control glare. The glass’s manufacturers 180

advertised its heat-​absorbing properties, but engineers, knowing that the curtain wall was experimental, calculated the cooling loads as if the glass were not heat absorbing, so that the air-​conditioning would have enough capacity to remove excessive heat that would build up inside the glass. Even so, the south facade’s solar gain taxed the air-​conditioning system and thermally stressed the spandrel panels backed with low cinder-​block fire walls, where heat built up and cracked them.74 Banham argued that in the UN Secretariat Building and Lever House the architectural approach to air-​conditioning apparatus inside and outside had been essentially one of concealment. Their glass curtain walls’ design minimally acknowledged the presence of equipment behind them. Inside, ceilings and sill-​height units had architecturally integral diffusers with otherwise hidden ducting. But in Lever House, the north, or Fifty-​Fourth Street, side, which is almost never photographed, has one visually prominent and technically essential element of the air-​conditioning system. On the second floor is an air-​intake louver, one of the largest in existence when it was built (fig. 108). It measures about seventy feet long by fifteen feet high, or more than a thousand square feet in area, and it draws in an average volume of 200,000 cfm. This elevated intake panel dominates the pedestrian’s immediate experience of Lever House along Fifty-​Fourth Street. But when it was built, its sound caused more concern than its size. A little less than six feet behind this aluminum louver were seven high-​pressure blower systems that drew in air for the building’s air-​conditioning. The noise from these blowers disturbed the tenants in the apartment building across Fifty-​Fourth Street. So a silencing system, adapted from those used for jet-​engine test cells in the aircraft

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industry, was constructed in the shallow space just behind the louver, in front of the blowers. High-​frequency and low-​frequency acoustic baffles of perforated metal encased sound-​ absorbing materials. The silencer had to neither take away too great a cross-​sectional area of the intake nor cause too great a drop in intake-​air velocity. It worked so well that the complaining residents said that the air-​conditioning blowers must have been shut off, since they now found it impossible to hear any sounds from them. In fact, the blowers continued to operate year-​ round, since the building’s air-​conditioning, and thus its habitability, depended entirely upon them.75 Air-​Conditioning in Mies van der Rohe’s Postwar Tall Buildings Although Le Corbusier was the European modernist directly involved in the UN project, and his work inspired Lever House, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s buildings were a prime source of ideas for postwar development of the glass tower. However, he had not included

air-​conditioning in his earliest postwar Chicago towers, the twenty-​two-​story Promontory Apartments, opened in 1949 on 5530 South Lake Shore Drive, in the Hyde Park neighborhood. As built, these had neither mechanical cooling nor ventilation, so some residents later began to insert openings for air-​conditioning units in the brickwork spandrel panels under the windows.76 Mies’s twin apartment buildings at 860–880 North Lake Shore Drive between Chestnut Street on the south and Delaware Place on the north, on Chicago’s Near North Side, were designed by April 1949 and built between then and 1951. To avoid radiators, which would interrupt their steel-​and-​glass walls and occupy valuable floor space, apartments were equipped with radiant hot-​water heating tubes in the plenum space between the ceiling below and the floor above (fig. 109, left), but these initially provided too much heat.77 By December 1956 Mies’s associate Joseph Fujikawa wrote, “We feel that with the increasing use of glass in our buildings, the necessity for air conditioning is unquestioned.” A ir - Condi t ioned Gl a ss Buil dings

Figure 109 Left: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (architect) and Pace Associates (associated architects and engineers), 860–880 North Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, 1949–51, original apartment, with radiant ceiling heat, on the south tower’s twenty-​ sixth floor. Chicago History Museum, Hedrich-​Blessing Collection, HB-15692-A. Right: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (architect) and William Goodman (mechanical engineer), Esplanade Apartments, Chicago, 1955–57, interior view showing Marlo heating and air-​conditioning unit set apart from the windows. Chicago History Museum, Hedrich-​Blessing Collection, HB-18101-N.

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Air-​conditioning had been seriously considered but was not included in the 860–880 Lake Shore Drive towers, because the developers thought that the added cost might jeopardize the project, since the apartments were to be sold as cooperatives.78 There were just twelve built-​in air conditioners, or “package units,” to cool entire selected apartments. But in 1952, the first summer that these towers were occupied, the solar gain through the glass, particularly on the west sides, caused a heat problem, and instrument readings were taken in apartments between 20 June and 10 August.79 Through the summer of 1952, individual residents had about thirty room air conditioners installed in the two towers, set into the movable lower panes of the hopper windows. But tenant regulations specified that the units could project only into, not out from, the building. In 1950 a German editor had foreseen the problem, noting that if air-​conditioning units were “hung out like bird cages on the facade,” then “the architecture [would be] beaten to death.” If these units were needed to make apartments livable, then it would not be strange for people to say of Mies, “See, he has not concerned himself with the cooling problem!”80 Ultimately the towers at 860–880 Lake Shore Drive were equipped with a central air-​ conditioning system and in 2007–10 were fully renovated. Air-​conditioning was included in Mies’s two large Chicago apartment groups that he began designing in 1953: the two twenty-​nine-​story towers at 900 Esplanade, for a site just north of 860–880 Lake Shore Drive, and the Commonwealth Promenade group of four twenty-​eight-​ story structures, to rise two and a half miles to the north, on Diversey Parkway and Sheridan Road at Lincoln Park. As Fujikawa wrote in 1956, “Today, there is no such hesitation in the 182

use of air-​conditioning for lake front high rise apartments [as there had been for the Lake Shore Drive apartments]. . . . The great number of new apartments built in recent years has created a competitive market which makes air conditioning a necessity for a successful rental program. We feel strongly that developments in the design of heating and cooling systems must keep pace with advances in architectural and structural design.”81 The individual apartments had interior low encased Marlo fan-​coil units for heating and air-​conditioning, supplied through a two-​pipe system, one supply pipe that could supply either cold or hot water to the unit, depending on the season, and one return pipe. Each building had hundreds of units.82 To keep the exterior form pristine, Mies placed them inside the apartments, behind the lower part of the window bays, where they remain today (fig. 109, right). There they were spatially intrusive and, at first, noisy, like most units of the time. But they did provide heating and cooling in a way that did not affect exterior appearance.83 Mies’s first and most renowned office tower was the thirty-​eight-​story Seagram Building in New York City, at 375 Park Avenue, on the east side occupying the two hundred feet of frontage between Fifty-​Second and Fifty-​Third Streets (fig. 110), diagonally to the southeast across Park Avenue from Lever House. In November 1954 Mies had signed a contract and had invited the New York firm of Kahn and Jacobs to be his associates. He had also asked Philip Johnson to assist. As a canonical work, the Seagram Building has received a great deal of historical attention, but little has been written about its mechanical systems. Its engineers for these were Jaros, Baum, and Bolles, the same firm that had previously worked on Lever House, among a number of comparably large office

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Figure 110 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (architect); Kahn and Jacobs (associated architects); and Jaros, Baum, and Bolles (mechanical engineers)—Seagram Building, 375 Park Avenue, on the east side between Fifty-​Second and Fifty-​ Third Streets, New York City, 1954–58, night view showing the mechanical penthouse above lighted office floors, 1958. Photo © Ezra Stoller / Esto.

buildings. Alfred Jaros Jr. and Richard Baum were the partners who worked on this project. The Seagram Building incorporated Mies’s approach to the exterior glass and metal enclosing envelope as a curtain wall hung outside the structural frame. In the sophistication of its air-​conditioning, it went beyond his postwar Chicago apartment towers, the UN Secretariat Building, and Lever House. As ever, this system had to conform to Mies’s overall aesthetic aims, which were focused on structural form.84 After much study with models of possible forms for the Seagram Building on its site amid older tall apartments, office buildings, and hotels, Mies finally decided on a tall rectangular tower, five bays wide (140 feet) north-​south across its front and three bays deep (110 feet) east-​west (fig. 111). The structural columns rise behind a curtain wall with projecting mullions that are I-​beams of architectural bronze. One-​ story-​high window frames, also of architectural bronze prefabricated with spandrels in place, are fastened between the mullions. The spandrels are made of Muntz metal, an alloy like bronze. The Seagram Building was described as the world’s first skyscraper to have a bronze facade.85 Yet it is not known if thought was given to the likelihood that the metal mullions might take on solar heat and radiate it inside. The windows are of pink-​gray tinted glass designed to eliminate glare yet assure maximum daylight.86

Unlike the smaller Lever House, occupied only by its client firm, the Seagram Building was both a corporate symbol and a speculative project. It had 530,000 square feet of air-​conditioned office space, about one-fourth A ir - Condi t ioned Gl a ss Buil dings

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Figure 111 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (architect); Kahn and Jacobs (associated architects); and Jaros, Baum, and Bolles (mechanical engineers)— Seagram Building, plans of the ground level (below) and a typical upper tower floor (above), with each utility shaft, adjacent to the elevator shafts, marked with an X. Mies van der Rohe Archive, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, drawing nos. (bottom) MoMA MR5411.38, Art Resource ART413235, and (top) MoMA MR5411.41, Art Resource ART571095. Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-​Kunst, Bonn.

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of which was for Seagram and affiliated companies, with the building’s opening envisioned to coincide with their centennial celebration in 1957. The rest of the space would be rented. The builder would be the George A. Fuller Company, which had also built the UN Secretariat Building and Lever House.87 In the mid1950s, the Seagram Building was one of about a dozen tall office buildings under construction in the area around Grand Central Terminal, all aiming to provide tenants with a maximum of amenities. As the company pondered its options in 1951, an internal memorandum had raised the overall question, “What type of building will compete best with Lever Brothers, the Ambassador, other buildings eventually to be erected on neighboring sites?”88 There was a financial impetus for the Seagram Building’s air-​conditioning to be superb, especially in its variable control by tenants at different floors and orientations.89 Its rental agents, Cushman and Wakefield, wrote to the Fuller Company in 1952: “By 1955, hundreds of tenants in this city will have experienced three more years of air-​conditioning. Its popularity is bound to continue to increase because every new air-​conditioned building that is built, broadens the educational process which creates the ever growing demand for more and more air-​conditioned space.”90 Estimates of operating expenses, prior to design, projected an air-​conditioning capacity of 2,136 tons, but the finished building had 3,200 tons.91 In 1957 Alfred Jaros Jr. wrote about the task facing engineers in the design of an air-​ conditioning system for a large office building. The two controlling factors were the origins of the heat in the building and the most efficient means for removing that heat. Jaros wrote: “In most modern office buildings radiant heat from the sun is the major controllable factor A ir - ​C ondi t ioning in Modern A merica n A rc hi t ec t ure

having influence upon the size and cost of the air-​conditioning systems, and it is usually less expensive to keep the heat out than it is to remove it after it is in. Windows are the villains.”92 In a typical office building with venetian blinds shielding windows representing about 40 percent of the facade area (far less than the 75 percent of windowed area on the Seagram Building), the maximum cooling load was: 1. People, lights, office equipment (fixed load) 2. Conduction through the insulated walls and roof 3. Conduction and solar radiation through windows 4. Dehumidification of outdoor air supply 5. Miscellaneous, including heat from fans

36% 2% 27% 23% 12%93

Jaros noted that if the window area had complete outside shading on the south, east, and west sides, this would reduce the refrigeration demand by about 20 percent, whereas if the window area were decreased from 40 to 25 percent, that would reduce total demand by about half that amount, or 10 percent. If the window area increased from 40 to 70 percent (about the largest he had ever seen), it would increase the demand by at least 20 percent. For example, in spring and fall, when rooms on lower floors were shaded by nearby buildings, heating would be required there, while upper floors would need cooling to offset intense solar heat. Expenses would be great if the design required extravagant amounts of heating and cooling, so each building, and even each facade, deserved special study for best results. As in Wright’s SC Johnson

Administration Building, large office buildings required systems of independent controls so that the amount of heating and cooling could be varied in the several differently oriented outside zones and in the interior zones.94 For the Seagram Building, Jaros, Baum, and Bolles tailored the air-​conditioning system for the structure’s large expanse of nearly floor-​ to-​ceiling windows and the maximum use of floor space. The building’s periphery contained 122,000 square feet of glass. Indeed, the Seagram Building was described as “the first in Manhattan with ceiling-​to-​floor glass,” distinct from the UN Secretariat Building and Lever House, which had glass above opaque sills on each floor.95 Because of the windows, then still novel, a heating and cooling system with unusually flexible control was developed to counter wide variations in temperature around the building in all seasons. The tower was divided into interior and perimeter zones, both served by equipment on the roof and in the second and third (bottom) levels of the basement. Chilled water for cooling was supplied by two centrifugal compressors, or refrigerating machines, each with a capacity of 1,600 tons, located on the roof. Each 23,000-pound machine was raised in four pieces in an operation described as the largest total weight lifted atop a skyscraper (fig. 112).96 The location exemplified a trend by the later 1950s toward placement of air-​conditioning equipment on rooftops in order to free space below grade for other uses that could generate rental income. Placing the compressors near the rooftop cooling towers rather than in the basement also required less piping linking the two. Atop the building, the two-​level mechanical penthouse housing the compressors was visually screened by an upward extension of the facade’s projecting mullions (fig. 110). Turbines powered by steam A ir - Condi t ioned Gl a ss Buil dings

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Figure 112 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (architect); Kahn and Jacobs (associated architects); and Jaros, Baum, and Bolles (mechanical engineers)— Seagram Building, lifting of centrifugal-​compressor components up the south side of the tower. From Buildings: The Magazine of Building Management 57, no. 7 (July 1957). Photo courtesy of Stamats Business Media.

purchased from the municipal system drove the two compressors.97 Steam was more economical and convenient than electricity. In the utility core, adjacent to elevators and stairways, shafts (marked by X on the floor plans) held air-​conditioning ducts and auxiliary piping (fig. 111). Primary supply air traveled through the vertical shafts in ducts and conduits to horizontal branch ducts serving all floors. Since the shafts themselves served as ducts for return air, they were lined with plastic to reduce surface friction and speed the flow of the air.98 Before the air-​conditioning system was selected, a duplicate of a typical office was built at Carrier’s Syracuse, New York, headquarters, to test the equipment under actual working conditions. Its large window area enabled the engineers to study the system’s capacity to respond to the different heating or cooling 186

loads that might exist in different offices simultaneously. This was to give clients an unusual degree of control over temperature and humidity.99 The Seagram Building’s apparatus included Carrier modular Weathermaster units designed for all-​glass buildings. The 3,600 units were the largest installation of these up to that time.100 Distinct from the sill-​height Weathermaster units in the UN Secretariat Building and Lever House, modular units low to the floor “occupy the smallest amount of space used by a central system providing year-​round air-​conditioning, yet must do a proportionately bigger cooling and heating job” because of the glass.101 They would “create an invisible wall of conditioned air over the inside of the window area to neutralize any winter cold or summer heat transmitted through the glass.”102 Each perimeter office space had two sources of conditioned air: an induction unit near the floor along the window, and ceiling supply vents, also along the window. As seen in a section through one floor and its nearby outer wall, the induction units were special low-​ profile (one-​foot-​tall) high-​velocity devices, which were partly recessed into the floor, the slab having been lowered near the windows to accommodate them (fig. 113). A drawing for this detail dated 27 June 1957 is in the Mies van der Rohe Archive at the Museum of Modern Art, suggesting that it was designed by Mies’s office. A small recessed area between the unit’s outer edge and the glass allowed drapes and venetian blinds to reach the floor, and because units were set back from the exterior wall, they minimally affected the visible proportions of the windows. In the ceiling next to the windows was a wide strip of acoustic tile where return air was drawn into ducts above (fig. 114).103 The Seagram Building’s visual uniformity would be ensured during the day by its material

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palette, including the reflective tinted glass, and at night, when that same glass became transparent, the illumination behind would be consistent through the tower’s 516-foot height (fig. 110).104 For Mies, these visual effects were paramount: it was the formal ideal of his architecture that controlled decisions about the use and visible presentation of technologies, whether they were structural or mechanical. In this way, his approach was like that of Harrison and Abramovitz and that of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill. Yet it was precisely this midcentury modernist tendency to visually suppress the air-​conditioning apparatus that younger architects like Eero Saarinen and Louis Kahn chose to counter in bodies of work that began in the 1950s and remained highly influential in later decades. Eero Saarinen and the General Motors Technical Center, 1948–56 If there was a transitional figure between Mies van der Rohe and Louis Kahn in the history of modernist integration of air-​conditioning systems, it was Eero Saarinen. His style and agenda were related to those of Mies, yet his approach directly presaged Kahn’s. At the time of his early death, Saarinen (1910–1961) was among the most widely admired architects in the United States, and a number of subsequently prominent practitioners had trained in his office. One foundation of his reputation was his firm’s enormous project for the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan, whose first era of design began in 1945 and whose dedication took place in the spring of 1956. In this, his largest project, on which he associated with the Detroit firm of Smith, Hinchman, and Grylls, Saarinen was concerned with mechanical systems as part of a holistic spatial and structural organization for offices

and industrial spaces.105 The site was to be “a beautiful, dignified, and ideally planned and equipped technical center attractive not only to present personnel, but offering the most complete facilities and desirable employment conditions to outstanding new research engineers and technicians. The building’s design was to be consistent with the corporation’s advanced thinking in research and development.”106 In aiming to attract excellent personnel, the company considered criteria similar to Wright’s work for SC Johnson. This “meant expressing the forward-​looking industrial character of the center,” envisioning the future.107 A key part of Saarinen’s futuristic solution focused on the center’s systems for air-​conditioning its varied offices and laboratories. A ir - Condi t ioned Gl a ss Buil dings

Figure 113 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (architect); Kahn and Jacobs (associated architects); and Jaros, Baum, and Bolles (mechanical engineers)— Seagram Building, section through an air-​conditioning unit, showing a primary air duct rising at an angle through the floor slab to reach a low Weathermaster unit on the floor above. From Consulting Engineer 9, no. 9 (September 1957): 93, based on Mies van der Rohe Archive, The Museum of Modern Art, New York City, drawing no. JB54.378, revised 27 June 1957, for window-​unit details, Seagram Building. © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-​Kunst, Bonn.

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Figure 114 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (architect); Kahn and Jacobs (associated architects); and Jaros, Baum, and Bolles (mechanical engineers)— Seagram Building, office interior, showing the air-​ conditioning unit on the floor and the exhaust vents in the ceiling near the windows, 1958. Photo © Ezra Stoller / Esto.

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At the technical center were groups for research, styling, engineering, process development, and service, the latter consisting of a heating plant, maintenance shop, water reservoir, and other facilities to support the other four groups. The associated architects collaborated with the corporation’s engineers to apply the latest industrial techniques from the automobile industry to building construction, where relevant. This architecture carried “forward the tradition of American factory buildings, which had its roots in the Midwest in the early automobile factories of Albert Kahn and ha[d] been perhaps the unique and greatest contribution of American architecture to the world.”108 Since the engineering group was the first to go into construction, by 1950, its buildings became prototypical for the whole project. It was among the first of several to be completed by October 1951. The engineering

staff focused on long-​range development of automotive design. This initial group of structures included the Administration and Drafting Building, Shop Building, Dynamometer Building, and related facilities. After a careful analysis of the group’s requirements, the first part designed was the Engineering and Drafting Building. Chief among its criteria were a “complete flexibility of floor space. Departments in this group were constantly expanding or contracting as required by the particular problems assigned to them.”109 To obtain this flexibility, Saarinen, like Mies at the Illinois Institute of Technology, chose a module to govern the design of all buildings. The unit was five feet two inches, selected so that prefabricated, moveable partitions could be located and shifted in an infinite number of combinations, according to changing needs. Each modular area was an independent spatial unit in its lighting, air-​conditioning, and sprinkler system. The module was thought serviceable for the center’s three major types of spaces: shop spaces, office/drafting/laboratory spaces, and special-​use spaces like those in the Dynamometer Building.110 For the engineering group, Saarinen and his team designed an office building three stories high, 53 by 370 feet in plan (fig. 115). Among the first spaces to be built was the drafting room, about fifty feet wide, free from all columns, and able to hold the load of automobiles and similar equipment (fig. 116). The structural plan was developed to meet not only these spatial requirements but also closely related mechanical and electrical criteria. The space between each floor and the ceiling below had to be kept to a minimum, so built-​up welded steel trusses two feet six inches deep spanned the fifty-​one feet two inches between columns. The lateral and longitudinal trusses were to be

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tied together, top and bottom, to form a two-​ way truss system spanning both the length and breadth of the building. A sectional perspective shows how the trusses’ depth provided the interstitial space for the air ducts (fig. 115). As with the Seagram Building, two mock-​ up offices for the General Motors Technical Center were built for testing options after research into lighting and air-​conditioning. Ultimately all seventeen of the center’s office

and laboratory buildings that were dedicated in May 1956 (out of an eventual total of twenty-​five buildings) had high-​velocity air-​conditioning because of the space saved by smaller ducts, which were easier to install and insulate. The system also had high supply velocities of about 2,000 fpm to permit greater temperature differentials between supplied air and room air, reducing the quantity of chilled air required. In other words, if very cool air A ir - Condi t ioned Gl a ss Buil dings

Figure 115 Eero Saarinen (architect) and Smith, Hinchman, and Grylls (associated architects and engineers), General Motors Technical Center, Warren, Michigan, 1948–56, sectional perspective through the Engineering Building, showing air ducts threaded through trusses. Eero Saarinen Collection (MS593), Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, box 105, drawing SK-121.

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Figure 116 Eero Saarinen (architect) and Smith, Hinchman, and Grylls (associated architects and engineers), General Motors Technical Center, Engineering Building, drafting room, showing luminous ceiling with vertical aluminum baffles and translucent plastic below fluorescent light fixtures. Photo © Ezra Stoller / Esto.

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entered a space more quickly, less air volume would be needed. If higher velocity could offset greater quantity, then this helped to limit energy demands. In the main Research Staff Administration Building, with its long expanse of glass and metal walls, a minimum of 20 percent of outdoor air was admitted at all times, its freshness increased by the plethora of surrounding trees. A minimum of six air changes per hour determined the airflow rate in all occupied areas.111 The system was designed for very high levels of spatial control and flexibility. It provided heating, ventilating, and cooling with individual room temperature control of 5ºF above and below a fixed zone setting. To enable such precise control of temperature for different adjacent spaces, a two-​duct (one hot and one cold) distribution system supplied air at two different temperatures to outlets located at modular intersections.112 The system supplied a constant volume of blended warm and cool air into each room at the temperature desired. Lighting fit

the module and gave shadowless light with a minimum of glare, as in the drafting room, where the work demanded no reflections (fig. 116). Fluorescent fixtures were set in a grid of aluminum ceiling baffles that blocked lateral slanting rays. The baffles gave the grid visible three-​dimensional form overhead. To reduce the light, a corrugated translucent plastic was in some spaces suspended across the bottom of the baffles to create a luminous ceiling, as seen on the left in figure 116. This provided a high degree of noise absorption and established a constant height to permit the use of standard moveable partitions.113 Ceilings, to be dramatic as soft gleaming areas at night, were “the first developed completely luminous ceilings using special molded plastic pans.”114 If the Engineering Building resonated with Mies’s work, then the Dynamometer Building, appended to its west, prefigured Kahn’s. The Dynamometer Building had distinct functions and was different in its air system (fig. 117). It had one main floor containing test cells for engine, transmission, chassis, and fuel-​system development work. Above this single working level was a mechanical penthouse for heating and ventilating equipment. Fresh air was supplied from the penthouse. Each test cell’s supply system pulled fresh air through filters and blew it down into the room through long narrow slots in the ceiling. This arrangement was to form a curtain of fresh air between the test operators and the test equipment, shielding operators from heat and fumes. The basement had separate engine-​exhaust ventilation systems for each cell on the working floor. Air was exhausted from the basement along the sides of the building’s foundation, where it combined with engine exhaust and was fanned up and out the stacks (fig. 118). Outside, the exhaust stacks were separate, mostly paired blue-​black

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Figure 117 Eero Saarinen (architect) and Smith, Hinchman, and Grylls (associated architects and engineers), General Motors Technical Center, Dynamometer Building, opened 1951, photograph ca. 1952–59. Photo © Wayne Andrews / Esto.

cylinders along the building’s long north and south flanks (fig. 117). Saarinen wrote, “In the Dynamometer buildings, the free-​standing exhaust pipes were designed to be strong elements in the composition.”115 As William Jordy noted, the Dynamometer Building may have inspired the exhaust towers on Louis Kahn’s Richards Medical Research Building of 1957–60.116 Although responding to the Dynamometer Building’s modern functionality, the exhaust towers aspired to an archaic monumentality. Aline Saarinen said that “the stately row of free-​standing exhaust pipes make it look . . . like an Egyptian temple.”117 The highly glazed

brickwork on the building’s end walls was also compared to preclassical antiquity: “Not since the fabulous palaces of the Assyrian kings were built in the ninth century before Christ have brilliantly colored glazed-​brick walls been used for architectural effect as they are in the Technical Center.”118 Like Le Corbusier, Aalto, and Kahn, Saarinen was drawn to archaic architecture as a model for a modern architecture that was itself in an early stage of development, as in ancient Greece, archaic Doric temples modeled high classical temples, like the Parthenon at Athens. As Kahn said in 1955: “One should not be surprised to find, in fact one would expect to find, an archaic quality in A ir - Condi t ioned Gl a ss Buil dings

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Figure 118 Eero Saarinen (architect) and Smith, Hinchman, and Grylls (associated architects and engineers), General Motors Technical Center, Dynamometer Building, sectional perspective showing ventilation system. From AF 95, no. 5 (November 1951): 117.

architecture today. This is because real architecture is just beginning to come to grips with a whole new order of artistic expression, growing, in turn, from the new set of tasks which society has set for the architect.”119 Architecture

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began in the forms of construction, including its mechanical systems, and from such forms a modern aesthetic would develop. For Kahn, air-​ conditioning was among those elements that would offer a rationale for novel forms.

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Louis I. Kahn’s Architecture and Air-Conditioning to the 1970s Chap ter 8

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mong the most influential American modernist architects, perhaps the one who most fully engaged with the accommodation and expression of mechanical air systems was Louis Kahn, especially in his major works from the early 1950s to his death in 1974. Kahn not only assimilated the spatial and functional requirements of air-​conditioning into his practice, as his contemporaries did. He also embraced it conceptually as a modern condition in architecture that had the potential to shape architecture’s visible character. As many critics and historians have described, in Kahn’s work and theory a historical sensibility informed his interpretation of the modernist tradition that he inherited from the earlier twentieth century and that flourished in his professional maturity. This chapter explores how his approach encompassed the air-​ conditioning systems of his buildings. Kahn completed his bachelor’s degree in architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in 1924. There he studied under Paul Philippe Cret, and he worked as a designer in Cret’s office in 1929–30. Recalling this training in the tradition of the École des Beaux-Arts, Kahn focused on the idea of the poché, or the areas of solid black ink on a plan showing a building’s walls and supports, with their thickness and their profiles. In his mature work, the hollow wall became the harboring space for mechanical

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systems, as a service space distinct from the main spaces that were served. He said: “From poché I learned the difference between the hollow wall and the solid wall. I got that directly from the Beaux–Arts. . . . I made the wall a container instead of a solid. That came directly from my training in Beaux-​Arts. So did the idea of the service spaces and the spaces served.”1 As he, his contemporaries, and scholars of his work have consistently noted, Kahn felt that service spaces included not just smaller secondary rooms, those subordinate to primary rooms in a Beaux-​Arts plan, but also interstitial spaces or, as he put it, the hollow wall that contained a building’s mechanical systems. Unlike Mies van der Rohe, whose work otherwise influenced his in a number of ways, Kahn explored the expressive potential of modern heating, ventilation, and air-​conditioning. He developed the apparatus of forced air into visible forms that he foregrounded in his architecture. As he wrote in 1955: “Mies’ order is not comprehensive enough to encompass acoustics, light, air, piping, storage, stairs, shafts, vertical and horizontal and other service spaces. His order of structure serves to frame the building but not harbor the service space.”2 Strictly speaking, this was not wholly true, in the sense that Mies and his collaborators carefully considered mechanical systems as part of their designs, but they did not 193

acknowledge them spatially and structurally in the way Kahn came to do. Of the building types that Kahn transformed, art museums and laboratories are particularly prominent. These types had standards of practice in heating, ventilating, and air-​conditioning that Kahn and his collaborators drew on to shape their original interpretations of services. Air-​Conditioning Art Museums to 1950 The country’s first system for comfort air-​ conditioning in an art museum was likely that for the Frick Collection in New York City, opened in 1935. Carrère and Hastings had designed the original building in 1912–14 as a home for Henry Clay Frick, but with the expectation that it would one day be open to the public. In 1932, after Frick’s widow died in 1931, John Russell Pope won a limited competition to transform this mansion into a public museum, which would have to accommodate large crowds, curatorial facilities, and expansions.3 Since Frick’s will had stipulated that no work of art could be removed from the building, it became necessary to construct an enormous vault in the basement to contain the collection. This space, the first to be built, included the building’s first air-​conditioning plant. The formerly open courtyard in the center of the house was transformed into an indoor garden, with lush foliage and burbling fountains, lit by a vaulted skylight. This brought complications for the new air-​conditioning system, which had to dehumidify the nearby galleries, and especially the new circular lecture hall, whose occupants needed cooling. Pope also designed the adjacent Frick Art Reference Library, also opened in 1935, which had air-​conditioning and double windows to prevent condensation on the glass.4 When the Frick Collection opened, 194

in December 1935, the air-​conditioning also had to handle the cooling load created by some 750 visitors. They “found that the Frick collection, unlike many other museums, could be visited without fatigue. It [was] small and compact enough to be seen in less than two hours. Because of the air-​conditioning system the atmosphere [was] refreshing and the carpeted floors of the Frick residence [made] walking comfortable.”5 For art galleries and museums, air-​ conditioning had dual benefits. Most obvious was the comfort that it provided the staff and the visiting public. But as important was the preservative effect of uniform temperature and humidity on irreplaceable artworks. American art directors were then concerned with the deterioration of privately possessed art objects under varying temperature and humidity. In the modern era of steam or hot-​water heating, lower humidity in the winter months caused parchment, paint, wood, and textiles to become brittle and crack. And without air-​ conditioning, excessive humidity in summer stimulated the growth of molds, fungus, and mildew. Finally, daily swings of temperature and humidity imposed a strain on the structure of tapestries, furniture, and paintings that eventually led to their destruction. American collectors despaired that their climate should have harmful effects on objects that had withstood the ravages of centuries in Europe. Art from warm dry climates deteriorated especially rapidly under the wide variations in American weather. By 1939, after the Frick had been air-​conditioned for three years, its director reported that it had “completely eliminated ‘bloom’ from the surface of oil paintings. This bluish film of moisture, which shows up on varnished surfaces in damp weather, not only detracts from the appearance of a painting but

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is a signal to art directors that they must not apply any paint or other preservative until the bloom has been removed by a change to drier weather.” Most museums were in the heart of large cities, where the outside atmosphere was laden with dust, which is a destructive agent to all fabrics, and sulfurous acid gas from chimneys, which attacks metals. Thus, by 1939, the Frick enjoyed “a state of cleanliness which [was] the envy of all art directors—its attendants [did] not need to dust off their exhibit pieces more than once a year. And the acid content of New York air [was] neutralized by operating the conditioning system with a slightly alkaline content in the air washer.”6 Among the first prominent new museum buildings to incorporate air-​conditioning was the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, opened in February 1941, also designed by John Russell Pope.7 Washington’s hot and humid summers, which had prompted the federal government to air-​condition through the 1930s (see chapter 4), would necessitate air-​ conditioning the gallery’s new public interiors. Pope wanted the gallery to be “a comfortable place in which to see pictures, in other words, to give a charm to the interior of the building and to avoid fatigue on the part of the visitor.”8 There were ninety small skylighted galleries on the one raised main floor, relieved by large interior courts, also skylighted. In a building without windows, the extensive skylights enabled a reduced heat load from electrical lighting, yet they increased the heat load from solar radiation. Air-​conditioning had not originally been planned, but Pope advocated it on the model of the Frick Collection, and the National Gallery had a system when it opened. From seventeen air-​conditioning plants in a basement below street level, ductwork served zones throughout the building.9

Both the Frick Collection and the National Gallery would be points of reference for the design of Louis Kahn’s later art museums. Richard Brown, Kahn’s client as director of the Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, had worked at the Frick and saw its environment as a partial model. The Yale Center for British Art was funded by a gift from Paul Mellon, son of Andrew Mellon, who had been the principal donor for the creation of the National Gallery of Art. The Yale Universit y Art Gallery Addition, 1951–53 Few art museums installed air-​conditioning before World War II, and art museums only gradually adopted it after the war.10 Among these was Kahn’s addition to the Yale University Art Gallery on Chapel Street, a commission he received after teaching at the Yale School of Architecture since 1947 and before returning from his time as architect in residence at the American Academy in Rome in 1950–51. He owed the commission in part to his longtime colleague George Howe, then the dean of Yale’s school of architecture, whose PSFS Building Kahn would have known well.11 The addition was originally called the Yale University Art Gallery and Design Center, denoting its inclusion not only of exhibition space and offices but also of drafting rooms, lounges, and workshops. Kahn’s addition first housed the Department of Architecture, the Print and Graphic Arts Departments, and the offices of the director of the art gallery, in addition to exhibition galleries. These galleries were the main part of the program, for which most funds for the project were specifically given.12 Each floor included column-​free galleries to the east and west of a central service zone with the main triangular stairs, an elevator, a secondary

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Figure 119 Louis I. Kahn (architect); Douglas Orr (associated architect); and Meyer, Strong, and Jones (mechanical engineers)—Yale University Art Gallery addition, New Haven, Connecticut, 1951– 53, design-​development ceiling plan. Louis I. Kahn Collection, University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, drawing 030.I.C.370.1.7.

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stairway, vertical mechanical plenums, and restrooms (fig. 119).13 Kahn was advised that the art gallery’s “structure should be exceptionally flexible— probably an open-​loft structure, subdividable at will and subject to quick change.”14 This meant widely spaced supports for a structural slab sufficiently deep to span between them. Spaces could be subdivided with easily moveable plywood partitions. Because of the steel shortage and government rationing during the Korean War (1950–53), attention turned to a structure of concrete, wherein steel would be used only for reinforcing. To enable spaces to be column-​ free, Kahn and his collaborators designed the ceilings as a tetrahedral grid of poured-​in-​place reinforced concrete (fig. 120). This geometry

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enabled the slab to span the galleries and to provide spaces within the ceiling for pipes, air ducts, and light fixtures, all of which were set in its depths. Kahn called it “three-​dimensional construction, as the ceiling forms a pattern that is in contrast to the traditional flat-​surface type of ceiling. Among its advantages are: all ductwork and conduit can be easily placed within the ceiling without being readily apparent and without [a]ffecting the strength of the system whatsoever.”15 The project evolved through multiple lines of consultation even before Kahn had returned from Rome at the end of March 1951. In January Yale offered him the project if he would associate with Douglas Orr, a New Haven architect, who had worked on the program and initial planning.16 Kahn accepted this arrangement, and in February, when Orr’s office sent Kahn prints of their earlier design, they noted: “[T]he new gallery portion should be air-​conditioned, as far as the budget allows.”17 Yet Yale then questioned “whether air cooling would be possible within [their] budgetary limitations, and whether it is feasible in a building of this nature.”18 When Orr’s office sent Kahn their program on 2 April 1951, they proposed “to limit the area ventilated by mechanical means to the interior bays only and provid[e] natural ventilation for the exterior bays by means of opening the windows.”19 But Kahn replied that operable windows in the exhibition spaces were not practical.20 It was “considered essential, as far as the budget [would] allow, to air-​condition galleries for paintings both old and modern, and for textiles and Oriental objects. Also, there should be air-​conditioned storage for furniture, and certain ceramics.”21 From July 1951, when Orr sent Kahn preliminary sketches, to March 1952, when the ceiling

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structure was fixed, the plan was to cool the third-​floor galleries (which were to hold the Jarves collection of early Italian panel paintings) and arrange other areas for future cooling via installation of cooling coils.22 When the addition opened in 1953, only the third floor was air-​conditioned, but the others were sealed and equipped for eventual air-​conditioning. So were they altered after 1958, when the architectural school vacated the second floor, which was redesigned for gallery use.23 In 1955 the early publications on the completed building focused on the ceiling as the site of integration for structure, ventilation, and electricity. As much as its frame of reinforced concrete, the addition’s mechanical services distinguished it as modern. As the Yale architectural journal, Perspecta, noted of Kahn’s work: “The builders of the past had it much easier than those of the present in one important respect: they did not have to worry about pipes, ducts, conduits and innumerable mechanical intestines.” The editors argued that while modernism as structural and functional expression had superseded use of historical styles, the tendency “to conceal the newly invented technology” persisted. The architect, structural engineer, mechanical engineer, and interior decorator normally worked separately on the various aspects of a building. But at the Yale Art Gallery, Kahn had “set himself the task of creating a space in which the structure and the mechanical equipment—lighting, acoustical and climatic—would all live one life and would become the basic means of artistic expression. Integrity of form was his first objective.”24 As the structural system went through a series of iterations in 1951–52, Kahn’s office worked with that of Orr, who was the first author on the specifications. Kahn also

worked closely with his colleague Anne Tyng. Early schemes included concrete floor slabs with T-beams underneath. In an open space between the beam soffits and the slab soffit above, mechanical systems could have been placed and then covered below with a hung acoustic ceiling level with the beam soffits. But after the gallery’s opening, Kahn criticized himself for having considered this approach, saying: “We should try more to devise structures which can harbor the mechanical needs of rooms and spaces and require no covering. Ceilings with the structure furred in tend to erase the scale. . . . It would follow that the pasting on of lighting and acoustical material, the burying of tortured unwanted ducts, conduits, and pipelines would become intolerable.”25 It was in this spirit that, by March 1952, Kahn successfully proposed rethinking the

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Figure 120 Louis I. Kahn (architect); Douglas Orr (associated architect); and Meyer, Strong, and Jones (mechanical engineers)—Yale University Art Gallery addition, gallery interior, showing tetrahedral ceiling housing electrical channels, or trol-​e ducts, for variable mounting of light fixtures originally in alternate bays. Photograph by Lionel Freedman. © Lionel Freedman Archives. Louis I. Kahn Collection, University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, photograph 030.IV.A.370.3.21.

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Figure 121 Louis I. Kahn (architect); Douglas Orr (associated architect); and Meyer, Strong, and Jones (mechanical engineers)—Yale University Art Gallery addition, isometric drawing of the tetrahedral floor system, showing air-​supply ducts and electrical raceways (trol-​e ducts) between the inclined vertical flanges of concrete T-​beams. Louis I. Kahn Collection, University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.

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structural system to include the tetrahedral floor slab, based on Tyng’s experimental projects for space-​frame geometry in steel, which were in turn inspired by the work of Buckminster Fuller.26 The floor spanned between columns forty feet apart, meaning that the slab would have to be deep and heavy, lending an aura of monumentality and permanence that Kahn wanted to reintroduce into modern architecture.27 Concrete had inspired such aspirations among architects since the early

twentieth century. But what was original in Kahn’s approach was his effort to integrate mechanical systems into this long-​standing ideal, which historically had focused mainly on structural assemblies alone. An isometric drawing through the tetrahedral ceiling shows that it is two feet four inches deep from its soffit to the top plane, which is keyed into the separately poured four-​inch-​ deep floor slab above (fig. 121). The structural engineer on the project, Henry A. Pfisterer,

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recalled that the local code had required some sort of beam system as distinct from a purely tetrahedral structure. To meet this requirement and to facilitate construction, the ceiling as built only simulates the original tetrahedral scheme, meaning that tetrahedral shapes were created, as seen from below, but these shapes are not structural. Instead, deep concrete beams span forty feet between the centers of the girders atop the columns. Yet the sidewalls of the beams are not vertical; rather, they are inclined (fig. 121). These beams are combined with cast triangular inclined bridging elements that look like tetrahedra from below but provide accessibility for electrical and mechanical distribution. The ceiling is thus not a true tetrahedral space frame as a thoroughly triangulated structural form.28 For ventilation and air-​conditioning, circular supply ducts of four different diameters ran east-​west between the tetrahedra’s inclined surfaces from the mechanical space on the center of each floor (fig. 121). More ductwork than normal was required and had to be placed before the top slab was poured, but ducts were inexpensive tubular stove pipe of galvanized iron rather than crafted sheet metal.29 To enable flexible partition placement, the ducts had small louvered openings (4 by 2.5 inches) at 2.5-foot intervals along their tops (some 6,500 outlets in all). These openings delivered small quantities of air upward to the ceiling slab serving as an inverted air splash pan, insofar as the slab aided in diffusing air by reflecting it back down into the space below. A critic wrote: “The air is thrown against the underside of the slab, and filters down through the openings of the floor system, creating what might be called a ‘breathing ceiling.’ . . . Rather more ductwork is required than in conventional air conditioning.” But “this ‘breathing

ceiling,’ thus achieved, provides an efficient air distribution for any space division.”30 Among the most telling images of Kahn’s ceiling is that which appears at night through the gallery’s glass wall facing its courtyard on the north side. Figure 122’s photograph of this view, by Lionel Freedman, likely had temporary light sources added to heighten its effect, but it and similar images clarify the logic of the interior structural system. To limit solar gain and ambient light, the windows were equipped with floor-​to-​ceiling light-​control panels, or window shades made of glass-​fiber fabric, hung from paired curtain tracks and adjusted horizontally by pull-​cords.31 As one looks in from the courtyard at night, the silhouetted lines of the glass mullions are seen against the diagonal lines of the ceiling inside. Lighting consultant Richard Kelly selected and placed the lighting fixtures to illuminate the tetrahedral ceiling and the

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Figure 122 Louis I. Kahn (architect); Douglas Orr (associated architect); and Meyer, Strong, and Jones (mechanical engineers)—Yale University Art Gallery addition, night view from Weir Courtyard facing southwest. Photograph by Lionel Freedman. © Lionel Freedman Archives. Louis I. Kahn Collection, University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, photograph 030.IV.A370.3.38.

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Figure 123 Louis I. Kahn (architect) and Cronheim and Weger (mechanical engineers), Alfred Newton Richards Medical Research Building, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1957–60, view from east, ca. 1961, showing Koolshade screens on east-​ facing windows. Photograph by Lawrence S. Williams, Inc. University Archives and Records Center, University of Pennsylvania, photograph no. UPX 12:0034, FF33.

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moveable plywood partitions so that the total logic of the interior design stands out, almost as if it were a sectional perspective.32 Two years later, Kelly designed the night lighting for the towering Seagram Building, where peripheral spaces near the windows had illuminated ceiling planes (fig. 110). Their solutions differed, but Kahn and Mies both used nighttime lighting that showed how they had integrated mechanical systems into their modern architecture’s overall aesthetic.

The Richards Medical Research Building, Universit y of Pennsylvania, 1957–60 If his addition to the Yale University Art Gallery gave Kahn national recognition, his international reputation dated from the Alfred Newton Richards Medical Research Building at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia (fig. 123). Renowned from its completion in 1961, the Richards Building marked a convergence of Kahn’s concern for the architectural expression of mechanical systems with the ongoing development of air-​conditioning as essential to biomedical research and pharmaceutical manufacturing since the 1910s. The Richards Building integrated structure and air-​conditioning to serve its original functions, which depended even more critically on sophisticated mechanical control of interior climate than did art museums and galleries.33 In the 1950s the University of Pennsylvania’s medical school, like its peer institutions across the country, foresaw the growing importance of technically advanced laboratory work to medical education. In the spring of 1956 the faculty asked the dean to establish a planning committee for a new building, which body soon began to establish the building’s requirements. The school’s administration also raised limited funds for a new laboratory building to house research departments then located in nearby structures. These groups included physiology, microbiology, pathology, public health and preventive medicine, and surgical research (which would include an operating room for experiments with animals). From the start, it was envisioned that the new facility would stand just west of the school’s large daylighted Medical Laboratories (1902–4), by Cope and Stewardson (renamed the John Morgan Building in 1987), and its Anatomy-​Chemistry west

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addition (1928). The new building was to link to these structures on its lower levels, as Kahn’s does. As of September 1956, the medical school’s planning committee contemplated a rectangular building eight stories tall above the basement.34 As planning progressed into 1958, the plan approached a hundred thousand square feet.35 The intent was for flexible spaces with vertical shafts for utilities, as in the Medical Laboratories. In January 1957 the medical school’s planning committee asked a trustee and G. Holmes Perkins, dean of the Graduate School of Fine Arts, to recommend an architect, and Perkins proposed Louis Kahn, his faculty colleague since fall 1955. Trustees approved this choice, and the president appointed Kahn.36 Yet in 1957 Kahn had designed neither a medical laboratory nor a high-​rise building, and he had had no previous contact with scientists and their work habits. His collaborator, the structural engineer August Komendant, recalled that Kahn’s first questions to him were, “Doctor, what is a medical laboratory? Have you had any experience in this field?”37 Kahn and his team had to learn about what services and instruments were needed and what the requirements were for natural or artificial light and for interior climatic conditions. From May through the summer of 1957, Kahn began this process through discussions with the department heads, medical doctors, and university administrators. By June he proposed a vertical scheme of stacked laboratory bays on eight floors distributed in towers.38 The mechanical systems were central to Kahn’s conception of the building’s spaces and massing. Collaborating with Komendant, Kahn and his team devised a plan for research laboratories that departed from the then-​standard corridor-​type layout, which he felt was

unsatisfactory because it yielded spaces that were inhospitable, anonymous, and inflexible. In November 1960, after the building was essentially completed, he said: The Medical Research Building at the University of Pennsylvania is conceived in recognition of the realization that science laboratories are studios and that the air to breathe should be away from the air to throw away. The normal plan of laboratories . . . places the work areas off one side of a public corridor and the other side provided with the stairs, elevators, animal quarters, ducts and other services. This corridor is the vehicle of the exhaust of dangerous air and also the supply of the air you breathe, all next to each other. The only distinction between one man’s spaces of work from the other is the difference of the numbers on the doors.39 Here Kahn may have been thinking of Penn’s older laboratory buildings, to which his vertical towers were to connect. But he was also likely referring to postwar examples of the type that interpreted it more along the lines of open flexible spaces, as the medical school had initially envisioned the Richards Building. In either case, Kahn clearly wanted a building that would depart from its type’s conventions. The university wrote: In preparing his design, Kahn felt very strongly that ventilation in research activities is of importance. In the standard contemporary laboratory, outside air mixes with inside contaminated air, resulting in unpleasant odors and potential danger. The air taken into, and exhaled from the new medical research laboratory at Pennsylvania

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Figure 124 Louis I. Kahn (architect) and Cronheim and Weger (mechanical engineers), Alfred Newton Richards Medical Research Building, floor plan showing three laboratory towers and a central service tower on the south side, before addition of research towers and a service tower to the west for the Department of Biology, added in 1964. From AR 113, no. 2 (August 1960): 150; drawing not attributed.

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never mixes. Four tall brick towers adjacent to the service stack act as “nostrils,” inhaling air from the University’s Botanical Gardens, at the rear of the building. Air circulates throughout the building and, from each studio, is expelled up and out. In this way the experiments of one studio do not contaminate the air of another.40 To require 100 percent outside air for ventilation creates a large thermal load, and Kahn’s structural solution had to facilitate this special scheme of ventilation. Thomas Leidigh, the structural engineer who oversaw the commission for his firm Keast & Hood, wrote: “Many of the concepts of structure integrated with mechanical services and Architectural

expression are relatively new. The Architect’s development of and belief in this integration is a topic in itself.”41 In a tight site on Penn’s urban campus, Kahn designed three eight-​story towers with laboratories shaped like studios, forty-​five feet square, with access from a central tower (fig. 124). He wrote: “I designed three studio towers for the University where a man may work in his own bailiwick and each studio has its own escape stairway sub tower and exhaust sub tower for isotope [chemically vitiated] air, germ-​infected air and noxious gas.”42 This passage refers to exhaust from the laboratory fume hoods, as distinct from general exhaust air from laboratory spaces. Biomedical and chemical laboratories are distinct in their air-​ handling needs from other industrial, commercial, and public building types because of their exhaust hoods over individual workbenches. Because laboratory-​hood exhaust air can contain harmful substances, by code it cannot be drawn into a general-​air exhaust system for reconditioning and recirculation. This refinement was introduced into Wright’s Johnson Research Tower’s ventilation system after it was built. For laboratory personnel working with bacteriological (as distinct from chemical-​ fume) hoods, another danger is that they could be exposed to pathogenic bacteria; moreover, unfiltered exhaust air from their workbenches might bring bacteria to others outside the laboratories. It is not safe to discharge potentially contaminated air directly outside a laboratory’s windows, since it might infiltrate nearby buildings with open windows near the same level. At some laboratories in multifunctional buildings, it was impractical, from the standpoint of both expense and aesthetics, to discharge the air through a duct extending a safe distance above a building’s roof.43

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This is where Kahn’s solution for the Richards Building was so unusual. He proposed separate monumental brick towers to duct the hood exhaust from all the laboratories to a safe distance high above the roof. Effectively these brick towers, because they originally handled only laboratory hood exhaust, represented the building’s distinct function as a medical research facility. Altering Louis Sullivan’s aphorism that “form follows function,” Kahn said, “form evokes function,” as if to stress the capacity of forms to make functions legible.44 This decision was costly, since the medical faculty, in surveying its needs for hoods with exhaust outlets, had earlier concluded: “It is desirable to have these hoods located in one tower only because of savings in construction costs.” Economy dictated “placing all hoods for all departments in one only of the three laboratory towers.”45 But Kahn proposed that each laboratory tower have hoods, with one or two exhaust towers and one escape stair tower. He conceived each laboratory as a served open space, like a loft or studio, even though scientists would subdivide them. The idea was to accord services their place, because if they were given their own position, then they would not impinge on the laboratory spaces they served. For Kahn, a mechanical system “is the great destroyer of space,” hence it needed to be well contained.46 His plan implicitly critiqued Mies’s stairs and plenums in a central service core like the Seagram Building’s. Kahn considered the exhaust towers to be worthy of articulation, and he detailed them differently from the stair towers. The stair towers have open crowns, with taller sidewalls rising above their end walls, so that their poured concrete structure is visible. One Kahn associate referred to the towers as “crenellated,” like the neo-​Elizabethan dormitory nearby.47 Yet

the four brick-​clad walls of each laboratory exhaust tower (and of each intake shaft on the central building) all rise to their tops, so the concrete structure is not visible (fig. 123). One critic wrote: “[F]aced with an intimidating mass of mechanical equipment, Kahn neither concealed nor glorified it. He simply accommodated it. In the process he synthesized structure and mechanics while giving the mechanical system itself full expression as an inescapable fact of life of a laboratory.”48 In each square laboratory bay, the interstitial service spaces were in the depth of the precast concrete Vierendeel trusses supporting each concrete floor slab (fig. 125). These trusses had steel reinforcing rods in them that were either prestressed (meaning that they were tightened before the concrete cured) or post-​ tensioned as a series of discrete elements (meaning that rods were threaded between successive parts of the truss after their concrete had cured, and then tightened with a jack to hold the parts of the truss together, like beads on a taut string). This construction helped with the air-​conditioning because, if the trusses could be prestressed and/or post-​tensioned, their parts could be thinner, like steel beams. Thus there would be more space in the trusses’ depths to run ducts and piping. Kahn was not the first to use a structural system of precast columns and beams. But other laboratories had service pipelines installed in crawl spaces below floors or hung from ceilings. What was innovative in his scheme was his development of the beams into trusses through whose voids the mechanical conduits could be threaded (fig. 126).49 As Leidigh wrote: All the interior members (main girders and secondary members) and the spandrel beams between the columns have

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Figure 125 Louis I. Kahn (architect) and Cronheim and Weger (mechanical engineers), Alfred Newton Richards Medical Research Building, under construction, view of precast concrete Vierendeel trusses supporting laboratory floors. August Komendant Collection, Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania.

a common bottom elevation. They are pierced horizontally by large openings to permit the passage of mechanical ducts, piping, etc., through the structure. . . . The rather lengthy period of evolution and crystallization of this structural system was as follows: the establishment of the relative size of openings possible at various points in the structure; the preliminary layout of the mechanical services; the sizing of these services passing through the openings; the sizing of the opening required to permit 204

passage of these services, with due regard to pitch of drainage lines, etc.; and, finally, the sizing of the structural members necessary to accommodate these openings. Truly, this structure is more than just a structure—it is part of an integrated building mechanism.50 For heating, ventilating, and cooling, Kahn collaborated with the Philadelphia mechanical engineers Nathan Cronheim and Leonard Weger from November 1957. Then it was not clear that the laboratories were to be

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air-​conditioned. On 25 November 1957 Weger wrote to Kahn to clarify the scope of his firm’s services on the project, noting: “Complete air conditioning will be designed for the Animal Tower, and the ventilation and air handling for the Laboratory Towers will be designed to accommodate future summer cooling. . . . If complete air conditioning of Laboratory Towers is to be provided, our fee for design and supervision will be increased.”51 As of 4 December 1957, “only the animal quarters [were to] be provided with year-​round air conditioning. Towers A, B, and C [would be] provided with a full heating and ventilating system ready for the installation of future air conditioning.”52 As the design had evolved from late 1957 through 1958, Kahn had had to respond to the need to cut costs further. In consultation with him, the planning committee considered cost-​saving ideas, including the mechanical systems, which, as of January 1958, were estimated at about 40 percent of the building’s total cost.53 To reduce a projected deficit relative to available funds, it was then proposed to eliminate “air conditioning for all but two of the Animal tower floors and refrigeration for air conditioning for the seven laboratory floors in all three towers.”54 By February 1958, Cronheim and Weger were entering the final phase of design for the mechanical systems, and they told Kahn: “[I]t is necessary that you advise us as to whether we are to design complete air-​conditioning, including the refrigeration cycle, for the Laboratory Towers, or to confine year-​round conditioning to the Animal Quarters. We believe it will be impossible to maintain acceptable conditions in the laboratories without the refrigeration cycle.” It would be possible to design the systems for the addition of cooling equipment at a later date, but this would

“occasion problems involving the partial dismantling of basic elements . . . in constant use, and [would] undoubtedly cause a disruption of services when the additions [were] made. Costs involved at that later date [would] be substantially higher than if the systems [were] made complete during the normal construction period.”55 Such arguments prevailed, because the working drawings with which Kahn and his staff proceeded through the spring of 1958 included air-​conditioning equipment for cooling the laboratories although hesitation about full air-conditioning lingered to September.56 Eventually funds were found to complete the Richards Building with air-​conditioning for all the laboratories. Construction began in October 1958, and the building was dedicated on 19 May 1960.57 After testing of the mechanical and other systems, the university took possession on 19 December.58

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Figure 126 Louis I. Kahn (architect) and Cronheim and Weger (mechanical engineers), Alfred Newton Richards Medical Research Building, laboratory interior with exposed mechanical piping and ductwork above a soffit of concrete Vierendeel trusses. Photograph by Joseph W. Molitor, 1960. Louis I. Kahn Collection, University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, photograph 030.IV.A.490.3.1. Photo: Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library © The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York.

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Figure 127 Louis I. Kahn (architect) and Cronheim and Weger (mechanical engineers), Alfred Newton Richards Medical Research Building, view from the southeast, showing a central service tower with square air intakes on the tower’s sides below the fourth floor. Photograph by George Cserna. Louis I. Kahn Collection, University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, photograph 030.IV.A.490.5.1. Photo: Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library © The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York. Figure 128 (opposite) Louis I. Kahn (architect) and Cronheim and Weger (mechanical engineers), Alfred Newton Richards Medical Research Building, plan and sections showing supply and exhaust air ducts in the laboratory-​tower ceilings, ca. 1960. Louis I. Kahn Collection, University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, drawing 030.I.C.490.008, M-6; graphic additions by author.

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The Richards Building’s air-​conditioning system begins on the rear, or south, side of the core service tower, where there are four separate vertical shafts for both air intake and general air exhaust (fig. 124, O). As Kahn said: “A central building to which the three major towers cluster takes the place of the area for services which are on the other side of the normal corridor plan. This central building has nostrils for intake of fresh air away from the exhaust sub towers of vitiated air.”59 The central south tower serves the three surrounding laboratory towers. It houses the air-​intake shafts on its south side and animal quarters whose temperature and humidity are carefully controlled. The three laboratory towers are offset from the central tower, originally allowing each tower exposure to daylight on three sides (fig. 124). The air-​intake openings, which Kahn, like Wright, referred to as “nostrils,” are on the third floor. In February 1958, “the method of air

intake was discussed and it was deemed essential that air intake be provided within one or two stories of the ground so that any possibility of short circuiting or contamination [from exhaust air] could be prevented.”60 The intakes read as square cutouts on the sides of the four south shafts, below the fourth-​floor slab (fig. 127). Air is drawn from these intakes to a mechanical penthouse on the core tower’s roof, where it enters four air-​handling units, one for each of the three laboratory towers and one for the animal quarters in the core tower. In the air-​ handling units, the intake air is filtered, washed, and either humidified and heated or dehumidified and cooled. The refrigeration machines supplying chilled water are in the core tower’s basement. Conditioned air is then forced down two major sets of vertical supply ducts on the core tower’s east and west sides (fig. 124, A). At each laboratory floor, horizontal supply ducts from these vertical shafts pass through the center of each tower’s trussed ceiling. Smaller ducts branching at right angles from these axial supply ducts bring conditioned air to each quadrant of the laboratory floor. General exhaust air is removed from the loft spaces of the laboratories by a parallel system of exhaust ducts that lead back to the core tower for reconditioning in the air-​handling units (fig. 128).61 Part of Kahn’s inspiration for the laboratory tower came from Wright’s SC Johnson Research Tower, which was extensively published upon its completion in 1950 and which Kahn visited in 1959. He said of it: “The Tower was done with love and I should say it is architecture. . . . Architecture should start a new chain of reactions. It shouldn’t just exist for itself; it should throw out sparks to others. That is really the judgment of a piece of art, that power. If the Tower has this power to throw out

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sparks, to make you want to build one of these things, then I believe it functions.”62 As James Marston Fitch noted of the Richards Building, Kahn set a very high minimum standard for what he called architecture, as distinct from building. For Kahn, architecture was always marked by two overarching qualities:

a “harmony of systems” and a “hierarchy of ennobling spaces.”63 For Kahn, Wright’s research tower presumably met these criteria, as the Richards Building was meant to. In both cases, the glass enclosure for the laboratories was a major and ultimately problematic decision, where aesthetic and

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mechanical priorities clashed. For the main windows in the Richards Building, Kahn had originally preferred Thermopane together with interior blinds, to limit solar heat gain, and thermal insulation for adjacent walls. But to reduce costs, Thermopane was replaced with single-​pane glass, and the blinds and insulation were removed. Therefore, unless the glass were screened, laboratories, which occupied the corners of the bays (with offices and circulation in the middle), would be overexposed to outdoor heat and light. This exposure provoked concerns about the cost of heating and cooling.64 To enclose the laboratory towers as built, Kahn chose single broad horizontal panes of clear plate glass flush with the outside plane of the structural trusses above and the brick spandrels below. For the transoms set in the trusses above the main windows, Kahn chose a glare-​ reducing glass that progresses from a clear to an increasingly darker blue tint from the first

Figure 129 Louis I. Kahn (architect) and Cronheim and Weger (mechanical engineers), Alfred Newton Richards Medical Research Building, view of Koolshade screens installed on a laboratory tower. Photograph by Cervin Robinson, late 1960 or early 1961? Louis I. Kahn Collection, University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, photograph 030.IV.A.490.10.1.

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floor to the top floor, though he regretted this color choice and later thought it should have been a warm gray of the same value.65 Early photographs of the Richards Building published in July and August 1960 show the glass in the laboratory towers as clear plate panels (fig. 126). But those who worked in the building in its early months recalled problems with excessive heat and glare through the windows. By February 1961 the corner windows on several faces of the laboratory towers had been equipped with external metal mesh screens installed in four panels across each window, as shown in photographs by Cervin Robinson and others (fig. 129). The product’s trade name, Koolshade, could refer to screens of tiny fixed horizontal louvers encased between inner and outer panels of glass. This preassembled sandwich of louvers set between glass panels could be substituted for fixed window glass. In use from at least 1940, such screens cut solar heat gain to reduce demands on air-​conditioning systems. Manufacturers published guidelines on their appropriate use depending on latitude, sun angles, and other factors.66 Testing showed that clear glass windows allowed 89 percent of the sun’s energy to enter and that the addition of another glass pane with an air space between reduced the energy gain by only 5 percent. Even heat-​absorbing glass one-​quarter-​inch thick allowed 72 percent of the sun’s energy to enter. But Koolshade’s glass-​encased louvers, angled to screen out the maximum amount of solar radiation, allowed only 18 percent. Views of the Richards Building show a variant of such Koolshade panels, in the form of metal-​ mesh screens, externally mounted on the clear single-​thickness plate-​glass windows of all three towers. Kahn’s office had inquired about Koolshade for the Richards Building as early as

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December 1957.67 At that point the laboratories were not planned to be air-​conditioned, and external shading of their variously oriented windows was critical to their habitability. This was important because, as an engineer for the project wrote, “[e]ach floor of each tower [was] considered as one temperature Zone. The action of the sun and the differences in room activities [would] cause temperature fluctuations within the area of each floor. The temperatures [might] vary as much as 5 or 6 degrees from the desired temperature.”68 From 1958, once it was decided to air-​condition the laboratory towers, Koolshade screens remained an important factor in controlling interior temperatures on the different facades, as these would experience variable heat loads from solar gain through the course of a day. They were to correct a problem inherent in the large glass windows of the corners. Yet as William Jordy wrote in 1961: “A significant failure of the studios . . . is insufficient sun control at most of the corners which serve as the major working areas. . . . Metal-​mesh screens fitted outside all windows receiving direct exposure from the sun will help in deflecting the sun’s rays; but these have little effect on the glare. And even if fully satisfactory, such screening falls short of the architectonic solution to an important aspect of the ‘life of the building’ demanded by Kahn’s philosophy.”69 The metal-​mesh screens significantly interfered with the panoramic view out the broad clear plate-​glass windows at the corners of the laboratories. These views over the surrounding campus and the tree-​shaded Biology Pond to the south had greatly appealed to the scientists. Even today, sixty years after the building’s completion, the horizontal expanse of the laboratory’s huge corner windows is compelling, making these spaces feel larger and better

connected to the outside than they actually are. For this reason, by 10 March 1961, less than three months after the university accepted the building, it asked that the Koolshade screens be removed, because “view not liked.” In response, Kahn’s office asked Cronheim and Weger to write a letter to the university “telling why Koolshade is necessary for air conditioning.”70 In reply to the suggestion that the screens be removed “to improve visibility through the windows,” Weger wrote: We strongly urge that this motion be given no consideration, at all, for the following reasons: 1. The sunshields were an integral and important part of the calculations for cooling. 2. The air conditioning cooling load would be substantially increased by the removal of the sunshields. 3. Still more serious, the sunshields even out the sun loads on the different exposures of the building, thus permitting the design of a system with one zone per floor for each tower. Without sunshields, the system would require zoning by exposure, a much more complex and costly method. To sum up, the removal of sunshields would cause the refrigeration plant to be undersized, would substantially increase power cost for cooling, and would cause considerable variation of temperatures in the perimeter rooms, both in summer and winter.71 Yet over time, Koolshade screens were removed from the Richards Building’s towers, although photographs show that some were either reinstalled or left in place for decades. As before, their removal caused problems with the amount of sunlight and solar heat gain in the tower laboratories during warmer months. Without the screens, occupants of the

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laboratory floors resorted to installing aluminum foil, brown paper, and other devices for reducing light and heat penetrating through the glass.72 If the screens had been left in place through the building’s early decades, then these difficulties would have been lessened, but the views would have remained compromised, the glare problem would have persisted, and, as Jordy described, they would have been perceived as a device apart from the building’s essential form. Such screens were used for the upper stories of the Biology Building adjacent to the west, completed in 1964 under another architect.73 Kahn learned from this difficult experience. In his later Salk Institute for Biological Studies, he gave the laboratory floors continuous plate-​glass windows that enabled expansive outdoor views, but these windows were set back behind overhanging cantilevered masses of concrete that shielded them from direct sunlight and its heat gain. The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, 1959–65 Dr. Jonas Salk was familiar with the importance of air-​conditioning not only for his laboratories but also for mass production of the polio vaccine after he announced its success in human trials in April 1955, when it was licensed. Demand for the vaccine was immediately widespread, with calls for shots flooding doctors from school systems nationwide. The campaign was led in part by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (NFIP), led by Basil O’Connor, which had funded Salk’s research. Translation of success in field trials to mass access to the vaccine depended on the reliability and speed of its manufacturing process. At the Eli Lilly and Company plant in Indianapolis, where the Salk vaccine was then made, highly filtered air for sterile production 210

areas and closely controlled temperatures for the incubator and storage rooms, as well as the air-​conditioned animal quarters and packaging building, were essential.74 The later Salk Institute for Biological Studies was comparably dependent on a high degree of consistency and control for its air supplies (fig. 130). As one observer wrote upon the institute’s initial completion, in 1965, “Biological research does have one constant requirement, and that is an almost total environmental purity.”75 Such conditions had been created for Dr. Salk’s laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh, where, after classifying multiple types of the polio virus, he first synthesized the vaccine in 1954. The institute had its start when, after the NFIP had achieved its immediate goal of eradicating polio, it changed its name in 1958 to the National Foundation to launch its expanded program against birth defects, arthritis, and viral diseases. In 1957 Dr. Salk started to discuss the creation of a research institute for biological sciences that would not only seek new medical advances but also concern itself with the social and cultural context of its research.76 Initially Salk imagined that he might establish the institute in Pittsburgh. But he was persuaded to consider California in light of the westward trend of population and resources. San Diego offered to donate a site along US Route 101 (Torrey Pines Road) in La Jolla, adjacent to the University of California. Salk first visited in September 1959 and recalled that in early January 1960, after touring possible sites, he settled on this location. The city gave Salk “some 27 acres of park land—not just any land but the most beautiful coastal cliff property left in La Jolla.”77 Salk learned of Kahn in October 1959, when the architect, as one panelist at a symposium, gave a lecture entitled “Order in Science and

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Art” at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, where he discussed the Richards Building then being built.78 After the lecture, Salk contacted Kahn and arranged to visit him in December in his office in Philadelphia, see the Richards site, and discuss his selection as the architect. That visit marked the start of their collaborative friendship. In January 1960, after the decision was made to establish the institute in La Jolla, Kahn prepared an initial site model to illustrate the overall proposal to San Diego’s city council at its meeting in March. But at this time there was not yet a clearly defined program with

spatial requirements. In this first scheme, Kahn proposed a cluster of towers like the ones that he had designed for the Richards Building, but this initial scheme was not pursued.79 From June 1960 Kahn worked with low-​rise schemes for the laboratories as long, loftlike spaces in four east-​west blocks with garden courts between them. On 20 June 1961 Kahn met with Salk and O’Connor in New York City. The day before, Kahn made notes for a program for the Salk Institute. Such an “Abstract of Program for the Institute of Biology at Torrey Pines, La Jolla, San Diego,” was noted in

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Figure 130 Louis I. Kahn (architect) and Dubin Mindell Bloome (mechanical engineers), Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California, 1959–65, view from the southwest, 1968. Edward Teitelman Collection, The Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania, photograph 339.I.77.4.

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Figure 131 Louis I. Kahn (architect) and Dubin Mindell Bloome (mechanical engineers), Salk Institute for Biological Studies, final plan of laboratory buildings, 23 July 1965, showing laboratory floor levels, with light wells (a) in the east-​end mechanical rooms. Stair and service towers are on the outer north and south sides of the laboratories. Louis I. Kahn Collection, University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, construction drawing LA-4; graphic additions by author.

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Kahn’s contract of 26 July. Its text was his most detailed statement of the institute’s spatial requirements. Kahn soon hired structural engineer August Komendant and mechanical engineer Fred Dubin’s firm, Dubin Mindell Bloome. Later Salk hired a laboratory-​design consultant, engineer Earl Walls. The program specified that the laboratories “must be free of columns in order to make possible complete flexibility of physical and mechanical layout. The air must be dust free and of the temperature and humidity as required for each scientist. . . . The Laboratories may be characterized as the architecture of the clean air and area change.”80

A version of the low-​rise scheme with four large rectangular laboratory buildings went into working drawings, and a contract for its construction was signed on 1 April 1962.81 But by June the project was fixed as two buildings with a central court between them (fig. 131). To provide enough working space, each building had three laboratory levels, each measuring 65 feet wide north-​south by 245 feet long east-​ west. In order to satisfy the California Coastal Commission’s height limits, one floor had to be set below ground level.82 Kahn worked within these limits, designing sunken patios and light wells on the north and south sides of the

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belowground floor to provide natural light to the lowest laboratory level (fig. 132). Construction on this design began in 1962 and finished in 1965. At the Richards Building, the laboratories’ large unshaded glass areas had been problematic. The Salk laboratory floors’ sides are 240-foot-​long ribbons of one-​quarter-​inch double-​thickness Starlux plate glass, made by the American Saint Gobain Corporation, the US affiliate of the French firm that had made the glass for Le Corbusier’s modernist villas of the 1920s.83 There is heat gain through the glass, but this is reduced along the laboratories’ sides, where the trusses spanning above have cantilevered ends to provide walkways outside, accessible at intervals via doors in the laboratories’ glass walls (fig. 132, a). The walkways ease movement between laboratories, whereas the Richards Building’s square laboratory bays each had only one entrance from the central core. A deficiency in the Richards Building had been the limited size and relative inflexibility of the laboratory-​tower floors. But Fred Dubin and Harold Mindell described the Salk Institute

as “unique in that lab areas are unobstructed completely by columns or service protrusions of any kind. Therefore partitions can be shifted to create whatever modular arrangements are required by changing research projects.” They stressed that no matter what the changing schemes of partitioning over time, “each module has separate controls for lighting, power, temperature and humidity.”84 Salk recalled: “Those labs were clear-​span, with movable walls. You could differentiate them as needs changed. I had discovered something that worked, tried to make it better, and Lou was an ideal playmate with whom to tinker.”85 Scientists later extolled the flexible design, with many praising it as the best lab that they had worked in or visited.86 Along the outer sides of the laboratories, Kahn placed service towers, which were accessible from the laboratories across the continuous outer walkway (figs. 131, 133). The towers’ concrete volumes included fire stairs, restrooms, and elevators. An “intolerable situation,” according to Mindell and Dubin, would have been “disturbance or interruption of

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Figure 132 Louis I. Kahn (architect) and Dubin Mindell Bloome (mechanical engineers), Salk Institute for Biological Studies, sectional perspective looking east through the north laboratory building, ca. 1965, showing one floor set below ground, Vierendeel trusses spanning above laboratory floors to form the mechanical floors, studies (right) separated by an outdoor passage from the laboratory block, and cantilevered north ends of trusses (a) sheltering laboratory-​floor windows. Louis I. Kahn Collection, University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, drawing 030.IV.C.540.1.1; graphic additions by author.

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Figure 133 Louis I. Kahn (architect) and Dubin Mindell Bloome (mechanical engineers), Salk Institute for Biological Studies, aerial view looking southwest, showing (a) east mechanical-​ wing roofs with open cooling-​ tower bays and air-​exhaust shafts, and photovoltaic panels on the roofs of the laboratory buildings, added in 2012. Photo: Altitude CAM, San Diego, California.

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researchers’ concentration during experiments or study. For this reason, labs and offices are isolated from corridors and elevator lobbies. Moreover, all electrical and mechanical service areas are similarly isolated so that equipment can be inspected, repaired, replaced, maintained or augmented without having to enter the laboratory areas.”87 Speaking in 1980, amid rising concern about energy, Dubin recalled that, given La Jolla’s famously benign climate, “Kahn’s early predesign concept included no air conditioning but had curved walls and columns in juxtaposition to create venturi effects and natural ventilation throughout the structure.” This suggests outdoor passages whose narrowness would accelerate air movement. But as he and Kahn studied this idea, living in a house near the site, they learned that “La Jolla had early morning fog, turbulent air currents, and updrafts from 214

the sea and nearby cliffs. There were other problems including dust in the area from other construction and noise from aircraft. After the three months [on site], [Dubin] insisted upon air conditioning because laboratory processes cannot exist without clean air, quiet, and a controlled work environment.” Kahn “changed his mind. The new design expressed his philosophy in another way. When he was shown that energy and conservation were fundamental, he was quick to respond in his design.”88 In describing Salk’s air-​conditioning, Mindell and Dubin stressed that the “air distribution and exhaust system likewise are unique in that all air is fresh. None is re-​circulated. . . . This air-​handling routine is most important because scientists performing critical experiments cannot tolerate variables of foreign cultures drifting through air vents from one lab to another. Therefore, supply of fresh air is

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complete and constant in all areas at all times. Air intakes and exhaust jets are widely separated. Labs are slightly pressurized to prevent inhalation and cross-​contamination.” The engineers noted: “In most regions of the country, this elaborate air-​handling concept would be prohibitively costly. In La Jolla, however, yearly inside-​outside temperature differentials are not great. Therefore, the small premium paid for this installation using totally outside air is justified.”89 Equipment like cooling towers and exhaust stacks is in mechanical towers on the east ends of the laboratories (fig. 133, a). Between the towers is a two-​level north-​south underground mechanical and electrical service room housing chillers, boilers, and generators. An unusual feature of Kahn’s design of the service room is the inclusion of two large access openings in its roof slabs that function as light and ventilation wells—one on the north side and one on the south (figs. 131, a; 134, left, a). Given the underground situation of the mechanical rooms, how to replace boilers and chillers would eventually become an issue, as heating and cooling technologies improved. These large light wells provide pathways for the old equipment to be lifted out and the new lowered in as needed, without either breaking into the fabric of the building or disassembling large equipment. The glass walls lining these light wells are removable for just this purpose. The light wells also serve as large, deep air-​intake shafts for drawing fresh supply air down to the chilled water lines in the basement mechanical room (fig. 134, right). Each concrete light well’s large thermal mass cools incoming air, passively reducing the energy demands for cooling it mechanically once it is drawn in through filters and dehumidifiers at the light well’s base. This beneficial effect combines with the natural

virtues of the coastal air, which is relatively cool and dry most of the time. Thus the chillers can operate at only about 34 to 39 percent of their capacity, saving energy.90 Each laboratory building was to have three working floors, with mechanical floors above each, between the top and bottom chords of the Vierendeel trusses that spanned sixty-​two feet across the laboratories (fig. 132). Dubin recalled that Kahn “had originally planned to use the interstitial space on only one floor. [Dubin] was able to indicate that it was essential for each laboratory floor to enhance the mechanical and electrical installations, to preserve adaptability, to reduce materials, and conserve energy. [Kahn] readily adopted the entire concept.”91 These mechanical floors were to enable “isolation of service areas and complete freedom from internal columns.” Laboratories have ceiling heights of eleven feet; the mechanical floors are nine feet high. Inside the mechanical floors, the openings between the vertical struts of the trusses were huge walk-​through service cavities large enough for the largest air ducts. Essential and costly, the mechanical floors were “the heart and the pocketbook of the building.”92 Their height meant that the laboratories were “the tallest three-​story buildings in recent architectural memory.”93 In the consistently mild climate of San Diego and close to the cooling ocean winds, the mechanical floors of the Salk Institute, whose interiors do not require air-​conditioning, have louvered openings at intervals along their sides so that they are naturally cooled spaces. These interstitial mechanical floors help cool the laboratory floors above and below them, thereby reducing the air-​conditioning load (fig. 132). Especially the upper laboratory floor does not have to contend with the solar

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a

Figure 134 Louis I. Kahn (architect) and Dubin Mindell Bloome (mechanical engineers), Salk Institute for Biological Studies, (left) view from the north mechanical-​wing roof looking southeast at the citrus grove over the east mechanical underground floors and at the eucalyptus grove further to the east, showing the south mechanical-​room light well (a); (right) north mechanical-​room light well looking north, 2018. Photos: author.

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heat gain of a roof directly above. Instead, the crowning mechanical floor, with cool outdoor air flowing through it, insulates this top occupied level.94 Kahn said: “The integration of the mechanical, electrical and architectural—this is the beginning of new shapes. . . . I hope to design structures where the mechanical plan has its own shape and the building of places has its own shape. The shapes of the mechanics have nothing to do with the shapes of the room.” The mechanical floors liberate the laboratory floors: “We must release freedom in spaces where men work and study. These spaces must not be cluttered with extraneous forms. The architecture being served must be independent of the architecture doing the serving. . . . Concrete makes it possible for an architect to build an unconcerned structure around the mechanical necessities of a building.” Thus “the 9-foot-​high

trusses give great freedom. The servant areas become the structure. You can walk into them. This is much more advanced than the concept of most servant spaces. It becomes a pipe laboratory, in a way—a peculiarity, of course, to this type of structure that requires a great deal of piping.”95 As in the Richards Building, mechanical services run within the open depth of precast, post-​tensioned concrete Vierendeel trusses, only the Salk Institute’s trusses created a full height space rather than a ceiling plenum (fig. 135). The Vierendeel could span space and provide structural stability to the buildings, yet its large rectangular web openings could harbor air ducts, which a beamed slab could not. The nine-​foot-​tall walk-​in space in the trusses’ depth made it easy to service and change equipment. In this Kahn was interpreting Salk’s idea that they “give the pipes a floor of their

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own.”96 The cost in person-​hours for making equipment changes is much lower when done from above in the mechanical floors than it would be if done from below in shallow ceiling plenums.97 At 245 feet long and 62 feet wide between the columns, the laboratory floors below could thus be open bays, “approaching the dimensions of a football field,” larger than at the Richards Building, to increase their flexibility for laboratory working groups, for whom the space would be periodically reconfigured.98 Shifts in research programs and their funding over time would necessitate the flexibility

of the laboratories, especially in terms of mechanical access. To Salk, this feature was essential because it would provide the capacity for the institute to evolve with changing scientific staff and technology. From the mechanical wing at the east end of each laboratory building, horizontal wiring, plumbing, and supply and return air ducts ran through the trusses. These services were more generous than those in the Richards Building, occupying a good deal more than half the total built space.99 As one critic noted, when the area of the mechanical floors themselves is added to that of the east

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Figure 135 Louis I. Kahn (architect) and Dubin Mindell Bloome (mechanical engineers), Salk Institute for Biological Studies, interior of a north laboratory mechanical floor looking east, showing air ducts and utility pipes threaded through Vierendeel trusses, 2019. Photo courtesy of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

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mechanical towers feeding them, “the area devoted to mechanical distribution is actually greater than that devoted to research. . . . Flexibility on such a scale, however, is obviously expensive.”100 In March 1962 the mechanical equipment for the Salk Institute’s laboratories was estimated to cost nearly as much ($4.93 million) as the building of the laboratories themselves ($5.26 million).101 Salk compared the facility “to the body—the laboratories and studies carrying the cerebral function; the service spaces carrying arteries, veins, and nervous system; the mechanical acting as the respiratory system, etc., each integral.”102 He termed the mechanical floors “mesenchyme” spaces, referring to that part of the embryonic mesoderm, consisting of loosely packed, unspecialized cells, from which connective tissue, bone, cartilage, and the circulatory and lymphatic systems develop. The analogy conveyed that the mechanical floors link and feed the labs. As these evolve over time, the mechanical floors are transformed to support their activities in differently specialized ways. As Kiel Moe has written: “In other words, mesenchyme tissue is specifically generic; its precisely open-​ended qualities engender multiple organic possibilities. Dr. Salk’s term captures the critical capacity of this zone in the building. . . . [M]esenchyme aptly describes the temporal adaptability and capacity for engenderment inherent in the spatial logic and construction of the pipe laboratory. The pipe laboratory’s specifically generic character is central to the organizational performance and growth of the institute.”103 Over the decades, the mechanical floors have fulfilled their intended purpose. Institute employees (including at least fifty plumbers, electricians, and carpenters, and an equal number of custodial staff ) perform ongoing 218

building maintenance and modifications. In addition, independent-​contractor crews renovate the laboratories and their HVAC systems on at least a seven-​year cycle to accommodate the changing functions of the laboratories and their scientific research teams.104 The spatial flexibility enabled by the mechanical floors was a recruiting asset, since potential scientists valued the offer of an empty space that they could design as their own new laboratory.105 The future of biomedical research was then unknown. As project architect Jack Mac­ Allister noted in 1965, biology was then “ ‘the hyphenated sciences’ ”: “[T]here are now bio-​ chemistry, bio-​physics, bio-​mathematics, bio-​ metrics, and it is impossible to forecast what the next offshoot might be. The Institute’s own direction is almost equally unpredictable.”106 It was key that its laboratories not “be overtaken by advancement in technology.”107 Only the north laboratory block was initially outfitted with mechanical systems. There, once it was warmed by the hot-​water boilers or cooled by the water chillers in the east mechanical tower, high-​velocity warm and cool air was supplied in separate forty-​two-​inch-​diameter cylindrical ducts that ran to the west through the central, deepest bays of the Vierendeel trusses (fig. 136). Slightly smaller thirty-​six-​ inch-​diameter parallel exhaust ducts flanked the supply ducts. Midway between the trusses, at twenty-​foot intervals, north-​south branch ducts carried warm and cool air to the outer sides of the laboratories. Mixing boxes for warm and cool supply air provided precise control of temperatures for varied laboratory areas. Local zoned thermostats regulated mechanical dampers to control the mixing of warm and cool air to maintain each area’s desired temperature. Lateral north-​south exhaust ducts extracted air from the labs and returned it to

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exhaust hot supply cold supply exhaust

the central east-​west exhaust ducts running the building’s length. Smaller pipe lines or conduits for water, gas, electricity, and other utilities ran to either side of the large central air-​supply and -exhaust ducts.108 On each mechanical tower’s roof are central exhaust ducts and larger twin cooling-​tower bays open to the sky (fig. 133). Unlike those of the Richards Building, the exhaust ducts are not externally expressed, being visible only from above. Each Salk Institute ceiling is an eight-​ inch-​thick poured concrete slab supported by upstand beams within the mechanical floor above the slab, so that the beams are not visible

from the laboratories below. To distribute air down into laboratories from the ducts in the mechanical floors, the concrete ceiling slabs are pierced with twelve rows of one-​foot-​by-​ four-​foot slots containing cast-​aluminum box forms. These slots are set five feet apart so that no potential workspace in the laboratory will be more than two and a half feet from access to mechanical connections overhead. The slots, with their extruded aluminum frames, had to be set in the formwork for the slabs before the slabs were poured (fig. 137). The slots provide points of access for air ducts, water and gas lines, and other services that drop down from

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Figure 136 Louis I. Kahn (architect) and Dubin Mindell Bloome (mechanical engineers), Salk Institute for Biological Studies, plans of the air-​duct and air-piping system for trussed mechanical floors, with (right) parallel longitudinal east-​west air-​supply and air-exhaust ducts and north-​south branch air ducts between trusses, 5 April 1965. Louis I. Kahn Collection, University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, construction drawing, LAC-10; graphic additions by author.

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Figure 137 Louis I. Kahn (architect) and Dubin Mindell Bloome (mechanical engineers), Salk Institute for Biological Studies, laboratory floor showing east-​west rows of extruded-​ aluminum ceiling boxes for utilities from the mechanical floor above, and north-​south rows of fluorescent light fixtures, ca. 1965. Photograph by Marvin Rand. Louis I. Kahn Collection, University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, photograph 030.IV.A.S40.5.119.

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the mechanical floor. In the words of Mindell and Dubin, they “serve as throats for air diffusers, exhaust ducts, conduit drops and pipes related to lab benches and work areas. And, when open, box forms are not required for any of these purposes . . . they are covered by rectangular steel plates that rest slab-​flush on the recessed shoulder ledges. Therefore, maintenance men can move about freely and safely on smooth, secure walking surfaces.”109 Light fixtures (originally fluorescent, replaced by LEDs in 2012) align north-​south below the ceiling at five-​foot intervals between adjacent east-​west slots. The north-​south light fixtures with the east-​west slots give the ceiling a visual texture of cross-​woven linear elements. Below this regular pattern, laboratories can be variously equipped, furnished, and partitioned.110 The Richards Building and the Salk Institute have handled exhaust differently. As discussed

earlier, general exhaust air for the laboratory spaces at Richards was originally wholly separate from the exhaust air from the fume hoods, which rose out through the appended brick towers. In the Salk Institute as designed, both general laboratory air and fume-​hood air are drawn back into the exhaust ducts in the mechanical floors between the laboratory floors. This is necessary because the Salk laboratories are much larger flexible loft spaces, in which fume-​hood locations can vary to such a degree that a separate system for their exhaust is impracticable. The engineers explained: “Normally exhaust hoods are individually exhausted making for large concentrations of contaminants, but our design, which gangs the hoods, allows for an extremely large amount of dilution since the total exhaust quantity is 135,000 c.f.m.,” so that the contaminants are dispersed through the total volume of the laboratory return air.111 Yet some hood exhaust has to be treated locally before it joins the main exhaust, which goes untreated.112 According to the recommendations of the National Institutes of Health, air from all fume-​ hood exhaust systems should be discharged at a minimum velocity of 4,000 fpm. The rectangular laboratory exhaust ducts are on the roof of the east mechanical wings (fig. 133), but their openings to the sky were originally so large that the discharge velocity was measured to be only 1,700 fpm. Thus, depending on wind and weather conditions, the slow-​moving exhaust, including fume-​hood discharge, might mix with intake air. To correct this situation, “a temporary plywood structure, pyramidal in form, was erected over the exhaust discharge opening in order to decrease the net area. The effect of this reduction in area was to increase the discharge velocity to approximately 7500 ft​.​/minute.”113 Erected early in 1967, such a structure extended

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the shaft four feet above the north mechanical wing’s roof (fig. 138). Thus, to make the exhaust system functional, Kahn’s architecture needed to be modified by recalling the exhaust towers at the Richards Building. By March 1967 Mindell and Dubin could report that exhaust was “accomplished by roof jets that obtain exhaust rates of 9,000 ft​.​/minute to insure fast, thorough dispersion.”114 The modified permanent exhaust towers appear today in aerial views (fig. 133). Mechanical equipment on the roof, including photovoltaic panels mounted in 2012, is not visible from the ground.115 The Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, 1966–72 In 1966, the year after the initial phase of construction at the Salk Institute was completed, Kahn received his first commission for a wholly new art museum, a building to house the collection of premodern works in the Kimbell Art Foundation in Fort Worth, Texas. Opened in 1972, this museum was Kahn’s last major building to be completed before he died, in March 1974. The Kimbell Museum has long been renowned for its cycloidal concrete vaults, with an ingenious system of reflectors controlling the natural light introduced along their skylighted crowns (figs. 139, 142). Among Kahn’s most admired works, the museum has inspired critical and historical studies since it opened and through the completion in 2013 of the addition to the west by Renzo Piano, who through his involvement was inventively respectful of the original. As with Kahn’s other major buildings, great attention was paid to the visible integration of the air-​conditioning system into the interior architecture. But in this case the visible mechanics served the client’s ideal of optimal conditions for exhibiting art.116

Kahn’s extraordinary client was the founding director of the Kimbell Foundation, Dr. Richard F. Brown, a Harvard-​educated art historian, who had previously served in 1961–65 as the director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, during its planning and construction of an air-​conditioned facility designed by architects William L. Pereira and Associates.117 While in Los Angeles, Brown had been a trustee of the La Jolla Museum of Art, which had hosted a show on Kahn’s work in the winter of 1965, just as the Salk Institute neared completion. In October 1966 the Kimbell’s board approved Brown’s recommendation to hire Kahn, with the proviso that he associate with a local architect, Preston M. Geren, who brought to the project a mechanical-​ engineering firm, Cowan, Love, and Jackson. Richard Kelly was hired as a consultant to fulfill Brown’s vision of a mix of artificial and natural

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Figure 138 Louis I. Kahn (architect) and Dubin Mindell Bloome (mechanical engineers), Salk Institute for Biological Studies, view of the eastern mechanical wing of the north laboratory, with temporary exhaust tower, 15 March 1967. Louis I. Kahn Collection, University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, photograph 0.30.II A26.34, Salk Institute Lab Problems, file # 67062 SIBS.

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Figure 139 Louis I. Kahn (architect) and Preston M. Geren (associated architect and engineer), Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, 1966–72, interior view of the cycloidal concrete vault inside the west entrance, looking south, showing the aluminum light reflector and horizontal linear air diffusers along mechanical trays at the base of the vault, ca. 1972. Photograph by Marshall Meyers. Marshall Meyers Collection, The Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania, photograph 136.39.31.

light. Brown asked that “[n]atural light . . . play a vital part in illumination, consistent with the problems of maintaining maximum lineal feet of wall for hanging pictures and avoiding . . . glare and heat effects.” He considered natural light to be preferable to artificial light both for the public, because of its familiarity and its capacity to suggest the relationship of the art to current experience, and for specialists, for judging the quality and reading the surface of artworks.118 As Kahn said when the building opened in 1972, “[T]he whole plan of Kimbell is based on the light quality.”119 Brown specified climate control to ensure the preservation of objects through correct, 222

constant air temperature, humidity, and cleanliness. Even though he was adamant about the need for natural light as central to the museum experience, local sunlight would have to be carefully controlled to avoid damage to the art. As he wrote in the Pre-​architectural Program of 1 June 1966: “Sunlight intensity frequently very extreme. This is a major factor to cope with, not only because of heat production, but in relation to visual effect on exterior design, psychological effect looking out from building interior, difficulties of potentially high surface reflectance of natural light off art objects, glare effect when looking at art against natural light source, intensity of light upon art objects in

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which light causes fading.” Fort Worth’s region, like La Jolla, had a relatively short and mild winter heating season. But “higher temperatures are a definite problem to cope with architecturally six months of the year, often over 90º, sometimes over 100º.”120 The Kimbell Museum could not rise above forty feet, in order that it not obstruct the view east to Fort Worth from the Amon Carter Museum of Western and American Art, designed by Philip Johnson and opened in 1961, which stood up a slope to the west (fig. 140).121 The height limit precluded tall clerestories for the galleries and led Kahn and his team to consider variations on top-​ lit schemes that included louvers or baffles to limit the transmission of sunlight and yet still provide it for natural interior illumination. After extensive preliminary studies and presentations of detailed designs from 1967 to 1969, Kahn resolved the plan as a one-​floor, near bilaterally symmetrical arrangement of cycloid-​shaped concrete shell-​vaults, most of them 104 feet long by 24 feet wide outside, and 100 feet long and 20 feet wide inside (fig. 141). The central section, with its recessed entrance, has one exterior and three interior vaults, flanked by side sections with six vaulted bays each (one outdoors to the west, on the front, and five behind it, indoors), although three of these bays are partly interrupted to provide skylighted courts, including two square smaller courts on the south side, balanced by one larger outdoor court on the north side. The major galleries are in the north and south side vaults, where the courts provide visual access to the outdoors as part of the museum experience, which Brown valued. Adapted by Kahn’s assistant Marshall Meyers from studies of thin-​shell concrete vaults, the cycloid is a curve traced by a point on the

circumference of a circle that rolls on a straight line; it is shallower than a semicircular or an elliptical arch and hence brings light closer to the space below (fig. 142). This was important to Brown, who wanted the galleries to have an intimate scale. The vaults rested on concrete columns and edge beams, forming gallery units twenty feet high.122 Working with Meyers, Kelly developed a Plexiglas skylight atop a slot along each vault’s crown. Below the slot, a perforated aluminum reflector diffused sunlight entering through the skylight. As an early example of a computer-​designed architectural element, each reflector allowed a portion of daylight through its surfaces and reflected part of the light onto the cycloidal vault’s curved underside. The reflector was polished on its upper surface to enhance its reflectivity, but its curving underside, seen from the galleries below, had a matte finish. The position of the reflectors’ yoke, or support, below the skylight was

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Figure 140 Louis I. Kahn (architect) and Preston M. Geren (associated architect and engineer), Kimbell Art Museum, aerial view from the northeast, February 1976, showing the cubic concrete cooling tower (circled in lower right), Fort Worth Coliseum (left), and Philip Johnson’s Amon Carter Museum of Western and American Art (right), atop a slope across West Will Rogers Drive, 1957–61. Photo: Robert Wharton © 2019 Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas; graphic addition by author.

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Figure 141 Louis I. Kahn (architect) and Preston M. Geren (associated architect and engineer), Kimbell Art Museum, main-​floor plan, with one of the vertical riser ducts for air-​conditioning circled and magnified. Louis I. Kahn Collection, University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, drawing 030.I.C.730.13; graphic additions and magnification by author.

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one factor that affected the air-​conditioning. If this yoke hung well below the skylight, then sunlight at certain angles would miss the reflector and pass directly into the museum’s interior. As building went forward in 1971, the engineers reminded Brown that “air conditioning and humidity control in the building was calculated and designed with the understanding that the skylight reflector would diffuse and reflect virtually all the entering sunlight upward. . . . [S]pace temperature and humidity control [could] not be held within design limits if direct sunlight [struck] floors, walls, objects, etc., below the level of air supply grilles.”123 The light distributed from the reflectors’ upper surfaces to the vault washes down

indirectly over the art in the galleries below, which are also lit by artificial fixtures. Kahn set these fixtures both along the lower rim of the reflectors and in light tracks set into mechanical trays within the eight-​foot-​wide channels between the beams at the base of the vaults (figs. 139, 142). The cross section in figure 142 shows that the trays carry ducts and concealed lighting above flat aluminum soffits that form a low interstitial ceiling between the vaults on either side. In earlier schemes, Kahn had placed air ducts within the reflectors below the apex of the vault.124 But separating the ducts from the reflectors removed the conditioned air from the variable heat near the vault’s linear skylights.

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Along with other supporting functions such as offices, the art-​conservation laboratory, and storage, the museum’s mechanical plant was set in the large basement, accessible from the east, the rear of the site, facing Arch Adams Street, one level lower than the main floor’s west entrance. The basement’s large area and high ceilings make a generous space for air-​intake filters and fans, central-​heating and -cooling equipment (including compressors to provide five hundred tons of refrigeration), and air-​ handling units.125 As a service space below the exhibition floor, the basement equipment room is analogous to the mechanical floors between the Salk Institute’s laboratory floors. The basement air handlers feed conditioned air through vertical risers that run up into the exhibition floor through four major plenums between the central and side sets of vaults (one such plenum is magnified in fig. 141). The air-​ conditioning system is zoned to respond to changes in solar gain, in differently oriented spaces, through the day.126 From the vertical plenums between the ends of the vaulted bays, supply air runs through paired horizontal ducts set in the mechanical trays between the vaults (figs. 139, 142). The relationship between the ducts and the vaults had to be carefully thought out in terms of their relative heights. The concrete structure’s lowest edge is at a height of ten feet ten inches from the floors, and the soffit of the mechanical trays is ten feet above the floor. Moreover, as the cross section shows, the bottoms of all the trays are set below the bottoms of the vault’s edge beams (fig. 142). This difference was calculated to allow enough height for a five-​ inch fascia along the side of the tray, below a five-​inch horizontal grille running the length of each vault’s base, just below its beam (fig. 139). Conditioned air emerges through these grilles, which appear not as visually distinct

registers but rather as continuous slots between the aluminum soffit of the mechanical trays and the concrete beam-​like base of the vault. The air is thus blown horizontally into the museum space along the grille’s full length. As elegant as this solution appears, Kahn originally had proposed continuous air grilles that would direct air up into the cycloids. Yet Geren told him: “[T]his would be very unsatisfactory from an air conditioning standpoint. In our area, successful air conditioning requires that the occupants sense a slight movement of air. For this reason, we must blow air out in a horizontal direction creating air movement around the people in the galleries.”127 Air is returned via negative pressure to minimally visible horizontal slots at the base of the walls’ travertine cladding and atop the hardwood flooring and then into plenums beneath the floor. Return air then flows down to the basement through vertical ducts at the east or west end of each cycloidal vault.128 Like the supply slots in the ceilings

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Figure 142 Louis I. Kahn (architect) and Preston M. Geren (associated architect and engineer), Kimbell Art Museum, diagram of cycloidal geometry (top) and section through cycloidal vault (bottom), showing a Plexiglas skylight above concave perforated aluminum reflectors, with rectangular air-​supply ducts in mechanical trays between the vaults. Louis I. Kahn Collection, University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, drawing 030.I.C.730.13–Section.

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above, the return grilles along the floor are closely integrated into adjacent architecture.129 Recooling condenser water from the refrigerating machine in the basement posed a challenge. Originally Kahn intended to install a cooling tower inside the building. But Geren noted that the necessary exhaust ducts from the tower would cut up through the vault structure. Also, the square footage of the exterior opening needed to accommodate not only the discharge from the tower but also one hundred square feet of outside air intake to cool it.130 The concrete vaults forming the museum’s roof provided no location for a conventional cooling tower and its exhaust and intake air ducts. Also, the landscape plan called for isolating the museum in a garden-​like open space around its north, west, and south periphery, where such a tower would appear incongruous with its vaulted silhouette. Thus, as Baird noted, Kahn set the cooling tower almost wholly outside the museum’s precinct, in a cubic concrete structure at the site’s northeast edge. With its concrete formwork designed by Kahn to match the museum’s, the tower is a monumental structure in its own right, rising to the site’s height limit of forty feet (fig. 140, circled ).131 Inside the Kimbell’s galleries, Kahn and his team made every effort to integrate the air-​conditioning into the architecture. But their museum’s exterior could not accommodate its vital cooling towers, which were relegated to a remote location, conceptually outside the scheme and visually removed. The Yale Center for British Art, 1969–77 When the Kimbell Museum opened, in 1972, Kahn was advancing work on his final museum, opened in 1977 as the Yale Center for British Art, on the south side of Chapel Street in New 226

Haven, directly across from the 1928 Yale University Art Gallery and diagonally opposite his 1953 Yale Art Gallery addition (fig. 143).132 In 1966 Paul Mellon, a 1929 alumnus, had given funds for a site and a building for his collection of British art and books from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. President Kingman Brewster Jr. appointed a committee to advise on the use of Mellon’s gift, and in early 1968 it proposed an integrated study and research center, including an art gallery, rare-​book and research libraries, and supportive study areas, with the aim of enhancing and stimulating new approaches to research. The first director was Jules David Prown, professor of art history, who led in shaping a program and in selecting Kahn. After Prown initially approached him in February 1969, in October Kahn was commissioned to design what was then known as the Mellon Center for British Art and British Studies. After several earlier schemes, Kahn developed a near final design by May 1972. The revised working drawings were only issued in August 1973.133 In the summer of 1973, Marshall Meyers, who had left Kahn to establish his own architectural practice with another former Kahn associate, Anthony Pellecchia, was hired as a liaison between Kahn’s office and the builder, George B. H. Macomber Company of Boston, which had built Kahn’s earlier building nearby. By the time of Kahn’s death, in March 1974, construction had proceeded to the point of placing the precast roof beams for the skylights. Pellecchia and Meyers were asked to complete the work. Kahn had suggested that Benjamin Baldwin, who had previously worked with him, be hired as interior designer, and he was.134 For the structural system’s early development, Kahn had returned to Henry Pfisterer, an associate professor of architectural engineering at Yale, who had advised on the Yale

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Figure 143 Louis I. Kahn (architect) and Van Zelm, Heywood, and Shadford (mechanical engineers), Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, 1969–77, exterior view from the northeast corner of Chapel and High Streets. Photo: Richard Caspole, 2016, Yale Center for British Art.

University Art Gallery addition twenty years before. Yet because of Pfisterer’s poor health, his partner, Abba Tor, did the structural engineering for the Yale Center for British Art.135 Impressed with the Salk Institute, Prown had originally wanted Fred Dubin’s firm to be the mechanical engineers, but the university decided instead on Van Zelm, Heywood, and Shadford. Shadford was also a Yale faculty member. These engineers had designed Yale’s central chilled-​water plant as part of its Central Power Plant at Ashmun Street and Tower Parkway, which would serve the Mellon Center.136 As Tor said in 2005: “Kahn had a unique talent to study, learn, and understand in depth the possibilities and constraints of the structural and mechanical systems, and integrate them in a most organic way with his architectural concepts. . . . Kahn, as in all his buildings, strove

here to achieve full compatibility and maximum integration between the architectural requirements and the structural and mechanical systems, while avoiding any hung ceilings or other devices to hide air ducts, lighting systems, and other auxiliary elements.”137 Prown recalled that the organic metaphor served as a check on decisions about the building’s systems: “Kahn conceived of a building as a living creature; the columns and beams as bones; electric wires as nerves; water pipes as blood circulation; air ducts as breathing tubes connecting to purifying lungs in the mechanical room where air is exchanged, humidified, and heated or cooled.”138 For Kahn, as for Dankmar Adler, Frank Lloyd Wright, and George Howe, organicism, developed in nineteenth-​century architectural theory, had a continuing conceptual life as applied to mechanical systems.

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Figure 144 Louis I. Kahn (architect) and Van Zelm, Heywood, and Shadford (mechanical engineers), Yale Center for British Art, plan of street floor (below) and fourth floor (above), with twenty-​foot-​square structural grid, (a) mechanical risers, and (b) fresh-​air-​intake shafts. Drawing by Pellecchia and Meyers, 1977; graphic additions by author. Louis I. Kahn Collection, University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. Courtesy Yale Center for British Art.

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As Tor implied, the organic analogy meant that structural forms harbored mechanical forms. Like functions in the living body, the two systems were distinct but concisely related in space. Kahn determined that the structural 228

slabs had to allow not only for sufficient headroom but also for ducts to be hung under the slabs. This entailed a flat slab of minimum thickness, rather than a slab with deep supporting beams that would compete for spatial depth with ducts. The columns were twenty feet on center, so that a flat slab with two-​way internal steel reinforcing could span between columns without beams. This grid runs through the plans of all four stories above ground (fig. 144). Outside, the center is a taut, compact building that extends 200 feet west along Chapel Street and 120 feet south along High Street from the intersection of the two streets. Between the columns and beams on the exterior walls, Kahn, after studying alternatives, set infilling panels of 12-gauge matte stainless steel fabricated in sections that allowed for variable placement of windows set flush with the surrounding steel panels (fig. 143). One enters the center through a single-​ story-​high, forty-​foot-​square portico in its northeast corner, at the juncture of Chapel and High streets (figs. 143, 144). Prown had proposed the open corner, to make the building feel accessible and inviting.139 Inside the doors, the center opens to a bright skylighted entrance court four stories high, so that, upon entering, one can grasp the whole interior layout (fig. 145). To the west, beyond the central cylindrical staircase, on the ground floor, is a

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two-​hundred-​seat lecture hall, whose floor slopes down to the west to the basement level. Above the lecture hall, in the building’s west half, is a three-​story library court. On the first floor are rented shops on the north and east sides, with services on the south side. The second and third floors have galleries around the four-​story entrance court, and a library, print room, and rare-​book room around the library court. The spaces culminate in the galleries on the crowning fourth floor. No part of the building received as much attention as the fourth floor in integrating natural and artificial lighting. Prown told Kahn in 1972: “I am so concerned about this critical matter. A large

Figure 145 Louis I. Kahn (architect) and Van Zelm, Heywood, and Shadford (mechanical engineers), Yale Center for British Art, east-​west section looking south, with (a) four-​story entrance court at left (east) and (b) three-​story library court at right (west), above the lecture hall with seating sloping down to the west. Drawing by Pellecchia and Meyers, 1977; graphic additions by author. Louis I. Kahn Collection, University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. Courtesy Yale Center for British Art.

proportion of the cost of the building is in the roof, and the novel system of natural lighting fixtures promises to be an extremely important aspect of the building design.”140 Kahn’s scheme, with its four-​story east entrance court and its three-​story west library court, created challenges for the design of the air-​conditioning system. As the engineers wrote: “The interior spaces of the BAC [British Art Center] are, first of all, large in volume, making it difficult to maintain uniform control of air conditions. Besides being large in volume, the spaces vary in shape from relatively low and wide areas to four-​story open courts. Some of these spaces, on the fourth floor in

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particular, are designed for movable partitions which much affect air movement within individual zones. The mechanical system must be capable of delivering draft-​free conditioned air to and from these different areas.” More so than in Kahn’s earlier buildings, designed before the energy-​conservation movement of the 1970s, energy consumption was a vexing issue in the Yale Center for British Art: Energy efficiency is necessarily an important consideration in the design of the systems. Energy is used to move and condition air and, ideally, a minimum should be used to accomplish both tasks. Unfortunately, in the case of conditioned air, the attainment of energy efficiency and precise control of air conditions, at the same time, in many different areas, is difficult. Different areas have varying loads and purposes and often, to some extent, energy used to condition air in one part of the building is wasted when the same system reconditions the already conditioned air for use in another section of the building.141 Unlike office buildings, where high-​velocity systems are advantageous, the Yale Center for British Art uses low-​velocity systems because “[l]ow air velocities help to keep system air friction low, which in turn reduces fan motor horsepower requirements and energy consumption. Low velocities also keep noise levels at a minimum even though much of the ductwork runs exposed in occupied areas.”142 The mechanical plant containing the primary air-​handling and air-conditioning equipment was eventually located in the basement on the building’s east side. This area still houses three air handlers: one for the center’s north side, on Chapel Street, one for its south side, 230

and one for the commercial spaces along the streets. Each air handler is a huge container for the supply and return fans, extensive filters, sound-​attenuation baffles, and the steam-​ heating and chilled-​water coils. Within the building, these air handlers supply more than fifty separate zones, defined both by the direction of their exposure to sunlight and by the location of the zone with respect to the interior or the perimeter of the building. Each zone has its own hot-​water reheat coil controlled by a thermostat, so that the temperature and relative humidity of supplied air can be adjusted.143 The scheme of air distribution did not change with the extensive restoration completed in 2016, although air conditions in the building’s many zones are now monitored by a computerized system.144 The center’s fresh air descends from four roof intakes to the basement mechanical room through four rectangular shafts on either side of centrally located elevators (fig. 144, b). Vertical risers for the ducts from the basement mechanical room are enclosed in two mechanical shafts, called “lozenges,” on the north and south sides, which rise through the first three floors (fig. 144, a). Where the south lozenge occurs, it centers on what would normally be the location of a column, but that structural point is split into four columns, to create a space similar to a rotated square. The lozenges decrease in size on each floor as the size of the air ducts inside them decreases, much as Kahn reduced the size of upper columns because they do less structural work. The vertical supply ducts in these lozenge spaces link to circular horizontal ducts that branch out from them. On the second and third library floors, pairs of ducts in round stainless-​steel casings run overhead, below the structural slab of the ceiling, as a prominent part of the

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Figure 146 Louis I. Kahn (architect) and Van Zelm, Heywood, and Shadford (mechanical engineers), Yale Center for British Art, second-​floor reference library, looking east, with stainless-​ steel air-​supply ducts overhead, emerging from a stainless-​steel-​ clad mechanical shaft containing vertical risers. Photo: Richard Caspole, 2019, Yale Center for British Art.

interior architecture (fig. 146). Unlike Kahn’s earlier buildings, where the air-​conditioning ducts are set wholly within interstitial spaces, the Yale Center for British Art, arguably his last completed work, displays them as carefully crafted visible elements within this occupied space. Return air goes out through low return grilles at the floor level or through slots below the windows to return ducts run within the depth of the floor slabs. As Abba Tor recounted, Kahn originally imagined that the return ducts would be equally visible, but their mechanically optimal vertical paths near the floors’ periphery interfered with the fenestration.145 At this point, it was decided to redesign the floors as “air-​floor” slabs, with duct-​like seven-​inch continuous air plenums cast between their upper and lower planes.

Air floors in factories and office buildings for variable-​volume air-​conditioning had been developed from the 1950s.146 As the mechanical engineers explained, the system of returning air through the floor enabled the design team “to keep the exposed ductwork simple and neatly arranged.”147 Air-​floor slabs like those at the Yale Center for British Art, which had a total depth of fourteen inches, had never been used before as load-​bearing surfaces above grade. But they tested successfully under extreme loads. Air floors were used on the second, third, and fourth floors for air-​return ducts and for minor supply ducts.148 Kahn focused on all visible details. As the engineers wrote, “Aesthetically, it was the Architect’s desire that the mechanical systems be openly expressed, clearly visible as an integral part of the building while maintaining the

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Figure 147 Louis I. Kahn (architect) and Van Zelm, Heywood, and Shadford (mechanical engineers), Yale Center for British Art, fourth-​floor gallery, with precast concrete coffers below skylights, aluminum diffusers in the base of a concrete coffer, and return-​air slots along oak baseboards. Photo: Richard Caspole, 2017, Yale Center for British Art.

crisply detailed and dignified character of the building as a whole.”149 In August 1973 Kahn asked the engineers to consult on all problems concerning HVAC, plumbing, and electrical work, noting: “These must satisfy the architectural organization of the building and the requirements of your part of the design and the practical requirements of installation. The open construction and exposed devices [need] infinite care in positioning. The Architect must therefore take part in decisions as to locations and relationships.”150 For example, Kahn was concerned about how the sections of the circular ducts would be joined together. He did not want a standard slip joint, like that in which one piece of stovepipe slides into another, but he would accept a butt joint with a wide collar, visible in the upper left of figure 146. To satisfy Kahn’s aesthetic concerns, the mechanical 232

engineer early in 1974 arranged with the ventilating contractor to “make samples of two or three methods of joining the ductwork and get the Architect’s approval at the job site,” a task that would be left to Marshall Meyers as resident architect.151 On the fourth gallery floor, the fewer risers there compact into smaller square enclosures. Other than the circular fire stair, the lozenges are the sole breaks in the otherwise regular square rhythm of the structural grid (fig. 144, top). The crowning fourth floor’s painting galleries are skylighted, with each square bay framed by precast concrete coffers in four panel-​like sections that join and rest on the square columns twenty feet on center (fig. 147). The skylights have a top layer of fixed aluminum baffles angled to admit a small amount of eastern, southern, and western daylight

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when the sun is high (as in summer or at midday), but more light when the sun is low (as in winter, early morning, and late afternoon). Below the baffles are shallow double-​lens Plexiglas domed panels that keep out the weather (fig. 148). The dome’s inner layer has a filter to screen out ultraviolet light harmful to the paintings. Such close control of sunlight and its radiant heat helps to limit the cooling loads. Below the domes are the ceilings of translucent “diffusing cassettes,” made of a plastic called Holophane, with a sandblasted acrylic soffit as a cover. These cassettes were designed to filter ultraviolet light and to admit sunlight so­that it falls almost evenly on all wall surfaces. Through them, light varies in color and

intensity according to weather, season, and time of day. The cassettes are equipped with tracks for artificial lights (fig. 148). Framing the cassettes are the precast concrete coffers, which function structurally as V-​shaped beams. Their broad slanting surfaces reflect and diffuse the natural light before it reaches the paintings below, and air ducts run through them. Rectangular air diffusers are set in slots cast in the beam soffits (fig 147), like the slots in the Salk Institute’s ceilings (fig. 137). Oak baseboards below Belgian linen panels for the paintings have discrete slots for return air (fig. 147). This air then flows horizontally through the air floor and vertically down the free space within the lozenges, between the central vertical

a b c d

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Figure 148 Louis I. Kahn (architect) and Van Zelm, Heywood, and Shadford (mechanical engineers), Yale Center for British Art, section through the skylights of a typical fourth-​floor roof bay, showing (a) the top layer of fixed exterior directional aluminum baffles, (b) shallow double-​ lens Plexiglas domes with ultraviolet filtering, (c) Holophane plastic diffusing cassettes, and (d) circular air ducts in concrete V-​beams below the skylights. Drawing by Pelle­cchia and Meyers, 1977; graphic additions by author. Louis I. Kahn Collection, University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. Courtesy Yale Center for British Art.

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Figure 149 Louis I. Kahn (architect) and Van Zelm, Heywood, and Shadford (mechanical engineers), Yale Center for British Art, mechanical room on the south side of the basement, looking north, showing the air handler for the north half of the center at left. Photograph by Peter Inskip, 2006. Courtesy Yale Center for British Art.

supply air ducts and the lozenges’ outer walls (fig. 144, a). Among the most telling interiors is that of the mechanical room on the south side of the basement (fig. 149). Here one sees none of the costly material finishes found in the public spaces, but rather concrete, cinder block, and painted steelwork. Yet its myriad details were as carefully considered as those in the main galleries. The equipment’s complexity and scale create a poetic effect, as it did in modern buildings going back to the origins of air-​conditioning in the early twentieth century.

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Architecture’s mechanical dimension has since become ever more central to our understanding of its future. What architects were doing visually, spatially, technically, programmatically, and materially with these new means for making buildings habitable is among the least studied aspects of the modern tradition. In one sense, that story, which these chapters have sought to narrate as a totality, constitutes the prehistory of sustainability, which has moved from a peripheral to a central place in thinking about architecture in the decades since the 1970s.

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Air-​Conditioning and the New Consciousness of Energy in Architecture Since the 1970s

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onths before Louis Kahn died, in March 1974, the OPEC oil embargo of October 1973 impacted national and international thinking about the relationship of architecture, energy, and air-​conditioning, whose consumption was perceived to be an issue even shortly before the embargo.1 In the United States, Kahn was the last among the masters of the modern movement who had tried conceptually and technically to integrate mechanical ventilation into his art of architecture. His death coincided with the end of decades of development in air-​conditioning when energy costs, although always of concern, had been secondary to issues of productivity and comfort. From the mid-1970s, after the advent of the environmental movement, architects began to radically reconsider how to heat, cool, and otherwise make buildings not only habitable but also sustainable. A consciousness of sustainability distinguishes our postmillennial mentality, and how this ideal developed in architecture between Kahn’s time and ours is its own story. Though it is hard to imagine in retrospect, US architectural professional journals sponsored essentially no discussion of energy as an issue before 1970, the year that is sometimes taken as the zero hour for the environmental movement, whose first major event was Earth Day, 22 April 1970.2 For decades prior, mechanical engineers had been working on

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conserving energy used for heating, ventilating, and cooling to save fuel, water, and electricity costs. But consideration of the whole of a building’s energy use as a premise for its architecture was new in the 1970s, the decade in which energy became central to professional discourse. Whole issues of major journals were editorially devoted to the relationship between architecture and ecology. Many articles sought to address what was perceived as general ignorance among architects about energy issues, confusion about the scope and implications of the problem, and the variety of technical questions and solutions linked to different building types. There was occasional speculation that energy issues would prompt aesthetic changes. This field-​wide journalistic surge responded to concerns that clients brought to architects. Then, from the 1990s, the design professions in and beyond the United States moved from a focus on energy conservation to embrace an encompassing ideal of sustainability.3 Air-​conditioning in modern American architecture created the patterns of energy consumption and resource use that architecture is now globally committed to transcend in remaking the built environment. This evolution brings to mind the words of the English novelist John Galsworthy, who wrote: “Men are, in fact, quite unable to control their own inventions; they at best develop adaptability 235

to the new conditions they create.”4 As one of the salient inventions of modern architecture, air-​conditioning initially developed decades before the proliferation of concerns for control of energy consumption and, more recently, carbon emissions and global warming. But as these priorities have arisen, its rethinking has become part of a comprehensive approach to architecture’s environmental impact. Air-​ conditioning emerged before sustainability, yet its control is now central to the future. Certain key contemporary aims and practices have their parallels with those of the many earlier works of architecture discussed in the preceding chapters. First, and perhaps most important, in all cases, there was close consideration of each building’s heating, ventilating, and air-​conditioning needs in relation to its specific functions and local climatic conditions. In this light, the mechanical systems were part of holistic architectural solutions, from the era of the New York Stock Exchange in 1903 to the works of Louis Kahn in the 1970s. Second, the development of those solutions required the close and sustained collaboration of many professionals, including architects,

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mechanical engineers, and equipment manufacturers. Case studies in the preceding chapters have sought to recover the importance of these collaborations, and especially the creative role that nonarchitects played in working toward solutions, from Alfred R. Wolff at the New York Stock Exchange to A. Warren Canney at Rockefeller Center, to Alfred Jaros Jr. at the Seagram Building, to Fred Dubin at the Salk Institute, among many others. Third, the architects saw in mechanical systems associated with air-​conditioning the potential for a more inclusive expression of modern functionality. Whether one looks at the work of Albert Kahn, George Howe, Frank Lloyd Wright, Wallace Harrison, Louis Kahn, or their contemporaries, they shared a vision of their art’s new conditions that included the idea of buildings as air-​moving machines; they embraced these conditions as resources for a more encompassing definition of their medium’s possibilities. In this way, the history of modern architecture bridges to the history of mechanical engineering, so that in seeing the myriad links between these interdependent fields, the historiography of both can be transformed.

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Appendix : Compressi v e Refriger ation and the He at Pump

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ost of the buildings discussed in this book have a variant of the compressive-​ refrigeration system for their air-​conditioning. The compressive-​refrigeration cycle is a scheme for transferring heat from one circulated water system (chilled water) to another (condenser water). In such a system, a gaseous refrigerant (like carbon dioxide, ammonia, or later, after its patenting in 1928, Freon) is compressed and condensed or liquefied to perform this heat transfer. As shown in figure 150, such a system has a compressor, where the refrigerant in its gaseous state is compressed to a high-​pressure vapor. One stroke of a piston draws refrigerant gas coming from the evaporator coils, and an opposite stroke compresses it. The compressed refrigerant gas then goes to the condenser, which is a set of looped or coiled pipes immersed in cool water, until enough heat has been drawn off the refrigerant vapor to liquefy or condense it. As the refrigerant liquefies, it gives off heat to the condenser water, which, so warmed, cycles to a cooling rack or, later, a cooling tower, so that it can be reused. In early days, however, warmed condenser water was sometimes discarded rather than recooled and recirculated. The high-​pressure condensed liquid refrigerant then cycles to an expansion or regulating valve, where the pressure is lowered to the point where the refrigerant springs mechanically to a gaseous state. In this change of state, the gaseous refrigerant must take on heat, which it does by drawing heat out of the water circulated in the evaporator, and that water is

thus refrigerated or chilled. In air-​conditioning processes, developed later, this chilled water circulates to an air handler where air is blown over chilled water to cool the air. After the refrigerant becomes a low-​pressure gas in the evaporator, it then returns to the compressor, and the refrigeration cycle repeats. Because refrigerant is costly, it circulates in a closed system, so that it is cooled and liquefied in the condenser and heated and vaporized in the evaporator over and over. In the early twentieth century, steam engines powered refrigerating compressors, just as they drove ventilating fans and other machinery, whereas later such equipment was driven by electricity.1 In the early twentieth century, carbon anhydride (CO₂), also called carbonic acid gas or carbon dioxide, was a safe, nonexplosive, nontoxic, and inexpensive refrigerant. As a liquid, a small quantity of it readily absorbed heat from water in order to chill it, and so did the work of refrigeration. Thus CO₂ refrigerating machines were more compact and required less space than other types. Carbon dioxide was preferred because of its lower cost relative to alternatives like ammonia (NH3) and sulfur dioxide (SO2). These were also extremely noxious. Explosions in ammonia compressors occurred when extremely high compression ratios existed. Carbon dioxide was first proposed as a refrigerant as early as 1850, and its application for comfort air-​cooling reached its high point in the 1920s. Carbon dioxide refrigeration machines had developed in England and Germany from the 1880s, and in the 237

Figure 150 Compressive refrigeration cycle. From Walter T. Grondzik and Alison G. Kwok, Mechanical and Electrical Equipment for Buildings, 12th ed. (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2015). © John Wiley & Sons.

United States they were used successfully from the 1890s for refrigeration and after 1900 for comfort cooling. In some structures, such as the Central Park Theater in Chicago (discussed in chapter 3), a direct-​expansion system used carbon dioxide (CO₂) as the refrigerant. “Direct expansion” means that the refrigerant gas in tubes directly cools streams of forced air that pass over them, as opposed to the carbon dioxide refrigerant’s chilling water, which in turn cools forced air. Thus, direct heat exchange occurs between the air to be conditioned and the refrigerant gas as it evaporates or condenses. This method of cooling theaters and other public buildings was developed by Fred Wittenmeier at the Kroeschell Brothers Ice Machine Company of Chicago, formed in 1897 and devoted to the manufacture of CO₂ refrigerating machines. Their system could efficiently cool nonindustrial interiors, but its high initial cost largely limited its application to industries like meatpacking, which provided the company’s main customers.2

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Willis Carrier’s system for the movie theaters of the mid-1920s, such as Grauman’s in Los Angeles and the Rivoli in New York (chapter 3), was innovative in its use of a centrifugal refrigerating machine as distinct from the earlier reciprocating machines. In 1920 Carrier had first developed the centrifugal compressor for comfort air-​conditioning as distinct from his original focus on industrial-​ process air-​conditioning. In his view, refrigerating machines had to be transformed so that they could operate at higher speeds and with automatic controls that were not possible with reciprocating compressors, whose pistons compressed the refrigerant in cylinders. The mechanical model for improvement was the shift in industries from low-​speed reciprocating-​piston steam engines to high-​ speed rotating turbines powered by electricity. For example, at first, fans were driven externally by belted connections to reciprocating steam engines, whose maximal speed governed that of the fan and thus the capacity of the system. But with fans driven by electricity, their

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maximum speed and the system’s capacity could increase enormously. In chiller design, the analogy was the shift from the reciprocating to the centrifugal compressor, wherein not a reciprocating piston but a rotating fan, whose speed was precisely controlled, delivered high-​ pressure refrigerant gas at a high speed to the condenser. There the gas would condense to a liquid and in so doing give up its heat to condenser water. The condensed refrigerant could then chill water in tubes that would cool air blown over them. The advantages of the centrifugal compressor over the earlier reciprocating compressor were (1) its degree of control over the speed of compression and thus the rate of cooling and (2) its capacity to provide more tonnage of refrigeration because of its higher speeds of operation.3 As one of Carrier’s competitors said: “The compressor is the heart of any air-​conditioning system. Upon the efficiency of the compressor depends the efficiency of the entire air-​conditioning system.”4 The new electrically powered capacity of the centrifugal compressors in turn provoked a search for new refrigerants that could respond optimally to the higher speeds of compression and condensation yet not be toxic, flammable, or explosive. Ammonia and CO₂ required too many stages of centrifugal compression, and their pressure requirements were high. What was needed was a refrigerant susceptible to compression and condensation at a rate compatible with the fan-​powered, rather than piston-​driven, machinery. Thus one innovation depended on the other. Carrier selected dielene (C2H2CL2), then commercially manufactured in Germany, as meeting his specifications. When no US manufacturer of reciprocating compressors would bid competitively on making centrifugal chillers, the Carrier Corporation,



which had not previously been a manufacturer of refrigerating equipment, applied for a patent in 1921. The Rivoli Theater had a centrifugal compressor using dielene as the refrigerant.5 As introduced in chapter 7, the heat pump performs a kind of reverse refrigeration (fig. 93). Like a refrigeration system, a heat pump consists of a compressor, a condenser, a throttle or expansion valve, an evaporator, and a working fluid (refrigerant). But it works in the reverse way. While air-​conditioning uses a refrigerant to convey heat from indoor air to outdoor air, a heat pump uses a refrigerant to convey heat from outdoor air to indoor air. To do this, the compressor first delivers vaporized refrigerant to a condenser coil inside in the space to be heated. But instead of removing heat from interior air and moving it outside, the vaporized refrigerant loses heat to the indoor air, which is cooler than the refrigerant. As the vaporized refrigerant loses heat to the indoor air, it condenses to a liquid in the indoor condensing coil and then flows outdoors. As it does, the refrigerant passes through an expansion valve, coming out as a liquid-​vapor mixture at a lower temperature and pressure. As the vaporized refrigerant enters the evaporator coil outdoors, it takes on heat by contact with air warmer than itself. The refrigerant cycles back indoors, where it is again compressed, and then condenses, conveying warmth to indoor air cooler than itself. Some heat pumps can extract heat from well water instead of outdoor air. In either case, the circulating refrigerant takes heat from an outside source and transfers it indoors. For all except the warmest regions, well water is preferred as a source of heat from outside, since a heat pump using air is at a disadvantage in cold weather, when the building’s need for heat is greatest and heat in the outside air is lowest.

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Because the heat-​pump cycle reverses that of refrigeration, the same equipment can be used for both heating and cooling, with adjustable valves determining which function the unit performs. In summer, a system creates air-​conditioning by reversing the flow of the refrigerant. Theoretically imagined in the 1850s by Lord Kelvin (1824–1907), the British physicist who developed the Kelvin scale of

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temperature, the heat pump developed from the mid-1940s for domestic use as a complement to domestic refrigeration, which would use the same equipment. One system with refrigeration for summer cooling and a heat pump for winter heating would be in full year-​ round operation, so the system’s initial costs could be amortized more quickly.6

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Notes

Introduction

1.  Reyner Banham, The Architecture of the Well-​Tempered Environment, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 92. See Nigel Whiteley, Reyner Banham: Historian of the Immediate Future (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002), esp. chap. 4: “The Expanded Field.” 2.  Anthony Denzer, The Solar House: Pioneering Sustainable Design (New York: Rizzoli, 2013); Kevin Bone, ed., Lessons from Modernism: Environmental Design Strategies in Architecture, 1925–1970 (New York: Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of the Cooper Union and the Monacelli Press, 2014); David Gissen, Manhattan Atmospheres: Architecture, the Interior Environment, and Urban Crisis (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014); Daniel A. Barber, A House in the Sun: Modern Architecture and Solar Energy in the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). See also Dean Hawkes, Architecture and Climate: An Environmental History of British Architecture, 1600–2000 (London: Routledge, 2012); and Vidar Lerum, Sustainable Building Design: Learning from Nineteenth-​Century Innovations (London: Routledge, 2016). Daniel A. Barber, Modern Architecture and Climate: Design Before Air Conditioning (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020) appeared after this book was in press. 3.  Latour presented such ideas in his Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-​Network-​Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 4.  L. R. Smith, “Dispelling Popular Fallacies About Air Conditioning,” Scientific American 151, no. 2 (August 1934): 87. 5.  Sheila J. Hayter, Bruce C. Snead, Richard B. Hayter, Paul A.

Torcellini, and Ron Judkoff, “Designing for Sustainability,” American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-​Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) conference, Dublin, Ireland, 20–22 September 2000, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, conference paper, NREL/CP-550-27797, 1, 2. 6.  Raymond Arsenault, “The End of the Long Hot Summer: The Air Conditioner and Southern Culture,” in Searching for the Sunbelt: Historical Perspectives on a Region, ed. Raymond A. Mohl (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990), 176–211; Gail Cooper, Air-​Conditioning America: Engineers and the Controlled Environment, 1900–1960 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998); Marsha E. Ackermann, Cool Comfort: America’s Romance with Air-​Conditioning (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002); Jonathan Rees, Refrigeration Nation: A History of Ice, Appliances, and Enterprise in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013); Salvatore Basile, Cool: How Air Conditioning Changed Everything (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014). See also John E. Crowley, The Invention of Comfort: Sensibilities and Design in Early Modern Britain and Early America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001); Michelle Murphy, Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty: Environmental Politics, Technoscience, and Women Workers (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006); and Michael Osman, Modernism’s Visible Hand: Architecture and Regulation in America (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018). 7.  Barry Donaldson and Bernard Nagengast, eds., Heat and Cold: Mastering the Great Indoors; A Selective History of Heating, Ventilation,

Air-​Conditioning, and Refrigeration from the Ancients to the 1930s (Atlanta: ASHRAE, 1994); Harry M. Will, ed., The First Century of Air Conditioning (Atlanta: ASHRAE, 1999); Eric B. Schultz, Carrier: Weathermakers to the World; The Story of a Company, the Standard of an Industry (Syracuse, NY: Carrier Corporation, 2012). 8.  Exceptional studies include Robert Bruegmann, “Central Heating and Forced Ventilation: Origins and Effects on Architectural Design,” JSAH 37, no. 3 (October 1978): 143–60; Cecil D. Elliott, Technics and Architecture: The Development of Materials and Systems for Buildings (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992); George Baird, The Architectural Expression of Environmental Control Systems (London: Spon Press, 2001); Thomas Leslie, Louis I. Kahn: Building Art, Building Science (New York: George Braziller, 2005); and Rosa Urbano Gutiérrez, “ ‘Pierre, revoir tout le système fenêtres’: Le Corbusier and the Development of Glazing and Air-​ Conditioning Technology with the Mur Neutralisant (1928–1933),” Construction History 27 (2012): 107–28. 9.  Sigfried Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command: A Contribution to Anonymous History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1948). 10.  Sandy Isenstadt, Electric Light: An Architectural History (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2018). 11.  Sara Hart, “An Icon Is Completed After 80 Years,” AR 113, no. 5 (November 2005), 20–23. 12.  Andrew Saint, Architect and Engineer: A Study in Sibling Rivalry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007). 13.  Thomas Leslie, Saranya Panchaseelan, Shawn Barron, and Paolo Orlando, “Deep Space, Thin Walls: Environmental and Material

241

Precursors to the Postwar Skyscraper,” JSAH 77, no. 1 (March 2018): 77–96; Manfredo di Robilant, “The Aestheticization of Mechanical Systems: Gio Ponti’s Montecatini Headquarters, Milan, 1936–39,” JSAH 77, no. 2 (June 2018): 186–203. 14.  “Apartment House, 25 East 83rd Street, New York City,” AF 69 (December 1938): 429–32. This building, by Frederick L. Ackerman with George Ramsey and Harold R. Sleeper, is on the northwest corner of the intersection with Madison Avenue. See “Comfort Plants for New Apartments,” Heating and Ventilating 36, no. 7 (July 1939): 27; and Sullivan A. S. Patorno, “New York’s First Complete Air Conditioned Apartment House,” Heating and Ventilating 36, no. 7 (July 1939): 28–31. On non-​air-​conditioned Parkchester, by Shreve, Lamb, and Harmon, see P. W. Anderson, “51 Buildings Served by Central Plant with Four Oil-​Burning Boilers,” Heating and Ventilating 36, no. 6 (June 1939): 13; “Central Plant for Metropolitan Housing Project,” editorial, Heating and Ventilating 36, no. 6 (June 1939): 48; “Unusual Downfeed Steam Piping in 51-Building Project,” Heating and Ventilating 36, no. 6 (June 1939): 48; no. 7 (July 1939): 44–48; “Parkchester Heating Plant Serves 12,000 Family Housing Project,” Power 85, no. 4 (April 1941): 230–61; and “Steam for Parkchester,” Power Plant Engineering 45, no. 6 (June 1941): 50–55. 15.  “Cooling Off Abroad,” BW, 1 August 1936, 36. 16.  James McQueeny, “Air Conditioning Takes on More Jobs,” Nation’s Business 27, no. 9 (September 1939): 26; William S. Shipley, “China Modernizes,” Scientific American 150, no. 4 (April 1934): 173–75. 17.  Elizabeth Shove, Gordon Walker, and Sam Brown, “Transnational Transitions: The Diffusion and Integration of Mechanical Cooling,” Urban Studies 51, no. 7 (May 2014): 1511. 18.  Cherian George, Singapore: The Air-​Conditioned Nation; Essays on the Politics of Comfort and Control, 1990–2000 (Singapore: Landmark Books, 2000); Jiat-​Hwee Chang and

242

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Tim Winter, “Thermal Modernity and Architecture,” Journal of Architecture 20, no. 1 (2 January 2015): 92–121. 19.  Tim Winter, “Urban Sustainability in the Arabian Gulf: Air Conditioning and Its Alternatives,” Urban Studies 53, no. 15 (2016): 3264–78. 20.  Michael Sivak, “Potential Energy Demand for Cooling in the Fifty Largest Metropolitan Areas of the World: Implications for Developing Countries,” Energy Policy 37 (2009): 1382–84, cited in Shove, Walker, and Brown, “Transnational Transitions,” 1507; Stan Cox, Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-​Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through the Summer) (New York: New Press, 2010), 130–49; Tim Winter, “An Uncomfortable Truth: Air-​Conditioning and Sustainability in Asia,” Environment and Planning A 45, no. 3 (2013): 517–31.

Chapter 1

1.  Philip Oldfield, Dario Trabucco, and Antony Wood, “Five Energy Generations of Tall Buildings: An Historical Analysis of Energy Consumption in High-​Rise Buildings,” Journal of Architecture 14, no. 5 (2009): 591–613; P. Depecker, C. Menezo, J. Virgone, and S. Lepers, “Design of Buildings’ Shape and Energetic Consumption,” Building and Environment 36, no. 5 (June 2001): 627–35. 2.  See Joel A. Tarr, “J. R. Walsh of Chicago: A Case Study in Banking and Politics, 1881–1905,” Business History Review 40, no. 4 (Winter 1966): 451– 66, and “The Chicago National Bank Building,” Engineering Record 44, no. 9 (31 August 1901): 204–7. On the building’s later remodeling and demolition for a Harris Trust Bank building, see Frank A. Randall, History of the Development of Building Construction in Chicago (1949; New York: Arno Press, 1972), 173–74. 3.  Violet S. Coen, “Chicago National Bank Building,” Inland Architect and News Record 40, no. 1 (August 1902): 3. 4.  Darwin D. Martin to John Larkin, 20 March 1903, in Jack Quinan, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin Building:

Myth and Fact (New York: Architectural History Foundation; Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987), app. C, 132. On the Larkin Building’s historiography, see Osman, Modernism’s Visible Hand, xii–xvii. 5.  Louis H. Sullivan, “Kindergarten Chat x: A Roman Temple,” in Kindergarten Chats and Other Writings, ed. Isabella Athey (New York: George Wittenborn, 1947), 39–40. 6.  “Ventilating and Heating the Chicago National Bank,” Engineering Record 44, no. 21 (23 November 1901): 502. 7.  Ibid., 503. 8.  Chicago National Bank, Chicago: Historical, Pictorial (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1902), 41. 9.  Ibid., 52, 54. 10.  Darwin Martin to John Larkin, 20 March 1903, in Quinan, Wright’s Larkin Building, app. C, 132. 11.  Coen, “Chicago National Bank Building,” 6. 12.  The contractors for the steam heating were Messrs. F. W. Lamb & Co., and for the ventilating apparatus, the Andrews & Johnson Co., both of Chicago. “Ventilating and Heating the Chicago National Bank,” 503, 504. 13.  Louis H. Sullivan, “The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered” (1896), in Louis Sullivan: The Public Papers, edited by Robert Twombly (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 111. 14.  Dankmar Adler, “Influence of Steel Construction and of Plate Glass upon the Development of Modern Style” (1896), Inland Architect and News Record 28, no. 4 (November 1896): 35. This essay is also in Lewis Mumford, ed., Roots of Contemporary American Architecture (1952; New York: Dover, 1972), 243–50. 15.  Joseph M. Siry, The Chicago Auditorium Building: Adler and Sullivan’s Architecture and the City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 134. 16.  Edward R. Garczynski, The Auditorium (Chicago, 1890), 28. 17.  Dankmar Adler, “The Chicago Auditorium,” AR 1, no. 4 (April–June 1892), 431.

18.  Dankmar Adler, “Mechanical Plants of Large Buildings,” Journal of the Western Society of Engineers 3, no. 2 (April 1898): 914. 19.  On the theater’s democratic ideology, see Siry, Chicago Auditorium Building, 199, 200–201, 210, 244, 260, 261, 366, 393–94. 20.  Dankmar Adler, “Theater-​ Building for American Cities, Second Paper,” Engineering Magazine 7, no. 6 (September 1894): 822–23. 21.  Adler, “Mechanical Plants of Large Buildings,” 914–15. Adler and Sullivan worked with refrigeration in their design of the Chicago Cold Storage Exchange (1888–91). Osman, Modernism’s Visible Hand, 51–60. 22.  Dankmar Adler, “The Paramount Requirements of a Large Opera House,” Inland Architect and News Record 10, no. 5 (October 1887), 46. 23. Garczynski, Auditorium, 128. 24.  Ibid., 176. 25.  Frank Lloyd Wright, Genius and the Mobocracy (New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1949), 58. See Joseph M. Siry, “Adler and Sullivan’s Guaranty Building in Buffalo,” JSAH 55, no 1 (March 1996): 9–10. 26.  Robert C. Twombly, Louis Sullivan: His Life and Work (New York: Elizabeth Sifton Books, Viking, 1986), 235–37; and Meryle Secrest, Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), 119–23. 27.  Dankmar Adler, “The Tall Business Building: Some of Its Engineering Problems,” Cassier’s Magazine 12, no. 3 (July 1897): 199. 28.  Louis Sullivan to Russell Sturgis, 6 March 1897, William Gray Purcell Papers, Northwest Architectural Archives, University of Minnesota, St. Paul. 29.  Sullivan, “Tall Office Building Artistically Considered,” 105–6. 30.  Real Estate News, St. Louis Post-​Dispatch, 7 November 1890, 5. See also “The Wainwright Building,” St. Louis Daily Globe Democrat, 7 November 1890, 5. 31.  Adler, “Tall Business Building,” 207. On the Wainwright, see also Vladimir Bazjanac, Center for Planning and Development Research, College of

Environmental Design, University of California at Berkeley, “Energy Analysis,” in George McCue, “Spirit from St. Louis,” Progressive Architecture 62, no. 11 (November 1981): 107. 32.  Sullivan’s circular windows perhaps had Parisian sources. See César Daly and Gabriel Davioud, Les théâtres de la place du Châtelet (Paris: Ducher, 1874); and Daniel Rabreau et al., Gabriel Davioud: Architecte, 1824–1881 (Paris: Délégation à l’action artistique de la ville de Paris, 1981), 75. See also Paula Lupkin, “The Wainwright Building: Monument of St. Louis’s Lager Landscape.” JSAH 77, no. 4 (December 2018): 428–47. 33. Siry, Chicago Auditorium Building, 366–87; John Vinci, The Trading Room: Louis Sullivan and the Chicago Stock Exchange, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1989). 34.  Percy C. Stuart, “The New York Stock Exchange,” AR 11, no. 1 (July 1901): 526. See Sarah Bradford Landau, George B. Post, Architect: Picturesque Designer and Determined Realist (New York: Monacelli Press, 1998), 120–30. 35.  “Many Novelties in New Stock Exchange,” NYT, 9 February 1902, SM5. 36.  Stuart, “New York Stock Exchange,” 537. 37.  “Cooling the New York Stock Exchange,” Metal Worker, Plumber and Steam Fitter 64, no. 6 (5 August 1905): 55. 38.  “Big Cooling Plant in Stock Exchange,” Cold Storage and Produce Review 10 (May 1903): 206. 39.  Edmund Clarence Stedman, “Life ‘on the Floor’: The New York Stock Exchange from Within,” Century Magazine 67, no. 1 (November 1903): 13–14. 40.  A. P. Trautwein, “Professional Career of Alfred R. Wolff,” Stevens Institute Indicator 26, no. 1 (January 1909): 7–16; Bernard A. Nagengast, “Alfred Wolff—HVAC Pioneer,” ASHRAE Journal 32, supplement (January 1990): S66–S80. 41.  R. Ogden Doremus, “Thoughts Suggested by Professor Dewar’s Discoveries,” North American Review 156, no. 438 (May 1893): 551.

42.  New York Stock Exchange, Mr. Geo. B. Post Before Building Committee, New York, October 2nd, 1901, p. 15, NYSE Archives. 43.  Alfred Wolff to George B. Post, 1 October 1901, p. 2. NYSE Archives. Partly quoted in Donaldson and Nagengast, Heat and Cold, 275. 44.  New York Stock Exchange, Mr. A. R. Wolff Before Building Committee, New York, January 31, 1902, Refrigerating Plant, pp. 8, 9, NYSE Archives. Partly quoted in Donaldson and Nagengast, Heat and Cold, 275. 45.  Ibid., 9. 46.  Ibid., 10. 47.  “Many Novelties in New Stock Exchange,” SM5. See also “Heating, Ventilating, and Air-​Cooling at the New York Stock Exchange—iv,” Engineering Record 51, no. 17 (29 April 1905): 490–91. 48.  “Big Cooling Plant in Stock Exchange,” 206. 49.  “Heating, Ventilating, and Air-​Cooling at the New York Stock Exchange—iii,” Engineering Record 51, no. 16 (22 April 1905): 464. 50.  “Heating, Ventilating, and Air Cooling at the New York Stock Exchange—i,” Engineering Record 51, no. 14 (8 April 1905): 413. 51.  W. W. Macon, “Air Cooling by Refrigeration,” Transactions of the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Heating and Ventilating Engineers 15 (1909): 118. 52.  “Heating, Ventilating, and Air-​Cooling at the New York Stock Exchange—iv,” 490. See “Cooling the New York Stock Exchange,” Carpentry and Building 27 (September 1905): 243–45. Cooling other spaces required 150 more tons of refrigeration, so the total capacity of 450 tons was “the largest ever attempted.” “Cooling the New York Stock Exchange,” Metal Worker, Plumber and Steam Fitter 64, no. 6 (5 August 1905): 55. On human emissions of Btus, see Eugene Stamper and Richard L. Koral, eds., Handbook of Air Conditioning, Heating, and Ventilating (New York: Industrial Press, 1979), 2–113. 53.  Margaret Ingels, Willis Haviland Carrier, Father of Air

Not e s to page s 17 –25

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Conditioning (Garden City, NY: Country Life Press, 1952), 1–12. See Henry W. Wendt, Buffalo Forge, 1877– 1952: World-​Wide Name in Industrial Equipment (New York: Newcomen Society in North America, 1952), 14–15. 54.  “Sympathy Saves $2,000,000 Concern,” NYT, 11 July 1914, 5. 55.  “The Power Equipment of the Sackett & Wilhelms Lithographing & Printing Company—i,” Engineering Record 49, no. 6 (6 February 1904): 166. 56. Ibid. 57.  Donaldson and Nagengast, Heat and Cold, 277, 279, 332n63. 58.  Margaret Ingels, “Willis Carrier,” working manuscript, chap. 2, p. 58, CCA. See also “New Printing Process,” NYT, 20 December 1903, 24. 59.  Donald A. Kepler, “Air Conditioning the New York Stock Exchange,” HPAC 19, no. 4 (April 1947): 72. 60.  Ingels, “Willis Carrier,” 58, 62. 61.  Ibid., 58–59. 62.  The principles of compressive refrigeration are discussed and illustrated in the appendix. 63.  J. I. Lyle, “Heating, Ventilating & Cooling Plant for the Sackett-​ Wilhelms Lithographing and Publishing Co.,” [1902?], 3–4, box 92758, CCA. See Ingels, “Willis Carrier,” 19. 64.  J. I. Lyle to Buffalo Forge Co., 2 October 1903, box 92758, CCA. 65.  H. H. Platt, president, Sackett & Wilhelms Lithographing Corp., to Walter A. Bowe, Carrier Corporation, 15 June 1943, box 92679, CCA. 66.  Margaret Ingels to Logan Lewis, 9 July 1964, box 92679, CCA. See James Barron, “More Than Pipe Dream, It Was the Idea That Led to Air-​Conditioning,” NYT, 17 July 2012, A21. 67.  W[illis] H. Carrier, “Air Conditioning—Its Phenomenal Development,” Heating and Ventilating 26, no. 6 (June 1929): 116, cited in Donaldson and Nagengast, Heat and Cold, 279. 68.  W[illis] H. Carrier, “A New Departure in Cooling and Humidifying Textile Mills,” Textile World Record 33 (May supplement, 1907): 363–69; Pam Edwards, “Carrier Air Conditioning

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and the Textile Industry,” Essays in Economic and Business History 12 (1994): 355–71. 69. Ingels, Willis Haviland Carrier, 20–27; Donaldson and Nagengast, Heat and Cold, 281, citing Carrier, “Air Conditioning—Its Phenomenal Development,” 116–17. See Cooper, Air-​ Conditioning America, 17–23, 34–35, 45–46, 57. 70.  Frank Lloyd Wright, An Autobiography (New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1943), 150, quoted in Banham, Well-​Tempered Environment, 86. On the Larkin Building’s system of heating, ventilating, and air-​ conditioning, see Quinan, Wright’s Larkin Building, 66–72. 71.  “The Larkin Administration Building was a simple cliff of brick hermetically sealed to keep the interior clear of the poisonous gases in the smoke from the trains that puffed along beside it.” Frank Lloyd Wright, An Autobiography (1932), in Frank Lloyd Wright: Collected Writings, ed. Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, vol. 2, 1930– 1932 (New York: Rizzoli, 1992), 209, quoted in Banham, Well-​Tempered Environment, 90. 72. Wright, Autobiography (1932), 210. 73. Banham, Well-​Tempered Environment, 91. 74.  App. A: “Darwin Martin’s Office Building Requirements,” 18 December 1902, in Quinan, Wright’s Larkin Building, 129. 75.  Darwin D. Martin to John Larkin, 20 March 1903, in Quinan, Wright’s Larkin Building, app. C, 132. 76.  On the company’s life in the building, see Quinan, Wright’s Larkin Building, chap. 4, 44–84. 77.  Howard R. Stanger, “Factory to Family: The Creation of a Corporate Culture in the Larkin Company of Buffalo, New York,” Business History Review 74, no. 3 (Autumn 2000): 409, 423, 424–25. 78.  App. A: “Darwin Martin’s Office Building Requirements,” 18 December 1902, in Quinan, Wright’s Larkin Building, 129. 79. Quinan, Wright’s Larkin Building, 66–72.

80.  Reyner Banham, “The Services of the Larkin ‘A’ Building,” JSAH 37, no. 3 (October 1978): 195–97. 81. Wright, Autobiography (1943), 150. 82.  “Larkin Company Admini­ stration Building Specifications— Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect, 1903,” item 91: Scope of the Work, FLWA, quoted in Quinan, Wright’s Larkin Building, 66. 83.  Ibid., item 92: Guarantees, FLWA, quoted in Quinan, Wright’s Larkin Building, 69. 84.  Ibid., item 102, FLWA, quoted in Quinan, Wright’s Larkin Building, 69, 72. 85.  Frank Lloyd Wright, “The New Larkin Administration Building,” Larkin Idea 6 (November 1906): 2, in Quinan, Wright’s Larkin Building, app. G, 141. 86.  George Twitmyer, “A Model Administration Building,” Business Man’s Magazine 19 (April 1907): 43, in Quinan, Wright’s Larkin Building, app. I, 151. 87. Ibid. 88. Ibid. 89. Ibid. 90.  Twitmyer, “Model Administration Building,” 43, in Quinan, Wright’s Larkin Building, app. I, 151. 91. Ibid. 92.  Wright, “New Larkin Administration Building,” 2, in Quinan, Wright’s Larkin Building, app. G, 141. 93.  Twitmyer, “Model Administration Building,” 43, in Quinan, Wright’s Larkin Building, app. I, 149. 94.  Charles E. Illsley, “The Larkin Administration Building, Buffalo,” Inland Architect and News Record 50, no. 1 (July 1907): 4. See Quinan, Wright’s Larkin Building, 38, 44–56. 95.  Stanger, “Factory to Family,” 426–27; Stanger, “Welfare Capitalism in the Larkin Company, 1900–1925,” New York History 86, no. 2 (Spring 2005): 228–37. 96.  Wright, “New Larkin Administration Building,” 2, in Quinan, Wright’s Larkin Building, app. G, 140. 97.  Ibid., 143. 98.  William R. Heath, “The Office Building and What It Will Bring to the

Work Force,” Larkin Idea 6 (November 1906): 13, in Quinan, Wright’s Larkin Building, app. H, 147. The cooling system was soon supplanted by a refrigerating machine made by the Kroeschell Brothers in 1908 or 1909. Banham, Well-​Tempered Environment, 92, cited in Quinan, Wright’s Larkin Building, 176n22, 176n30. See Ingels, “Willis Carrier,” 137. 99. Quinan, Wright’s Larkin Building, 96, 179n12; Stanger, “Factory to Family,” 424. 100.  Marion Harland, My Trip Thru the Larkin Factories (Buffalo, NY: Larkin Co., 1914), 14, in Quinan, Wright’s Larkin Building, app. J, 154. 101.  Illsley, “Larkin Administration Building,” 4. 102.  Hendrik Berlage, “Neuere amerikanische Architektur,” Schweizerische Bauzeitung 60 (21 September 1912): 165–67, translated as “The New American Architecture (1912); Travel Impressions of H. P. Berlage, Architect in Amsterdam,” in The Literature of Architecture; the Evolution of Architectural Theory and Practice in Nineteenth-​Century America, ed. Don Gifford (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1966), 614–15. 103.  Russell Sturgis, “The Larkin Building,” AR 23, no. 4 (April 1908), in Quinan, Wright’s Larkin Building, app. K, 160. 104.  Frank Lloyd Wright, “Reply to Mr. Sturgis’s Criticism,” in In the Cause of Architecture (Buffalo, NY, April 1909), in Quinan, Wright’s Larkin Building, app. L, 166. Wright’s design for the Abraham Lincoln Center of 1903 anticipated the Larkin Building’s flues and stairs as distinct blocks. See Joseph M. Siry, “The Abraham Lincoln Center in Chicago,” JSAH 50, no. 3 (September 1991): 262–63. 105. Wright, Autobiography (1932), 206. 106.  Frank Lloyd Wright, “In the Cause of Architecture: The Third Dimension” (1925), in Frank Lloyd Wright: Collected Writings, ed. Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, vol. 1, 1894–1930 (New York: Rizzoli, 1992), 210. 107. Quinan, Wright’s Larkin Building, 26–30.

108. Wright, Autobiography (1932), 210.

Chapter 2

1.  A. Warren Canney, “Air Conditioning in the Rockefeller Center Development,” Ice and Refrigeration 87, no. 5 (November 1934): 208. 2.  “Air Conditioning, 25 Years Old,” BW, 5 December 1936, 15. 3.  J. Milo Curci, “Cooling the Air to Outwit Heat,” NYT, 22 July 1928, 108. 4. Cooper, Air-​Conditioning America, 52–57; Walter L. Fleisher, “Air Conditioning: Its Development in Industry,” HPAC 1, no. 1 (May 1929): 3–9. 5.  Willis Carrier, “Air Conditioning—New Prospects for an Established Industry,” HPAC 1, no. 1 (May 1929): 29–30. 6.  Sally A. Kitt Chappell, Architecture and Planning of Graham, Anderson, Probst and White, 1912–1936: Transforming Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 52–55, 123–26. 7.  Carrier Engineering Corporation, “Mills to Millions: The Story of William Wrigley, Jr.,” Weather Vein 4, no. 2 (1924), 3. 8.  Carrier Engineering Corporation, “Chewing Gum and Its Manufacture” and “Artistry in Steel,” Weather Vein 4, no. 2 (1924), 9–15, 16–23. 9.  Carrier Engineering Corporation, “The Conquest of Clay,” Weather Vein 1, no. 9 (September 1921), 3–13. 10.  F. E. Ortman, vice president of the American Ceramic Society, quoted in Carrier Engineering Corporation, “The Drying of Ceramic Ware; Terra Cotta,” Weather Vein 1, no. 9 (September 1921), 23–24. 11.  On the Wrigley Building’s later air-​conditioning, see “Water-​Vapor Refrigeration for Air Conditioning,” Refrigerating Engineering 33, no. 4 (April 1937): 261. 12.  Studies include Grant Hildebrand, Designing for Industry: The Architecture of Albert Kahn (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1974); Reyner Banham, A Concrete Atlantis: U.S. Industrial Building and European Modern

Architecture, 1900–1925 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986), 82–87; Federico Bucci, Albert Kahn: Architect of Ford (Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 1993); and Brian Carter, ed., Albert Kahn: Inspiration for the Modern (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Museum of Art, 2001). 13.  J. J. Floreth, “Ford Motor Company Sets High Air Conditioning Standards,” HPAC 9, no. 10 (December 1937): 729. 14.  Jack Russell, “The Coming of the Line: The Ford Highland Park Plant, 1910–1914,” Radical America 12, no. 3 (May–June 1978): 28–45. See Hildebrand, Designing for Industry, 43–54; Banham, Concrete Atlantis, 97–102; and Bucci, Albert Kahn, 39–49. 15.  Horace Lucien Arnold and Fay Leone Faurote, Ford Methods and Ford Shops (New York: Engineering Magazine, 1915; repr., New York: Arno Press, 1972), 411–15. 16.  Allan Nevins and Frank Ernest Hill, Ford: The Times, the Man, the Company (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1954), 454, quoted in Hildebrand, Designing for Industry, 52. 17.  Arnold and Faurote, Ford Methods and Ford Shops, 411. On electrical lighting of factories, see David E. Nye, Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology, 1880– 1940 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992), chap. 5, 185–237. 18.  Percival Robert Moses, “The Heating, Ventilating, and Air-​Conditioning of Factories, 1: Its Economic Importance—Systems for Temperature Control,” Engineering Magazine 39, no. 5 (August 1910): 705–6, 708. See Arnold and Faurote, Ford Methods and Ford Shops, 412; and American Blower Company, Ford Motor Company Installs “Sirocco” Heating, Ventilating, and Cooling System (Detroit: American Blower Company, 1914). 19.  Arnold and Faurote, Ford Methods and Ford Shops, 389. 20. Hildebrand, Designing for Industry, 91–123; Bucci, Albert Kahn, 50–59. 21.  Albert Kahn, “Ford Laboratory,” typescript, Albert Kahn

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Collection, Detroit Institute of Arts; “Construction Begins on New Ford Engineering Laboratory, Dearborn,” Ford News 3, no. 11 (1 April 1923): 1, 8; George Nelson, Industrial Architecture of Albert Kahn, Inc. (New York: Architectural Book Publishing, 1939), 154. 22.  Floreth, “Ford Motor Company,” 730. 23.  The Legacy of Albert Kahn (Detroit: Detroit Institute of Arts, 1970), 23. 24.  Arthur van Vlissingen Jr., “Cash Out Is Cash In—on These Air-​ Conditioning Jobs,” Factory Management and Maintenance 95, no. 7 (July 1937): 55. 25.  A[lbert] Kahn, “Ford Laboratory,” undated typescript, Albert Kahn Associates Archives, quoted in Bucci, Albert Kahn, 57. 26.  Albert Kahn, “How Building Design Affects Production Efficiency” (read to the American Management Association, Chicago, 15 November 1939), 10, 11, folder 6, box 1, Albert Kahn Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. 27.  Floreth, “Ford Motor Company,” 730. 28.  Albert Kahn, quoted in AF 73, no. 6 (December 1940): 501, quoted in Hildebrand, Designing for Industry, 156. 29.  Charles O. Herb, “An Air-​ Conditioned Machine Shop and Foundry Turns Out More Accurate Work,” Machinery 42, no. 11 (July 1936): 697–700. 30.  “Ford Plant Adopts Air Conditioning,” Heating and Ventilating 32, no. 11 (November 1935): 21. 31.  Herb, “Air-​Conditioned Machine Shop,” 698. 32.  Van Vlissingen, “Cash Out Is Cash In,” 55. 33.  Ibid., 54. 34.  “Ford Plant Adopts Air Conditioning,” 21. 35.  Douglas Brinkley, Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century of Progress, 1903–2003 (New York: Viking, 2003), 376–92, 426–33. 36.  “Strike for Cool Air,” BW, 12 June 1937, 15. Postwar textile workers bargained for air-​conditioning. See

246

Not e s to page s 46 – 51

“Keeping Cool,” BW, 9 October 1948, 108–10. 37.  Floreth, “Ford Motor Company,” 729. 38.  Arnold and Faurote, Ford Methods and Ford Shops, 386. 39.  HPAC 6, no. 11 (November 1934): 25. See “Air Conditioning at the 1934 Century of Progress,” Ice and Refrigeration 87, no. 2 (August 1934): 55–58. 40.  Robert W. Rydell, World of Fairs: The Century-​of-​Progress Expositions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 98–99, quoted in Ackermann, Cool Comfort, 81. 41.  Henrik Schoenefeldt, “Adapting Glasshouses for Human Use: Environmental Experimentation in Paxton’s Designs for the 1851 Great Exhibition Building and the Crystal Palace, Sydenham,” Architectural History 54 (2011): 233–73. 42.  Hubert Bennett, quoted in Stephen Eskilson, “Sears Beautiful,” Chicago History 39, no. 2 (Fall 2000): 32. 43.  “5400 Tons of Air Conditioning for New York World’s Fair,” Heating and Ventilating 36, no. 5 (May 1939): 27. See Ackermann, Cool Comfort, 80. 44.  “Five Big Buildings at Exposition Are Windowless,” Chicago Tribune, 27 May 1933, 3, quoted in Ackermann, Cool Comfort, 82. 45.  Official Guide: Book of the Fair (Chicago: A Century of Progress, 1933), 23, quoted in Ackermann, Cool Comfort, 81. 46.  “A Century of Progress Exposition,” HPAC 4, no. 6 (June 1933): 289– 91; no. 7 (July 1933): 360–62; the latter noted in Ackermann, Cool Comfort, 84. 47.  Lisa Diane Schrenk, Building a Century of Progress: The Architecture of Chicago’s 1933–34 World’s Fair (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), chap. 5, 157–86; Robert Boyce, Keck and Keck (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1993), chap. 5, 43–55; Denzer, Solar House, chap. 1, 13–34. 48.  “Millions Have Experienced Air-​Conditioning at the Chicago Fair,” HPAC 5, no. 11 (November 1933): 558.

49.  The Editor’s Page, HPAC 10, no. 10 (October 1938): 35, quoted in Ackermann, Cool Comfort, 89. 50.  “The ‘New Industry’ Hears News,” BW, 16 March 1935, 9. 51.  “Air-​Conditioning,” BW, 25 June 1936, 16. 52.  “Chicago Takes Nation’s Lead in Air Conditioning,” Chicago Tribune, 20 August 1934, 24. 53.  “Chicago Leads the Country in Air Conditioning Installations,” Chicago Tribune, 11 May 1934, 24. On the Board of Trade, see George R. Bailey, “Air Conditioning in the World’s Largest Grain Market,” Heating and Ventilating 34, no. 8 (August 1937): 47–49. The Merchandise Mart’s lower floors had been Chicago’s first to be air-​ conditioned. On retrofitting its upper stories, see Walter A. Stahl, “World’s Largest Building Starts Its Air Conditioning Program,” Heating and Ventilating 34, no. 9 (September 1937): 65–68. Chicago’s first fully air-​conditioned skyscraper was Naess and Murphy’s Prudential Building (1951–55). See Leslie et al., “Deep Space, Thin Walls.” 54.  “Hotels Report Better Business Since the Fair,” Chicago Tribune, 21 July 1936, 25. 55.  “The First Step in Cooling a Building,” editorial, Chicago Tribune, 17 July 1933, 12. 56.  A. Warren Canney, “Choosing the Right Air Conditioning System,” HPAC 6, no. 11 (November 1934): 457; “Air Conditioning for the Tribune Tower,” Chicago Tribune, 28 June 1928, 14; ibid., 10 June 1934, 14; “Air Conditioning System Installed in Chicago Tribune Building,” Ice and Refrigeration 87, no. 1 (July 1934): 9–10. 57.  “Cut Workers’ Colds,” BW, 10 April 1937, 44. 58.  Knight C. Porter and William P. Rock, “Air Conditioning Becomes Locally Competitive,” HPAC 10, no. 3 (March 1938): 172–73. 59.  Al Chase, “Chicago to Have World’s First Windowless Department Store,” Chicago Tribune, 20 May 1934, 26; Richard Longstreth, “Sears, Roebuck and the Remaking of the Department Store, 1924–42,” JSAH 65, no. 2 (June 2006): 258, 277n56.

60.  Chase, “World’s First Windowless Department Store,” 26. 61.  Eskilson, “Sears Beautiful,” 41. 62.  “Without Windows: Architect’s Conception of a Windowless Department Store Building for Sears, Roebuck & Co., Chicago, Ill.,” AF 62, no. 3 (March 1935), 207. 63.  Chase, “World’s First Windowless Department Store,” 26. See “Windowless Construction Reduces Air Conditioning Load,” HPAC 6, no. 7 (July 1934): 292. 64.  “Without Windows,” 209. 65.  “No Windows: Sears, Roebuck & Co. Risk $1,500,000 on a New Type of Store Building,” Architect and Engineer 120, no. 2 (February 1935): 38. 66.  Chase, “World’s First Windowless Department Store,” 26. 67.  Les Janes, quoted in Chase, “World’s First Windowless Department Store,” 26. 68.  “Without Windows,” 207. See “New Air-​Conditioned Department Store of Windowless Configuration,” In the News, HPAC 6, no. 12 (December 1934): 542. 69.  “The ‘New Industry’ Hears News,” 9; “Here Are Air-​Conditioning Facts,” BW, 2 May 1936, 20. 70.  Porter and Rock, “Air Conditioning Becomes Locally Competitive,” 172–73. See also “Air-​Conditioning Gain,” BW, 24 April 1937, 25. 71.  “5400 Tons of Air Conditioning,” 27; Margaret Ingels, “The Refrigerating Engineer’s Visit to the New York World’s Fair,” Refrigerating Engineering 38, no. 1 (July 1939): 10–14; Ackermann, Cool Comfort, 80, 81. 72.  David L. Fiske, “Refrigeration’s ‘Greatest Story Ever Told,’ ” Refrigerating Engineering 38, no. 1 (July 1939): 7. The article’s title refers to the life of Jesus Christ, as narrated in the Gospels. 73.  “5400 Tons of Air Conditioning,” 27. 74.  Ibid., 31. 75.  Ibid., 30. On Chicago, see “Refrigeration Exhibits at the 1934 Century of Progress,” Ice and Refrigeration 87, no. 1 (July 1934): 4–6. 76.  Ingels, “Refrigerating Engineer’s Visit,” 10.

77.  “Snow Maids Shovel Snow,” Heating, Ventilating, and Air Conditioning 36, no. 8 (August 1939): 23. 78. Ackermann, Cool Comfort, 96. 79.  “Design for Mass Production,” AR 87, no. 2 (February 1940): 84. 80.  “A Windowless Factory,” Architecture 63, no. 5 (May 1931): 303. 81.  “Simonds Saw Windowless Factory Nearing Completion,” Iron Age 143 (2 February 1939): 88. 82.  Alvan T. Simonds and Gifford K. Simonds, “Why We Built a Windowless Factory,” Brick and Clay Record 78 (24 March 1931): 314. See “Simonds Saw Occupying Pioneer Windowless Plant,” HPAC 10, no. 11 (November 1938): 711. 83.  “Simonds Saw Windowless Factory Nearing Completion,” 88. 84.  “Efficient Means for Mass Production,” AR 85, no. 6 (June 1939): 103. 85.  “Controlled Comfort for Workers,” Scientific American 162, no. 1 (January 1940): 19. 86. Ibid. 87. Ibid. 88.  “Windowless Factory,” 304. Nye, Electrifying America, 193, notes how electric light had earlier enabled round-​the-​clock shifts in factories. As of 2019, the renovated Simonds building was for sale or lease for manufacturing or warehouse functions. 89.  Clifford Strock, “Profits in Air,” Heating and Ventilating 36, no. 11 (November 1939): 28–34. 90.  Alden D. Walker, “Should Factories Have Windows?,” Michigan Society of Architects Weekly Bulletin 16 (31 March 1942): 41. 91.  “Glass Block Walls Supplant Windows in New Factory Building,” Canadian Machinery and Manufacturing News 47, no. 10 (October 1936): 37–38; “Glass Block Fills Dual Need in New Container Plant,” Steel 99 (8 October 1936): 34–35, 61; “Functional Design of Corrugated Container Factory Aided by Use of Glass Block,” Paper Trade Journal 103 (29 October 1936): 44, 46; “Glass Block Windows Aid Functional Design of Factory,” Engineering News-​ Record 117 (29 October 1936): 603–4. 92.  Dietrich Neumann, “ ‘The Century’s Triumph in Lighting’:

The Luxfer Prism Companies and Their Contribution to Early Modern Architecture,” JSAH 54, no. 1 (March 1995): 24–53. 93.  “Products and Practice: Glass Block,” AF 72, no. 5 (May 1940): 327. 94.  Edwin Teale, “Light Conditioning,” Popular Science 139, no. 1 (July 1941): 75. 95.  “Products and Practice: Glass Block,” 327. “Glass Block Is Sensation of Year,” American Builder 59, no. 1 (October 1937): 111. 96.  “Products and Practice: Glass Block,” 330. 97.  Teale, “Light Conditioning.” 98.  Christopher Gray, “1939 Arrival That Made Its Neighbors Old-​ Fashioned,” NYT, 27 July 1997, R5. 99.  Henry McBride, “Opening of the New Museum of Modern Art,” New York Sun, 13 May 1939, quoted in Robert A. M. Stern, Gregory Gilmartin, and Thomas Mellins, New York 1930: Architecture and Urbanism Between the Two World Wars (New York: Rizzoli, 1987), 145. 100.  “A Modern Museum: The 1939 Goodwin/Stone Building,” press release, Museum of Modern Art, April 1989, MoMA Archives. 101.  Teale, “Light Conditioning.” 102.  “Museum of Modern Art Will Have Glass Walls,” press release, Museum of Modern Art, 1938, document no. 381220–32, MoMA Archives. 103.  “The Museum of Modern Art, New York City; Philip L. Goodwin and Edward D. Stone, Architects,” AF 71, no. 2 (August 1939): 116.

Chapter 3

1.  HPAC 28, no. 10 (October 1956): 9, cited in Jeff E. Biddle, “Early Decades of Commercial Air Conditioning in the United States,” May 2010, 8, http://econ​.msu​.edu​/faculty​ /biddle​/docs​/posted​%20draft​.pdf. 2.  “Air Conditioning,” BW, 26 May 1934, 11–12; “Air Conditioning— The New Demand on Water Supplies,” American City 51, no. 2 (February 1936): 9. 3.  Jeff E. Biddle, “Making Consumers Comfortable: The Early Decades of Air Conditioning in the United States,”

Not e s to page s 52– 62

247

Journal of Economic History 71, no. 4 (December 2011): 1080. 4.  Ibid. Biddle cites data on air-​ conditioning adoption by different retailers reported in Chain Store Age, November 1939, 101, and November 1941, 96. See R. M. Bolen, “Air Conditioning for Profit,” Popular Science Monthly 123 (August 1933): 4–5. 5.  “Air Conditioning Data,” BW, 12 March 1938, 44. 6.  “A Designer’s Thoughts on Theater Air Conditioning Operation,” Heating and Ventilating 28, no. 12 (December 1931): 49. 7.  L. L[ogan] Lewis, “Air Conditioning for Museums,” Museum: A Quarterly Review 10, no. 2 (1957): 141. 8.  Knud Lönberg-​Holm, “Heating, Cooling, and Ventilating the Theatre,” AR 87, no. 1 (July 1930): 93–94. 9.  “The Realization of a Dream,” Balaban and Katz Magazine 1, no. 9 (11 May 1925): 10, Chicago History Museum. Carrie Balaban, Continuous Performance: The Story of A. J. Balaban (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1942), 52. See Jean Guarino Clark, “A Theater of Firsts: Chicago’s Central Park Theater,” Historic Illinois 29, no. 1 (June 2006): 3–7; Donaldson and Nagengast, Heat and Cold, 284; and Ira Berkow, “The Nickelodeon That Grew,” Chicago 26, no. 10 (October 1977): 190–93, 230, 232, 233. 10.  “Let’s Give the Children a Good Vacation,” Balaban and Katz Magazine 1, no. 15 (22 June 1925): 10. 11.  “Keep Cool at Our Theatres,” Balaban and Katz Magazine 1, no. 18 (13 July 1925): 10. On the large mechanical cooling plant at the municipal theater in Cologne, Germany, 1903, see Joseph Musmacher, city engineer, Cologne, “Cooling Plant in Cologne Theater,” Ice and Refrigeration 26, no. 5 (1 May 1904): 253, cited in Donaldson and Nagengast, Heat and Cold, 286– 87, and Musmacher, “Die Luftkühlanlage für das neue Stadttheater in Köln a. Rh.,” Gesundheits-​Ingenieur 27, no. 7 (10 March 1904): 101–4. 12.  Herman Bundeson, quoted in Balaban, Continuous Performance, 69; Douglas Gomery, Shared Pleasures: A History of Movie Presentation in the

248

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United States (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 53–54. See The Fundamental Principles of Balaban and Katz Theatre Management (Chicago: Balaban & Katz, 1926). On equipment, see “Heating, Ventilating, and Cooling Plant of the Tivoli Theatre,” Power Plant Engineering 26, no. 5 (1 March 1922): 249–55. 13.  “Air Conditioning System in Motion Picture House,” Ice and Refrigeration 69 (November 1925): 251. 14.  Curci, “Cooling the Air to Outwit Heat.” 15.  Knight C. Porter and William P. Rock, “Estimating the Potential Market for Air Conditioning,” HPAC 9, no. 1 (January 1937): 10. 16.  L. L[ogan] Lewis, “Air Conditioning’s Contribution to the Picture Industry,” BoxOffice 46 (2 December 1944): 25, box 123301, CCA. 17.  M. G. Harbula, “Air Conditioning Design for Theaters,” Heating and Ventilating 28, no. 12 (December 1931): 38. 18.  “Designer’s Thoughts on Theater Air,” 47. 19.  Charles F. Talman, quoted in “Overdone Theater Cooling,” Literary Digest 103, no. 4 (26 October 1929): 32. 20.  “Designer’s Thoughts on Theater Air,” 47. 21.  Sidney Grauman, quoted in “Los Angeles’ New Playhouse,” Los Angeles Times, 21 January 1923, sec. 3, p. 32. 22.  Edwin Schallert, “Grauman Proves Faith in the Amusement Art,” Los Angeles Times, 26 January 1923, sec. 2, p. 9. 23.  Ibid., sec. 2, p. 13. 24. Ibid. 25.  Ben Schlanger, “New Theaters for the Cinema,” AF 57 (September 1932): 255. See also Schlanger, “Motion Picture Theatres,” AR 81 (February 1937): 17–24, and Schlanger, “Cinemas,” AR 84 (July 1938): 113–15. 26.  Kenneth Taylor, “New Grauman a World Apart,” Los Angeles Times, 26 January 1923, sec. 2, p. 12. 27.  “A Cascade of Color,” Los Angeles Times, 26 January 1923, sec. 2, p. 9. See Edward G. Leaf, “Four Millions Spent on Unique Construction,”

Los Angeles Times, 26 January 1923, sec. 2, p. 9. 28.  Carrier Corporation, Weather Vein 3, no. 4 (1923): 22. 29.  Edwin Schallert, “Crowds Surge at Theater,” Los Angeles Times, 27 January 1923, sec. 2, p. 1. 30.  “Downward-​Diffusion Air Conditioning System for a Large Theatre,” Heating and Ventilating 21, no. 3 (March 1924): 57. 31. Ingels, Willis Haviland Carrier, 64. 32.  “Downward-​Diffusion Air Conditioning,” 57. See Donaldson and Nagengast, Heat and Cold, 286–87. 33.  “Downward Diffusion Air Conditioning,” 58. 34.  L. L. Lewis, “Air Conditioning’s Contribution,” 25. 35.  Will Horwitz Jr. to E. P. Heckel, Carrier Engineering Corporation, 19 June 1925, folder: Theaters, Correspondence, 1925–1926, box 92889, CCA. A different text of this letter is quoted in Ingels, Willis Haviland Carrier, 65. 36.  L. L. Lewis, “Air Conditioning’s Contribution,” 25. 37.  “That Something Different in Refrigeration,” folder: Rivoli Theatre (1925–1929), box 112470, CCA. See Ingels, Willis Haviland Carrier, 64–65. 38.  “Keep Cool at the Rivoli,” Rivoli Times, 1925?, folder: Rivoli Theatre (1925–1929), box 112470, CCA. 39.  Unsigned, undated memorandum, attributed to Carrier, quoted in Ingels, Willis Haviland Carrier, 66–67. 40.  Hugo Riesenfeld to Carrier Engineering Corporation, 3 July 1925, folder: Theaters, Correspondence, 1925–1926, box 92889, CCA. 41.  McQueeny, “Air Conditioning Takes on More Jobs,” 26. 42.  D[wight] D. Kimball, “Ventilating and Cooling of Motion Picture Theaters,” AF 42, no. 6 (June 1925): 394. 43.  Ibid., 397–98. 44.  Curci, “Cooling the Air to Outwit Heat.” 45.  Carrier Engineering Corporation, “Weather Indoors and Out,” Weather Vein 9, no. 1 (1929): 12. 46.  Carrier Engineering Corporation, “What Is Meant by

‘Manufactured Weather,’ ” Weather Vein 9, no. 3 (1929), 15. 47.  Ibid., 17. 48.  T. J. C. Martyn, “Man Manufactures Weather for His Health and Comfort,” NYT, 2 August 1931, sec. 20, p. 4. Among the foreign countries were Japan, Mexico, South Africa, and Argentina, where Carrier was active by the mid-1930s. See Carrier International News, 1934–62, box 92924, CCA. 49.  Carrier Engineering Corporation, “Weather Indoors and Out,” 15. 50.  Joseph Van Raalte, “Long Pants Mark Him to Friends,” Staten Island (NY) Advance, 19 July 1929. See also E. E. Free, “Samples of City Air Tested for Their Dust: Sampling the Air of New York,” NYT, 30 June 1929, sec. 20, p. 4. 51.  L. L. Lewis, “Air Conditioning’s Contribution,” 25. 52.  “The Ultra-​Expressive Ray,” Weather Vein 1, no. 8 (August 1921): 3–29. On film developing, see L. H. Polderman, “Movie-​Makers Teach a Lesson in Product Improvement by Air Conditioning,” HPAC 5, no. 6 (June 1933): 292–93. 53.  L. L. Lewis, “Air Conditioning’s Contribution,” 31. 54.  “Walt Disney Gang’s New Home,” Compressed Air Magazine 45, no. 5 (May 1940): 6147–48. See also Samuel Martin Jr., “Walt Disney Air Conditions,” HPAC 12, no. 4 (April 1940): 231–33. 55.  “No Dust for Disney,” BW, 16 March 1940, 44. 56.  William H. Jordy, American Buildings and Their Architects, vol. 5, The Impact of European Modernism in the Mid-​Twentieth Century (1972; New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 1–85; Carol Herselle Krinsky, Rockefeller Center (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), who notes air-​conditioning on pp. 16, 73–74, 104, 106–7, 109, 120, 134, 137–38, and 156; Stern, Gilmartin, and Mellins, New York 1930, 617–71; Victoria Newhouse, Wallace K. Harrison, Architect (New York: Rizzoli, 1989), chap. 6, 34–43, and chap. 7, 44–55; Daniel Okrent, Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center (New York: Viking, 2003).

Rockefeller Center (New York: 57.  Rockefeller Center, 1932), 35. 58.  Canney, “Air Conditioning in the Rockefeller Center,” 209. 59.  Ibid., 206–7. 60.  “Chicago Leads in Air Conditioning,” Ice and Refrigeration 87, no. 6 (December 1934): 296. 61.  “Status of Air Conditioning,” Ice and Refrigeration 87, no. 3 (September 1934): 134. 62.  Canney, “Air Conditioning in the Rockefeller Center,” 205. 63.  C. Milton Wilson, “Skyscraper Plumbing in the RCA Building,” Engineering News-​Record 109, no. 20 (17 November 1932): 597. 64. Ibid. 65.  Canney, “Air Conditioning in the Rockefeller Center,” 205–6. In the RCA Building, early air-​conditioned offices included those of the American Cyanamid Co. on the fifty-​seventh to sixty-​first floors. A. B. Wason, “World’s Highest Air Conditioning System,” HPAC 7, no. 6 (June 1935): 277–81. 66.  Andre Merle, “Rockefeller Center, iii: Air Conditioning the Music Hall,” Heating and Ventilating 29, no. 6 (June 1932): 47–50. 67. Ibid. 68.  Ibid. New air conditioning was installed as part of the comprehensive restoration of Radio City Music Hall completed in the fall of 1999. Ellen Lampert-​Greaux, “Engineers for an Icon,” Mechanical Engineering 123, no. 9 (September 2001): 56–59. 69.  Canney, “Rockefeller Center, iv: Design of the Air Conditioning System for the Broadcasting Studios,” Heating and Ventilating 29, no. 8 (August 1932): 40. 70.  Canney, “Air Conditioning in the Rockefeller Center,” 16. 71.  O. B. Hanson, “Air Conditioning Radio City Studios,” Refrigerating Engineering 27, no. 6 (June 1934): 293. 72.  A. Warren Canney, “Sound Control and Air Conditioning in the N.B.C. Radio City Broadcasting Studios,” AR 75, no. 1 (January 1934): 87, 88. 73.  Canney, “Rockefeller Center, iv,” 40. 74.  Ibid., 43.

75.  Canney, “Air Conditioning in the Rockefeller Center,” 18. 76.  Ibid., 17. 77.  Stern, Gilmartin, and Mellins, New York 1930, 650; Andre Merle, “86 Shops at Radio City Air Conditioned,” HPAC 6 (January 1934): 12–13; Merle, “Rockefeller Center Air Conditions Sunken Plaza Shops,” Heating and Ventilating 31 (March 1934): 19–21. 78.  Clifford F. Holske, “The Artificial Skating Rink—A Review of a Growing Use of Refrigeration,” Refrigerating Engineering 33, no. 3 (March 1937): 149–53, 187. 79.  “Rockefeller Center Buys Largest Air-​Conditioner,” New York Daily Investment News, 25 November 1932. 80.  “World’s Largest Air Conditioning Plant Is on the Air,” Inco (International Nickel Co. quarterly) 14, no. 2 (Fall 1936): 13.

Chapter 4

1.  Eugene S. Ferguson, “An Historical Sketch of Central Heating: 1800–1860,” in Building Early America: Contributions Toward the History of a Great Industry, ed. Charles E. Peterson (Radnor, PA: Chilton, 1976), 176–79. 2.  William C. Allen, History of the United States Capitol: A Chronicle of Design, Construction, and Politics (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 2001). 3.  L. L[ogan] Lewis and A. E. Stacey Jr., “Air Conditioning the Halls of Congress,” HPAC 1, no. 8 (December 1929): 665. 4.  Legislative Appropriations Bill, Fiscal Year 1929, H.R. Rep. No. 1187, 70th Cong., 1st sess. (1928), 6. 5.  Senate Resolution 231, 68th Cong., 1st sess., Cong. Rec., vol. 65, pt. 11, June 7, 1924, 11142, cited in Allen, History of the United States Capitol, 401. 6.  Royal S. Copeland quoted in Lewis and Stacey, “Air Conditioning the Halls of Congress,” 668. 7.  Royal S. Copeland, draft of a newspaper column, “Your Health,” March 1928, box 26 / folder: Speeches & Writings, Misc. Jan.–Aug. 1928, Royal Samuel Copeland Papers,

Not e s to page s 7 1– 85

249

1892–1938, Bentley Historical Library of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, cited in Ackermann, Cool Comfort, 67. See Senate Historical Office, “Senators Vote to Knock Out Walls,” 11 May 1928, http://www​.senate​ .gov​/artandhistory​/history​/minute​/ Senators​_Vote​_To​_Knock​_Out​_Walls​ .htm. 8.  David Lynn, “Memorandum with Reference to Heating, Ventilating, and Cooling the United States Senate Chamber and Cloakroom,” 4 February 1927, 1, 2, box 9, Air Conditioning Capitol Complex 1896–1937, series 20.5, Project History Files, record group 20, Construction Management, Records Center, AOCA. 9.  Report of the Architect of the Capitol, 70th Cong., 2nd sess., S. Doc. No. 169 (1928), 17. Charles-​ Edward Amory Winslow (1877–1957), a Yale professor of public health, chaired the commission. See “In Memoriam: Charles-​Edward Amory Winslow, 1877–1957,” HPAC 29, no. 2 (February 1957), 265–66; and Ackerman, Cool Comfort, 27–41. 10.  “Paying for the Air We Breathe,” World’s Work 61, no. 6 (June 1932): 44. 11.  David Lynn, architect of the Capitol, letter to prospective bidders, 3 December 1927, “Ventilation and Air Conditioning of the Senate Chamber and the Hall of the House of Representatives of the United States Capitol, Washington, D.C.,” 70th Cong., 1st sess., Cong. Rec., vol. 69, pt. 1, 5 January 1928, 1068. 12.  Report of the Architect of the Capitol, 4 December 1929, 71st Cong., 2nd sess., S. Doc. No. 42 (1929), 27. 13.  Lewis and Stacey, “Air Conditioning the Halls of Congress,” 665. 14.  Leonard Greenburg and J. J. Bloomfield, “The New Ventilation Systems of the Senate and House Chambers of the Capitol, Washington, D.C.,” Public Health Reports 48, no. 6 (10 February 1933), 142. 15.  Mark Bernstein, “Thomas Midgley and the Law of Unintended Consequences,” American Heritage’s Invention and Technology 17, no. 4 (April 2002): 38–46.

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Not e s to page s 85– 92

Report of the Architect of the 16.  Capitol, 4 December 1929, 28, 30. 17.  G. W. Calver, “The Ventilation Problem of the Halls of the Senate and the House of Representatives,” United States Naval Medical Bulletin 28, no. 1 (1930), 187. 18.  “Capitol Hill Keeps Cool While Debating the Great National Issues,” Washington Post, 18 August 1935, B5. 19.  Greenburg and Bloomfield, “New Ventilation Systems,” 143. 20.  Lewis and Stacey, “Air Conditioning the Halls of Congress,” 668, 671. 21.  Greenburg and Bloomfield, “New Ventilation Systems,” 142. 22.  Lewis and Stacey, “Air Conditioning the Halls of Congress,” 670–71. 23.  Report of the Architect of the Capitol, 4 December 1929, 30. 24.  “Paying for the Air We Breathe,” 47. 25.  “Manufactured Weather Now Makes ‘Every Day a Good Day’ in the Nation’s Capitol,” Weather Vein 9, no. 3 (September 1929), 39. 26.  Calver, “Ventilation Problem,” 192, 193. 27.  Greenburg and Bloomfield, “New Ventilation Systems,” 142. 28.  “ ‘Heated’ Debates Impossible in Senate; It’s Refrigerated,” clipping, source unidentified, 18 August 1929, box 112470, book 2: Summary of Publicity Clippings, August 1929, CCA. 29.  Weather Vein 9, no. 3 (September 1929): 30, cited in Allen, History of the United States Capitol, 402. 30.  Calver, “Ventilation Problem,” 192, 193. 31.  “Manufactured Weather Now,” 31. 32.  “Cooling System Installed for Congressional Comfort,” Norwalk (OH) Experiment, 12 July 1929. 33.  Kirke L. Simpson, “A Washington Bystander,” Bridgeport (CT) Post, 1 July 1929. 34.  “Cooling System for U.S. Senate Chamber,” Fostoria (OH) Times, 27 June 1929. 35.  David Lynn, architect of the Capitol, “Installation of a New Ventilating and Air Conditioning System for the Senate Chamber,” printed notice, ca. August 1929, AOCA, cited in Allen,

History of the United States Capitol, 402–3. 36.  “For Better Air,” Washington Post, 15 July 1929, 6. 37.  “Pro and Con: Cooling Plants for Homes,” New London (CT) Day, July 1929. 38.  “Ventilation for the Senate Chamber,” Dallas Times Herald, 24 June 1929. See also Samuel R. Lewis, “Air Circulation and Temperature in State Capitols,” HPAC 1, no. 3 (July 1929): 205–9. 39.  Annual Report of the Architect of the Capitol . . . for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1936, 24 May 1937, 75th Cong., 1st sess., S. Doc. No. 76 (1936), 16. 40.  “Capitol Has World’s Biggest Air Conditioning Job,” Washington (DC) Evening Star, 28 November 1936, B1. 41.  “Cooling Congress: Capitol, Senate, and House Office Buildings Air Conditioned,” AF 67, no. 1 (July 1937): 88. 42.  Rooms air-conditioned in 1931–32 were those of the House’s powerful Ways and Means Committee and its Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee. Report of the Architect of the Capitol . . . for the Fiscal Year Ending 30 June 1932, 21 February 1933, 72nd Cong., 2nd sess., S. Doc. No. 189 (1932), 36. 43.  Annual Report of the Architect of the Capitol . . . for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1936, 16. 44. Allen, History of the United States Capitol, 403. See also “Capitol Cool-​Air Installation Halted,” Washington Post, 11 August 1936, X15. 45.  “Cooling Congress: Capitol, Senate, and House Office,” 86. 46.  Annual Report of the Architect of the Capitol . . . for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1924, 69th Cong., 2nd sess., H.R. Doc. No. 463 (1924), 12. 47.  Annual Report of the Architect of the Capitol . . . for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1939, 6 May 1940, 76th Cong., 3rd sess., S. Doc. No. 192 (1939), 25–26. 48.  Annual Report of the Architect of the Capitol . . . for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1938, 27 April 1939, 76th

Cong., 1st sess., S. Doc. No. 68 (1938), 25. 49.  “Facts on Conditioning,” BW, 24 July 1937, 31. 50.  “Air and Water,” BW, 12 September 1936, 37. 51.  “Water Supply and Air Conditioning,” American City 53, no. 5 (May 1938): 9. 52.  “Air and Water,” 37. 53.  “Cooling Congress,” Power 82, no. 6 (June 1938): 310–12; M. S. Lebair, “World’s Largest Cooling Plant Cools Congress,” HPAC 10, no. 7 (July 1938): 436; Charles A. Peters, “Operating the World’s Largest Conditioning System,” Refrigerating Engineering 37, no. 6 (June 1939): 375. 54.  “Engineers to See Work at Capitol,” Washington Post, 28 January 1934, SA6. 55.  Harry L. Haines, “The Air-​ Conditioning System in the Capitol and House Office Buildings,” 16 June 1938, 75th Cong., 3rd sess., Cong. Rec., vol. 72, pt. 11, 2846. 56.  Annual Report of the Architect of the Capitol . . . for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1939, 55. 57.  Haines, “Air-​Conditioning System in the Capitol,” 2846. 58.  “Air-​Cooling Halves Colds in Congress,” Washington Post, 13 June 1938, 5. 59.  “Cooler and Longer Sessions: Air Conditioning Keeps Congress on Job,” HPAC 18, no. 10 (October 1946): 76. 60.  Joseph Martin, My First Fifty Years in Politics (New York: McGraw-​ Hill, 1960), 49, quoted in Arsenault, “End of the Long Hot Summer,” 202. 61.  Frederick Gutheim, foreword to A Quest for Grandeur: Charles Moore and the Federal Triangle, by Sally Kress Tompkins (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), ix. 62.  Pierce Timmis, “New $3,800,000 Central Steam System Heats 42 Washington Buildings,” HPAC 6, no. 6 (June 1934): 250. 63.  F. K. Boomhower, “Boiler Plants,” AR 93, no. 2 (February 1943): 59. 64.  Combustion Engineering advertisement, BW, 29 August 1936, 3.

65.  “Central Heating Plant, Washington, D.C.,” American Architect 146 (February 1935): 49–51; “Central Heating Plant, Washington, D.C.,” AR 79, no. 3 (March 1936): 220–23. 66.  The two first met in November 1936, in Philadelphia, where Cret helped to introduce Wright at a talk he presented to the Philadelphia Art Alliance. Frank Lloyd Wright to Paul Philippe Cret, 6 November 1936, and Cret to Wright, 12 November 1936, microfiche nos. C045E02, C045E04, FLWA. 67.  “The President’s Weather,” Literary Digest 106, no. 11 (13 September 1930): 27, cited in Ackermann, Cool Comfort, 70. Air-​conditioning was also installed in the nearby Executive Office Building (1871–88; Alfred B. Mullett). 68.  “Herbert Hoover, Vigorous and Firm, Observes 56th Anniversary Today,” Chattanooga Times, 10 August 1930; “New Cooling System in White House Affords Livable Days in August,” Wichita Beacon, 10 August 1930. 69.  “President May Recommend Department Cooling Systems,” Washington Star, 22 July 1930. 70.  “U.S. Studies Cooling Plan,” Washington Times, 23 July 1930. 71.  “Air Conditioning Starts Fast,” BW, 6 April 1935, 11. 72.  “Cooling Congress,” AF 67, no. 1 (July 1937): 86, 88. 73.  Peters, “Operating the World’s Largest Conditioning System,” 375–76. On air systems for the National Archives, see “Uncle Sam’s Prized Papers to Be Air Conditioned,” Refrigerating World 68, no. 2 (February 1933): 21–22; “Valuable Papers Preserved,” Management Methods 62, no. 4 (April 1933): 168; and “New National Archives Building Conditioned to Protect Records,” HPAC 5, no. 6 (June 1933): 305. 74.  J. McHollan, “Department of Justice Air Conditions Its New Building for Office Efficiency,” HPAC 6, no. 8 (August 1934): 333. 75.  Terry Mitchell, “Air Conditioning System for the New War Department Building,” Refrigerating Engineering 42, no. 2 (August 1941): 88–89. See also Alfred Goldberg, The Pentagon:

The First Fifty Years (Washington, DC: Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1992), and Steve Vogel, The Pentagon: A History; The Untold Story of the Wartime Race to Build the Pentagon—and Restore It Sixty Years Later (New York: Random House, 2007). 76.  “Pentagon Building, Arlington, Va.,” AF 78, no. 1 (January 1943): 46, 39. 77.  “400 Pentagon 1st Floor Workers Go to Basement,” Washington Post, 22 May 1949, 10M. 78.  “Pentagon Building Is 100% Air Conditioned,” Refrigerating Engineering 44, no. 6 (December 1942): 396. 79.  “World’s Largest Office Building . . . (Second Part),” Domestic Engineering 161, no. 3 (June 1943): 67. 80.  “Five Sides . . . to a Pentagon,” Domestic Engineering 161, no. 2 (May 1943): 70. 81.  “World’s Largest Office Building,” Ice and Refrigeration 103, no. 5 (November 1942), 259. 82.  “World’s Largest Office Building . . . (Second Part),” 67. 83.  Harman W. Nichols, “ ‘Solar Compensators’ Keep Pentagon Tempers Even,” Washington Post, 12 July 1953, 10R. 84.  “World’s Largest Office Building Cooled by Sun Control,” Popular Science 143, no. 3 (September 1943): 88. 85.  “That’s Why Pentagon Is Calm and Collected,” Washington Post, 21 July 1958, C12; “World’s Largest Office Building . . . (Second Part),” 67. 86.  Nichols, “ ‘Solar Compensators,’ ” 10R; “Pentagon Has Largest Air Conditioning Unit,” Washington Post, 2 August 1953, R6. 87.  “Pentagon Building Is 100% Air Conditioned,” 397. 88.  Nichols, “ ‘Solar Compensators,’ ” 10R. 89.  Letter from a War Department employee, quoted in Jerry Kluttz, The Federal Diary, Washington Post, 12 December 1942, 1B. 90.  Anne Hagner, “Pentagon’s Lucky 30,814 Toil in Air Conditioned Beatitude,” Washington Post, 9 July 1943, 1. 91.  Dr. Frederick C. Smith, cited in Jerry Kluttz, The Federal Diary,

Not e s to page s 93 – 104

251

Washington Post, 28 December 1943, 1B. 92.  Ivan R. Tanneyhill, quoted in Anne Hagner, “War Spurs Science On, But Public Will Benefit,” Washington Post, 11 July 1943, L1. In 1943 the Statler Hotel (now the Capitol Hilton), designed by Holabird and Root of Chicago, opened at 1001 Sixteenth Street NW, on the northeast corner of the intersection with K Street. It was the largest fully air-​conditioned hotel in the United States, and the first to use the Carrier Conduit Weathermaster System. See Carrier Corporation, The Carrier Conduit Weathermaster System in the Hotel Statler, Washington (Syracuse, NY: Carrier Corporation, 1950). 93.  “Air Conditioning Reverts to Its Original Conception,” Scientific American 167, no. 6 (December 1942): 254. 94.  “Air Control Job,” BW, 20 July 1940, 32. See also “Frozen Precision,” BW, 6 February 1943, 82, 84. 95.  “Manufacturing: Air-​ Conditioned War,” Time 38 (29 December 1941): 57–58. 96. Allen, History of the United States Capitol, 411–15. See “Architect Seeks Quick Approval of Capitol Plan,” Washington Post, 26 May 1946, M4. 97.  J. W. Barrett and A. M. Laukaitis, “Design of a Central Refrigeration Plant for U.S. Capitol Hill,” Air Conditioning, Heating, and Ventilating 53, no. 6 (June 1956): 67–68. 98.  Ibid., 71. 99.  “How Government’s Air Conditioning Program Is Shaping Up,” HPAC 29, no. 7 (July 1957): 128. 100.  “U.S. Government to Air Condition Most New Future Buildings,” HPAC 28, no. 6 (June 1956): 91–92. 101.  Nick Gicas, “Hill Air-​ Conditioning Unit Soon World’s Largest with 15,400 Tons,” Roll Call, 13 April 1960. 102.  Charles Stempf and Henry A. Caldwell, “Air Conditioning a Necessity,” HPAC 25, no. 2 (February 1953): 88. See also Martha M. Hamilton, “D.C. Without A.C.? Life Here Would

252

Not e s to page s 104– 111

Be Positively B.C.,” Washington Post, 16 June 1994, A9. 103.  Frank Zala, “Capitol Hill Keeps Cool While Debating the Great National Issues,” Washington Post, 18 August 1935, B5. 104.  Stempf and Caldwell, “Air Conditioning a Necessity,” 88; Raymond Arsenault, “The Cooling of the South,” Wilson Quarterly 8, no. 3 (Summer 1984): 155. 105.  Hamilton, “D.C. Without A.C.?,” A9. 106.  Arsenault, “End of the Long Hot Summer,” 186. 107.  Hamilton, “D.C. Without A.C.?,” A9. 108.  Arsenault, “End of the Long Hot Summer.” See also Betsy Frederick-​Rothwell, “The ‘Monster Problem’: Texas Architects Try to Keep It Cool Before Air Conditioning,” Arris 36 (2015): 40–53. 109.  “Air Conditioning in South,” Manufacturers Record 104, no. 4 (April 1935): 52. 110. Ibid. 111.  “Air Conditioning Trend Points South,” Manufacturers Record 106, no. 3 (March 1937): 41. 112.  Margaret Ingels, “Air Conditioning in the South,” Manufacturers’ Record 108, no. 12 (December 1939): 32–33. 113.  “Through the South—It’s Air Conditioning,” Domestic Engineering 157, no. 2 (February 1941): 48–50. 114.  “Condition Air in Your Plant,” Factory and Industrial Management 76, no. 5 (November 1928): 904. 115.  W. B. Henderson, “Predicts Great Importance for Air Conditioning in the South,” HPAC 18, no. 11 (November 1946): 78. 116.  Jouett Davenport Jr., “South Is Top Air Conditioner Market,” Manufacturers Record 126, no. 2 (February 1957): 52. 117.  Sidney Fish, “South Makes Rapid Strides in Use, Production of Air-​Conditioning,” Manufacturers Record 122, no. 10 (October 1953): 38. 118.  Henderson, “Predicts Great Importance,” 77. 119.  “Air Control Job,” 33.

120.  “Emphasis on Year-’Round Air Conditioning Is Feature of Southern Construction,” American Gas Journal 180, no. 5 (May 1954): 34. 121.  “Gas Air Conditioning in the Southern States,” American Gas Journal 183, no. 5 (May 1956): 28–31. 122.  Edwin A. Scott Jr., “Through the South—with Btu and Camera,” Sheet Metal Worker 45, no. 11 (August 1954): 85–86. 123.  Henderson, “Predicts Great Importance,” 80. 124.  Ibid., 77. 125.  Arsenault, “End of the Long Hot Summer,” esp. 193–96. See also Jocelyn Hazelwood Donlon, Swinging in Place: Porch Life in Southern Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); and Michael Dolan, The American Porch: An Informal History of an Informal Place (Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2002), esp. 198–99, 235, 238. 126.  Jeff E. Biddle, “Explaining the Spread of Residential Air Conditioning, 1955–1980,” Explorations in Economic History 45, no. 4 (2008): 402, 405. The higher figure for 1955 was noted in Air Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration News, 2 August 1976, 8, cited in Arsenault, “End of the Long Hot Summer,” 185. 127.  “Experts See Record-​Breaking Year for Air Conditioning in South,” Manufacturers Record 125, no. 4 (April 1956): 16. 128.  Davenport, “South Is Top Air Conditioner Market,” 52. 129.  Ibid., 53. 130.  “Air Conditioning Statistics Show That Houston Is Controlling Its Weather,” Heating and Ventilating 46 (August 1949): 113. 131.  “Houston Is Best Air-​ Conditioned City,” Heating and Ventilating 48, no. 5 (May 1951): 83; “Air Conditioning Soaring, Survey Shows,” HPAC 29, no. 4 (April 1957): 127. 132.  Bernard Johnson, quoted in “Factory Air Conditioning for Worker Comfort Is Definite Trend,” HPAC 28, no. 10 (October 1956): 89. 133.  I. A. Naman, “Domed Stadium Air-​Conditioning Design” (1966),

reprinted in ASHRAE Journal 51, no. 6 (October 2009): 60–65. 134.  Houston Post, 22 October 1978, cited in David G. McComb, Houston: A History (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 192. 135.  Mike Pauken, “Sleeping Soundly on Summer Nights—The First Century of Air Conditioning,” ASHRAE Journal 41, no. 5 (May 1999): 40–47. 136.  Bureau of the Census, U.S. Census of Housing, 1960, vol. 1, States and Small Areas, pt. 1, United States Summary (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1963), 28; “Detailed Housing Characteristics,” in Bureau of the Census, Census of Housing, 1970, vol. 1, Housing Characteristics for States, Cities, and Counties, pt. 1, United States Summary (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1972), 1–235. Both are cited in Arsenault, “End of the Long Hot Summer,” 185. 137.  Air Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration News, 20 September 1976, 5, cited in Arsenault, “End of the Long Hot Summer,” 188. 138.  Sean P. Cunningham, American Politics in the Postwar Sunbelt: Conservative Growth in a Battleground Region (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 36–37; Michael F. Logan, Desert Cities: The Environmental History of Phoenix and Tucson (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006), 137–57; Cox, Losing Our Cool, 3–15. 139.  Wade Greene, “Air Conditioning,” NYT Magazine, 14 July 1974, 20. 140.  Nelson W. Polsby, How Congress Evolves: Social Bases of Institutional Change (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 80–82, 84–85, 152.

Chapter 5

1. Elliott, Technics and Architecture, 319; Banham, Well-​Tempered Environment, 178–80, 208–13; American Society of Mechanical Engineers, The Milam Building, San Antonio, Texas: A National Mechanical Engineering Heritage Site, Designation Ceremony, 23 August 1991 (n.p., n.d.).

2.  “Investment Company’s Enterprise Big Factor in San Antonio’s Growth,” SAE, 21 June 1927, 10. 3.  “Shaping a City’s Destiny,” SAE, 9 August 1927, 9. 4.  “Milam Building,” SAE, 14 August 1927, 6. 5.  “Chief Interest in Milam Building Turns to Interior of Structure,” SAE, 13 November 1927, A3. 6.  “These Are the Reasons Why You Will Make More Money in the Milam Building!,” SAE, 28 October 1928, 4. 7.  “Investment Company’s Enterprise,” 10. 8.  Laytha S. H. Kothmann, “George Willis, Prairie School Architect in Texas” (MArch thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 1988), 1–4. See Frank Lloyd Wright, “In the Cause of Architecture” (1908), in Wright: Collected Writings, 1:99; and H. Allen Brooks, The Prairie School: Frank Lloyd Wright and His Midwest Contemporaries (New York: W. W. Norton, 1976), 82. 9.  “These Are the Reasons,” 4. 10.  “Successful First Year Prompts Party,” Milam Builder 1, no. 1 (February 1929): 1; “Milam Building Giant of City,” SAE, 2 October 1927. 11.  “Chief Interest in Milam Building,” A3. 12.  “37 National Concerns in Milam Building,” SAE, 16 December 1928, C13. See also “Shaping a City’s Destiny,” 9. 13.  Herman Worsham, “The Milam Building,” HPAC 1, no. 3 (July 1929): 174. See also Banham, Well-​Tempered Environment, 178. 14.  “Investment Company’s Enterprise,” 10. 15.  Jay C. Henry, Architecture in Texas: 1895–1945 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993), 217, 220. See Kathryn E. Holliday, “Verizon Building (Barclay-​Vesey Building for the New York Telephone Company),” Journal of Architectural Education 67, no. 1 (2013): 156–58. 16.  “Shaping a City’s Destiny,” 9. 17.  “Milam Building,” 6. 18.  “Cool Comfortable,” SAE, 14 May 1928, 17.

19.  “ ‘Every Day a Perfect Day’— in the Milam Building,” SAE, 21 August 1927, A4. 20.  “Who’s Who in the Milam Building,” SAE, 1 June 1928, 5. 21.  Willis H. Carrier, “Cooling by Conduit Saves Space,” Ice and Refrigeration 101, no. 1 (July 1941): 73. 22.  Worsham, “Milam Building,” 174. 23.  “Ideal Working Conditions in the Milam Building,” SAE, 30 August 1927, 7. 24.  “Do You Realize—,” SAE, 26 September 1928. 25.  “Delightfully Comfortable— in the Milam Building,” SAE, 27 April 1928, 5. See “Milam Building Windows for Light Only as Weather Manufactured as Desired with Each Day Perfect,” SAE, 28 August 1927, 2A; and “Perfect Vision—Plus Weather Protection,” SAE, 30 September 1927, 2. 26.  “Milam Building Windows for Light Only,” 2A. 27.  Although Worsham and Carrier describe dehumidification accomplished by a water-​spray system, recent research indicates that such a system did not exist in the Milam Building. Instead, the building may originally have had dehumidification through surface condensation at cooling coils filled with chilled water. American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Milam Building, San Antonio, Texas. 28. Banham, Well-​Tempered Environment, 178. 29.  Worsham, “Milam Building,” 177. 30.  “Milam Building, ‘City Within a City,’ Will Have Its Own Water Supply,” SAE, 25 September 1927, 2A; Ruel McDaniel, “Tailor-​Made Weather for Offices,” Scientific American 141, no. 1 (July 1929): 25. 31.  “1,200 Gallons a Minute!” SAE, 4 October 1927, 3; Betsy Frederick-​ Rothwell, “Air Conditioning in Place,” paper presented at the 5th Construction History Society of America Biennial Meeting, University of Texas at Austin, 28 May 2016. 32.  “Do You Realize—.”

Not e s to page s 111– 117

253

33.  “State School Head Praises Building,” SAE, 23 December 1928, 4C. 34.  McDaniel, “Tailor-​Made Weather for Offices,” 25–26. 35.  “Lawyer Relieved of Hay Fever in Milam Building,” SAE, 24 October 1929, 7. See A. H. Willis, Air Conditioning for the Relief of Cedar-​Pollen Hay Fever (Austin: University of Texas, 1939). 36. “Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company,” SAE, 1 November 1928, 12. 37.  McDaniel, “Tailor-​Made Weather for Offices,” 25. 38. Banham, Well-​Tempered Environment, 178, 180. 39.  Joseph M. Dowling, “Flexibility a Feature of the Completely Conditioned Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building,” HPAC 5, no. 8 (August 1933): 411. See Banham, Well-​Tempered Environment, 180, citing Realto Cherne and Chester Nelson, “Preliminary Planning for Air-​Conditioning in the Design of Modern Buildings,” AR 75 (June 1934): 538–48. 40.  “Milam Building,” SAE, 14 November 1928, 13. 41.  Worsham, “Milam Building,” 175–76. 42.  Ibid., 176. The chief engineer from 1930 to 1970 was Arthur Stanley Collier Sr. (1904–2004). “Arthur Stanley Collier, Sr.,” obituary, SAE News, 28 January 2004; Frederick-​Rothwell, “Air Conditioning in Place.” 43.  McDaniel, “Tailor-​Made Weather for Offices,” 24. 44.  M. A. Snyder, “Office Comfort Pays Dividends in the Milam Building,” Building Investment 5, no. 6 (February 1930): 53. 45.  Worsham, “Milam Building,” 180. 46.  Snyder, “Office Comfort Pays Dividends,” 53. 47.  Worsham, “Milam Building,” 180. 48.  Snyder, “Office Comfort Pays Dividends,” 53. 49.  Worsham, “Milam Building,” 181. 50.  “How Much of This $10,000,000 Do You Want?,” SAE, 20 September 1928, 4; “A 100% Invitation,” SAE, 9 September 1928, 6.

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Not e s to page s 117 – 1 23

51.  “Successful First Year Prompts Party,” 1. 52.  Neil E. Beaton, quoted in “Who’s Who in the Milam Building.” 53.  Worsham, “Milam Building,” 181. 54.  “Pioneer User Says Air Conditioning Pays,” HPAC 8, no. 1 (January 1936): 18. 55.  Gene Church Schulz, “Gillette Company Lowers the Heat in San Antonio’s Historical Building,” Air Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration News 179, no. 17 (23 April 1990): 10. 56.  Anne Dingus, “The Heat Generation,” Texas Monthly, July 2001, 46. In 2016 the developer Weston Urban acquired the Milam Building and began a total renovation. 57.  A. J. Rummel, F. E. Giesecke, W. H. Badgett, and A. T. Moses, “Reactions of Office Workers to Air Conditioning in South Texas,” HPAC 11, no. 5 (May 1939): 323–29. See also A. B. Newton, F. C. Houghten, Carl Gutberlet, R. W. Qualley, and M. C. W. Tomlinson, “Shock Experiences of 275 Workers After Entering and Leaving Cooled and Air Conditioned Offices,” HPAC 10, no. 7 (July 1938): 481–91, and F. C. Houghten, A. B. Newton, R. W. Qualley, and Edw. Witkowski, “General Reactions of 274 Office Workers to Summer Cooling and Air Conditioning,” HPAC 10, no. 8 (August 1938): 552–56. 58.  Rummel et al., “Reactions of Office Workers,” 329. 59.  McDaniel, “Tailor-​Made Weather for Offices,” 24. 60.  William A. Starrett, quoted in “Paying for the Air We Breathe,” 47. 61.  “Capital Conditioning,” BW, 12 January 1935, 30. See “Manufactured Weather in the Railroad Car: The Equipment” and “The Equipment in the First Cars,” Weather Vein 10, no. 3 (1930): 18–30, 31–34. 62.  “A New Shelter for Savings,” AF 57, no. 6 (December 1932): 483–98. The original name was the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society. After merging with the Western Savings Fund Society in 1982, the company became the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society. Grace Ong-​Yan, “Architecture,

Advertising, and Corporations, 1929–1959” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2010), 13. 63.  Robert A. M. Stern, George Howe: Toward a Modern American Architecture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975), 121n74. 64.  John F. Lyons, “Tall Story,” Philadelphia 35, no. 8 (August 1948): 31. 65.  Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building, National Register of Historic Places, Inventory—Nomination Form, 1976. 66.  “New Home of Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Is Distinctive in the United States,” Real Estate Magazine 123, no. 10 (August 1932): 5; William H. Jordy, “PSFS: Its Development and Its Significance in Modern Architecture,” JSAH 21, no. 2 (May 1962): 47–83; Robert A. M. Stern, “PSFS: Beaux-​Arts Theory and Rational Expressionism,” ibid., 84–102; Jordy, American Buildings and Their Architects, 5:87–164; “The PSFS Building, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1929–32,” Perspecta 25 (1989): 78–141; David Leatherbarrow, “What Goes Unnoticed: On the Canonical Quality of the PSFS Building,” Harvard Design Magazine 14 (Summer 2001): 16–23; Emily Thompson, The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900–1933 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002), 218–28. 67.  L. S. Tarleton, “Air Conditioning the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building,” Heating and Ventilating 29, no. 7 (July 1932): 28. 68.  Dowling, “Flexibility a Feature,” 409. 69.  Hal Chapman, “The Value of Air Conditioning in Renting Skyscraper Space,” Refrigerating Engineering 33, no. 1 (January 1937): 46. See also Banham, Well-​Tempered Environment, 209. 70.  Lyons, “Tall Story,” 21. 71.  “Philadelphia’s Fancy,” Fortune 6, no. 6 (December 1932): 67. 72.  Jordy, “PSFS: Its Development,” 63–71. 73.  “Philadelphia’s Fancy,” 69. Another source gives 28 November

1930 as the date of the final scheme’s approval. “A New Shelter for Savings,” 484. See also William Lescaze, On Being an Architect (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1942), 247. 74.  PSFS, Building Committee Minutes, PSFS/HML, cited in Ong-​ Yan, “Architecture, Advertising, and Corporations,” 28, 62. See also Jordy, “PSFS: Its Development,” 71. 75.  Minutes of Sixteenth General Meeting on the 1200 Market Street Building, 12 August 1931, box 84, General Meeting Minutes, PSFS Collection, acc. 2062, PSFS/HML. 76.  Frederick Gutheim, “Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building: A Re-​appraisal,” AR 106, no. 4 (October 1949): 182. 77.  Ibid., 90. See Stern, “Beaux-​ Arts Theory and Rational Expressionism,” app., Memo: Mr. Howe to Mr. Willcox, 2 December 1930, 102n20. 78.  Tarleton, “Air Conditioning,” 28. 79.  L. S. Tarleton, “Heating and Cooling for a Modern Bank and Office Building,” Heating and Ventilating 28, no. 9 (September 1931): 58. 80.  Ibid., 60; Chapman, “Value of Air Conditioning,” 46. 81.  “Planning, Engineering, Equipment: The Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building,” AF 57, no. 6 (December 1932): 548. 82.  George Howe to James Willcox, 25 July 1930, in Stern, “Beaux-​Arts Theory and Rational Expressionism,” app., 98. 83.  Tarleton, “Heating and Cooling,” 58. 84.  Tarleton, “Air Conditioning,” 30. 85.  Tarleton, “Heating and Cooling,” 60. 86.  Tarleton, “Air Conditioning,” 29. See also Chapman, “Value of Air Conditioning,” 10. 87. Banham, Well-​Tempered Environment, 211. 88.  Tarleton, “Air Conditioning,” 30. 89.  “Contract for Air Conditioning,” NYT, 15 November 1931, N14. 90.  Tarleton, “Heating and Cooling,” 59; “Planning, Engineering,

Equipment,” 550. Consulting mechanical engineers were the H. Berkeley Hackett firm of Philadelphia. 91.  Tarleton, “Air Conditioning,” 29. 92.  “Planning, Engineering, Equipment,” 550. 93.  Tarleton, “Air Conditioning,” 30. See also Chapman, “Value of Air Conditioning,” 11. 94.  “Planning, Engineering, Equipment,” 550. 95.  Tarleton, “Heating and Cooling,” 59. 96.  Ong-​Yan, “Architecture, Advertising, and Corporations,” 57–63, 82–93. 97.  Gutheim, “Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building,” 182. 98.  George Howe, “Architectural Deflation; or, The Practical and the Aesthetic in Modern Architecture,” address to the School of Architecture, New York University, November 1931, 3–4, box 1, pt. i: Manuscripts, George Howe Collection, 1974.005, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University. 99.  Their associate Walter Behr­ man perhaps designed most of them. Alfred Bendiner, “P. S. F. S. Building,” (Philadelphia) Sunday Bulletin Magazine, 28 April 1963, 14. 100.  See Michael Brawne, “Looking Up: Suspended Ceilings as an Element in Interior Design,” Architectural Review 124, no. 740 (September 1958): 160–70. 101.  “Planning, Engineering, Equipment,” 548. 102. Jordy, American Buildings and Their Architects, 5:140–45; Lorraine Welling Lanmon, William Lescaze, Architect (Philadelphia: Art Alliance Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1987), 55–57. 103.  Dowling, “Flexibility a Feature,” 412. 104.  Chapman, “Value of Air Conditioning,” 10. 105.  Lyons, “Tall Story,” 21. 106.  Carla C. Keirns, “Better Than Nature: The Changing Treatment of Asthma and Hay Fever in the United States, 1910–1945,” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Biological and

Biomedical Sciences 34, no. 3 (September 2003): 511–31. 107.  “Rex Rittenhouse: Reveals James M. Willcox Is Prisoner at 12 South 12th Street . . . ,”Philadelphia Record, 15 September 1935. See Jerome B. Gray & Co., Manufactured Weather (Philadelphia: Franklin Printing, 1932), 1, 3–4. 108.  “Philadelphia’s Fancy,” 130. 109.  “Here Manufactured Weather Attracts New Tenants,” System and Business Management 62, no. 11 (November 1933): 493. 110.  Gutheim, “Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building,” 92–93. See also “Does Modern Architecture Pay?” AF 79, no. 3 (September 1943): 74–78. 111.  Lyons, “Tall Story,” 21. 112.  Gutheim, “Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building,” 180. 113. Banham, Well-​Tempered Environment, 213.

Chapter 6

1.  “Frank Lloyd Wright Uses Floor Heating for Johnson Wax Job,” HPAC 10, no. 4 (April 1938): 238. See also “Office Building Without Precedent,” Engineering News-​Record 119 (9 December 1937): 956; and Frank Lloyd Wright, An Autobiography (1943), in Frank Lloyd Wright: Collected Writings, ed. Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, vol. 4, 1939–1949 (New York: Rizzoli, 1994), 181. The major studies are Jonathan Lipman, Frank Lloyd Wright and the Johnson Wax Buildings (New York: Rizzoli, 1986); Brian Carter, Johnson Wax Administration Building and Research Tower (London: Phaidon, 1998); Mark Hertzberg, Frank Lloyd Wright’s SC Johnson Research Tower (Petaluma, CA: Pomegranate, 2010); and Joseph M. Siry, “Frank Lloyd Wright’s Innovative Approach to Environmental Control in his Buildings for the S. C. Johnson Company,” Construction History 28, no. 1 (2013): 141–64. 2.  Victor Walters, Westerlin and Campbell Co., “Johnson Building Conditioned by Unique System,” Refrigerating Engineering 38, no. 5 (November 1939): 322, 324. See also “A. S. R. E. Discusses Windowless

Not e s to page s 1 23 – 13 4

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Skyscrapers,” HPAC 1, no. 3 (July 1929): 193; and C[harles] F. Talman, “Now the Windowless Building with Its Own Climate,” NYT, 10 August 1930, sec. 20, p. 4. 3.  Allen S. Park, “Comfort for White-​Collar Workers,” Compressed Air Magazine 45, no. 12 (December 1940): 6307. 4.  J. T. Meek, “The Modern Way to Job Concentration,” Illinois Journal of Commerce 19, no. 9 (September 1937). This article was reprinted in a separate brochure, co-​authored with Robert E. Hattis, The Modern Way to Job Concentration (Chicago: National Aluminate Corporation, 1937), a copy of which is in the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal. 5.  Robert E. Hattis, “Unique Air Conditioning System Serves New Industrial Building,” HPAC 9, no. 2 (February 1937): 99. 6.  “Building Cost to Be Cut 20%, Architect Says,” Chicago Tribune, 9 August 1936, 21. 7.  D. W. Atwater, “Workrooms Without Windows,” National Safety News 27, no. 4 (April 1933): 13–14, 56. 8.  Hattis, “Unique Air Conditioning System,” 99. 9.  Meek, “Modern Way to Job Concentration.” 10.  Hattis, “Unique Air Conditioning System,” 100–101. 11.  Park, “Comfort for White-​ Collar Workers,” 6309. 12.  Robert E. Hattis, “63 Individual Ducts Serve Air-​Conditioned Spaces in Windowless Building,” Heating and Ventilating 34, no. 6 (June 1937): 31. 13.  “Air Conditioning a Windowless Building,” Sheet Metal Worker 28, no. 2 (February 1937): 38. 14.  Hattis, “Unique Air Conditioning System,” 97. See “Let Contracts for Chicago’s First Windowless Air-​ Conditioned Commercial Structure,” Chicago Tribune, 9 August 1936, 21. 15.  Gerald C. Dittman, “Individual Heating-​Cooling Ducts Supply Each Room of New Building,” HPAC 19, no. 12 (December 1947): 82. 16.  See Hershey Chocolate Corporation, The Modern Office Building (Hershey, Pa., 1935?).

256

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17. Lipman, Wright and the Johnson Wax Buildings, 1. 18.  Herbert F. Johnson to Frank Lloyd Wright, 18 August 1936, FLWA, fiche id. J028D09. 19.  Four Matson schemes for SC Johnson’s quarters are documented in blueprints in its archives. Two are for a windowless building with revolving doors like those later crafted for Wright’s building. See Lipman, Wright and the Johnson Wax Buildings, 82. 20.  Ibid., 1. 21.  Johnson to Wright, 18 August 1936, FLWA, fiche id. J028D09. No plans for Matson’s air-​conditioning are known. For heating, he proposed a steam line through a tunnel from the factories’ boilers, to the east, just as Wright would. Benjamin Wilt­ scheck to Wright, 13 August 1936, noted, “The location of the proposed heat tunnel may be changed. It suits Mr. Matson’s plans but may not suit yours.” FLWA, fiche id. J028C09. 22.  W. S. Bodinus to SC Johnson & Sons, 31 August 1936, FLWA, fiche id. J030B04. Matson’s sister recalled that he traveled to Hershey after getting the Johnson commission. Mark Hertzberg, “Two Men, Two Visions,” (Racine) Journal Times, 12 May 2002. 23.  Ramsey showed him Matson’s plans and wrote: “About Matson’s sketch, he was decent but honest.” Ramsey to Johnson, 19 July 1936, H. F. Johnson Jr. Papers, Frank Lloyd Wright, box 1, folder 39, SC Johnson Archives. Olgivanna Wright, interview with Jonathan Lipman, 19 January 1980, quoted in Lipman, Wright and the Johnson Wax Buildings, 13. See also Wright, Autobiography (1943), in Wright: Collected Writings, 4:178. 24.  Johnson to Wright, 23 July 1936, FLWA, fiche id. J028B08. 25.  William Connolly to Jean Masilink [Eugene Masselink], 10 August 1936, FLWA, fiche id. J028C02. 26.  Wright to Johnson, 15 August 1936, wrote: “I am calling in consultation air conditioning people and if you know anyone you would like in on it— let me know.” FLWA, fiche id. J028C10, quoted in Lipman, Wright and the Johnson Wax Buildings, 32.

27.  Frank Lloyd Wright, The Natural House (1954), in Frank Lloyd Wright: Collected Writings, ed. Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, vol. 5, 1949–1959 (New York: Rizzoli, 1995), 120–21. 28. Wright, Autobiography (1943), in Wright: Collected Writings, 4:179. See Donald Leslie Johnson, “Frank Lloyd Wright’s Design for the Capital Journal, Salem, Oregon (1932),” JSAH 55, no. 1 (March 1996): 58. 29.  Wright to George Putnam, editor, Capital Journal, 15 February 1932, FLWA, fiche id. P013B06, quoted in Johnson, “Wright’s Design for the Capital Journal,” 60. 30.  Wright to Johnson, 24 August 1936, FLWA, fiche id. J030A06. “The largeness of the room makes uniform air distribution easy and so does the warmed floor of the whole area.” Wright to Johnson, 20 August 1936, FLWA, fiche id. J028E06. He promised that one would “feel as though he were among pine trees breathing fresh air and sunlight.” Wright, quoted in Lipman, Wright and the Johnson Wax Buildings, 51. 31. Lipman, Wright and the Johnson Wax Buildings, 43, 140. 32.  “Administration Building, Johnson’s Wax Factory, Racine, Wisconsin, Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect,” Architectural Design and Construction 9, no. 6 (June 1939): 233. 33.  A. C. Clausen, “Engineering Features of the World’s Most Modern Office Building,” National Engineer 44, no. 1 (January 1940): 13. 34.  John Garth, “Frank Lloyd Wright Designs the Office of the Future for S. C. Johnson and Son, Inc.,” American Business 9, no. 5 (May 1939): 42. 35.  Column calyxes in the third-​ floor conference room had air vents. See A. C. Clausen, “Engineering Features,” 13, and Lipman, Wright and the Johnson Wax Buildings, 116. On hollow columns, see Joseph M. Siry, Unity Temple: Frank Lloyd Wright and Architecture for Liberal Religion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 105, 247; Siry, Beth Sholom Synagogue: Frank Lloyd Wright and Modern Religious Architecture (Chicago: University

of Chicago Press, 2012), 179, 423, 465, 589n66, 598n86. 36. Lipman, Wright and the Johnson Wax Buildings, 65. 37.  Garth, “Office of the Future,” 42. 38.  A. C. Clausen, “Engineering Features,” 13. 39.  “Floor Heating for Johnson Wax Job,” 238. 40.  A. C. Clausen, “Engineering Features,” 13. 41. Lipman, Wright and the Johnson Wax Buildings, 93. 42.  “Johnson Offices Open to Public,” Racine Journal-​Times, 21 April 1939, 2. 43.  Garth, “Office of the Future,” 44. 44.  A. C. Clausen, “Engineering Features,” 13. 45.  Sam Lewis, “Controlling Wax Making Conditions,” HPAC 26, no. 11 (November 1954): 121. 46. Lipman, Wright and the Johnson Wax Buildings, 77, 81, 151, 169. 47.  M. T. Walters, “A Building That Breathes,” Mill and Factory 27, no. 2 (August 1940): 66. 48. Lipman, Wright and the Johnson Wax Buildings, 14–15; S. Lewis, “Controlling Wax Making Conditions,” 121. 49.  A. C. Clausen, “Engineering Features,” 15. 50.  M. T. Walters, “Building That Breathes,” 66. 51.  A. C. Clausen, “Engineering Features,” 13. 52.  “Administration Building, Johnson’s Wax Factory,” 233. 53.  “Floor Heating for Johnson Wax Job,” 238. 54.  M. T. Walters, “Building That Breathes,” 66. 55.  A. C. Clausen, “Engineering Features,” 12, 15. 56.  M. T. Walters, “Building That Breathes,” 67. 57.  A. C. Clausen, “Engineering Features,” 12. 58.  Ibid., 15. 59.  Ibid., 14, 20; M. T. Walters, “Building That Breathes,” 67. 60.  A. C. Clausen, “Engineering Features,” 20; “Floor Heating for Johnson Wax Job,” 238; “Johnson Offices Open to Public,” 2.

61.  “Floor Heating for Johnson Wax Job,” 238; V. Walters, “Johnson Building Conditioned by Unique System,” 324. Additional heating and refrigerating equipment was in the basement. Garth, “Office of the Future,” 46. 62.  “Floor Heating for Johnson Wax Job,” 239. 63.  A. C. Clausen, “Engineering Features,” 20. 64.  M. T. Walters, “Building That Breathes,” 67. 65.  Victor Walters, “Building Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright Features Floor Heating, Air Conditioning.” HPAC 11, no. 11 (November 1939): 663. 66.  Gustave Pabst Jr., “An Office Building, or the Story of Two Men,” Milwaukee Journal, 23 April 1939, 7. 67.  “Johnson Offices Open to Public,” 2. 68.  A. C. Clausen, “Engineering Features,” 12. 69.  Samuel C. Johnson, quoted in “Mr. Wright and the Johnsons of Racine, Wis.,” AIA Journal 68, no. 1 (January 1979): 65, 82. 70.  Thomas W. Ennis, “Company Edifices ‘Sell’ Products,” NYT, 7 August 1960, R1. 71.  “Floor Heating for Johnson Wax Job,” 238. 72.  “Johnson’s Bonus and Benefits Plan Brings Industrial Peace,” Milwaukee Journal, 24 March 1946, 7. 73.  Garth, “Office of the Future,” 43. 74.  “Johnson’s Bonus and Benefits Plan,” 7. 75.  Garth, “Office of the Future,” 42. 76. Ibid. 77.  “Efficiency Increased 20% in Johnson Firm,” Refrigerating Engineering 39, no. 1 (January 1940): 32. 78.  V. Walters, “Building Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright,” 663. See M. T. Walters, “Building That Breathes,” 68. The workroom’s heating and air-​ conditioning was later reconfigured several times. The author thanks Kevin R. Stefanczyk, then chief mechanical engineer for the SC Johnson buildings, for a tour on 3 August 2012.

79.  Norman Bel Geddes, Horizons (Boston: Little, Brown, 1932), 45. See also Christina Cogdell, Eugenic Design: Streamlining America in the 1930s (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); and David A. Hanks and Nancy Hoy, American Streamlined Design: The World of Tomorrow (Paris: Flammarion, 2005). 80. Wright, Autobiography (1943), in Wright: Collected Writings, 4:180. 81.  Frank Lloyd Wright, “The New Building for S. C. Johnson & Son, Inc.,” 11 October 1936, in Lipman, Wright and the Johnson Wax Buildings, 182. 82. Lipman, Wright and the Johnson Wax Buildings, 25. Peters said of Wright’s early drawings for the administration building: “I remember clearly his great struggle to make space flow. . . . Part of [his] effort [at] streamlining is understood in the sense of making [the building] a great plastic space enclosure.” Peters interviewed by Lipman, 22 April 1979, cited in Lipman, Wright and the Johnson Wax Buildings, 31. 83.  SC Johnson and Sons, Research and Development Staff, For the Next Generation: The Commitment to Research at Johnson Wax (Racine, WI: SC Johnson, 1986), 68. 84.  Herbert F. Johnson, 4 October 1943, FLWA, fiche id. J101E09, quoted in Lipman, Wright and the Johnson Wax Buildings, 122. 85.  Frank Lloyd Wright, “Frank Lloyd Wright,” AF 94, no. 1 (January 1951): 77. 86.  Wright to Johnson, 8 February 1944, FLWA, fiche id. J104B03. 87.  Samuel R. Lewis to Wright, 14 January 1946, FLWA, fiche id. J113A02. 88. Lipman, Wright and the Johnson Wax Buildings, 145. 89.  Richard M. Bennett, “Imperial’s Structural Engineer,” letter, American Institute of Architects Journal 70, no. 1 (January 1981): 6, noted the role of Samuel Lewis. After starting his career in 1896 as a designer and consulting engineer, Lewis founded Samuel R. Lewis and Associates in 1924. He later became president of the American Society of Heating and

Not e s to page s 1 41– 1 49

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Ventilating Engineers. Realty Miscellany, Chicago Tribune, 13 November 1938, B12; Obituaries, Chicago Tribune, 9 March 1964, B16. 90.  Wright to Johnson, 20 December 1949, FLWA, fiche id. J130C04. Sometimes the client would pay the engineer directly on Wright’s authorization, and that amount would be deducted from the fee that Wright received. Samuel R. Lewis to Wright and Herbert Johnson, 17 May 1948, FLWA, fiche id. J122B03. 91.  Frank Lloyd Wright, “An Organic Architecture” (1939), in Wright: Collected Writings, 3:316. 92.  Wright to Johnson, 8 December 1943, FLWA, fiche id. J102C08. 93. Lipman, Wright and the Johnson Wax Buildings, 141. 94. Carter, Johnson Wax Administration Building, 20. 95.  Wright to Johnson, 13 December 1943, FLWA, fiche id. J102D07. See also “A ‘Sun-​Centered’ Laboratory Impresses Dedication Guests,” Milwaukee Journal, 18 November 1950, 9. 96.  Wright, “Frank Lloyd Wright,” 77. 97.  J. Vernon Steinle to Wright, 8 February 1944, FLWA, fiche id. J104B01. 98.  W. J. Warren to W. S. Bodinus and N. E. Bueter, Carrier Corporation, 4 January 1945, FLWA, fiche id. J110A06. 99.  Ibid., fiche id. J110A01. 100. Lipman, Wright and the Johnson Wax Buildings, 152. 101.  “Johnson Wax Research Tower,” Refrigerating Engineering 58, no. 12 (December 1950): 1181. 102.  “Keeping Cool at Johnson’s Wax Works,” Refrigerating Engineering 58, no. 12 (December 1950): 1180. 103.  W. J. Warren to W. S. Bodinus and N. E. Bueter, Carrier Corporation, 4 January 1945, FLWA, fiche id. J110A06. 104.  “Johnson’s Wax,” HPAC 26, no. 9 (September 1954): 236. The tower and its second-​floor office space provided more than 99,000 sq. ft. The administration building had 90,000 sq. ft. “Research Tower at Wisconsin Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright,”

258

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Architect’s Journal (London) 111 (February 1950): 150. 105.  Wright to Johnson, 16 December 1943, FLWA, fiche id. J102E109. 106.  “Wax Research and Development Tower, Racine, Wisconsin,” Architect and Engineer 183, no. 3 (December 1950): 21. 107. Lipman, Wright and the Johnson Wax Buildings, 146; William Wesley Peters, interview with Gregory Williams and Sue Lacey, 27 February 1990, 9, Landmark Preservation Council, Oral History Archive, Price Tower Arts Center, Bartlesville, OK. 108.  “Wright’s Core-​Supported Tower Unveiled in Photographs,” AR 108, no. 6 (December 1950): 11b. See also “Wax Research and Development Tower,” 22. 109.  “Keeping Cool at Johnson’s Wax Works,” 1180. 110.  “Multiple Air Conditioning Systems in Unique Research Laboratory,” Refrigerating Engineering 61, no. 4 (April 1953): 350–51. 111.  “Keeping Cool at Johnson’s Wax Works,” 1181. 112.  R. W. Shields, Samuel R. Lewis and Associates, to Industrial Commission of Wisconsin, 11 October 1947, State of Wisconsin, Division of Safety and Buildings, E File 635, 1945–61, Wisconsin Historical Society. 113. Hertzberg, SC Johnson Research Tower, 58. 114.  Wiltscheck to Wright, 24 June 1947, FLWA, fiche id. J117D06. 115.  “Keeping Cool at Johnson’s Wax Works,” 1180–81; “Johnson Wax Research Tower,” Official Bulletin, Heating, Piping and Air Conditioning Contractors National Association 58, no. 2 (February 1951): 22–25; W. R. Wendt Jr., “Futuristic Research Laboratory; Fully Air-​Conditioned Building in U.S.A.,” Modern Refrigeration 56, no. 659 (February 1953): 69–70. 116. Lipman, Wright and the Johnson Wax Buildings, 157. 117.  Ibid., 164; Hertzberg, SC Johnson Research Tower, 30. 118. Hertzberg, SC Johnson Research Tower, 19, notes that some mezzanines were converted to offices and enclosed in glass.

119.  Ibid., 10, 55–61; Lipman, Wright and the Johnson Wax Buildings, 159, 164. 120.  “ ‘Sun-​Centered’ Laboratory,” 9. 121. Hertzberg, SC Johnson Research Tower, 39. 122.  Ibid., 58–59. See also Lipman, Wright and the Johnson Wax Buildings, 164. 123.  Johnson, quoted in “Industrial Leaders See Johnson’s Glass Tower,” Milwaukee Journal, 17 November 1950, 10. 124.  Fred Reichley, quoted in Hertzberg, SC Johnson Research Tower, 58, 61. 125. Lipman, Wright and the Johnson Wax Buildings, 164–73; Hertzberg, SC Johnson Research Tower, 65. 126.  Wright to Herbert Johnson, 16 December 1943, FLWA, fiche id. J102E110. 127.  Vincent Scully, Louis I. Kahn (New York: George Braziller, 1962), 30–31. See chapter 8 below. 128.  “Rogers E. Lacy, Oilman, Passes,” Dallas Morning News, 10 December 1947, 1, 3. 129.  HPAC 9, no. 3 (March 1937): 101; HPAC 28, no. 3 (March 1956): 121; HPAC 36, no. 1 (January 1964): 121— cited in Biddle, “Making Consumers Comfortable,” 1081. 130.  John Rosenfield, “47-Story, Windowless Dallas Hotel Designed by Celebrated Architect,” Dallas Morning News, 28 July 1946, 1. 131.  Joseph M. Siry, “Wright’s Price Tower: Context, Clients, and Construction,” in Prairie Skyscraper: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Price Tower, ed. Anthony Alofsin (New York: Rizzoli, 2005), 44–71. 132.  Rosenfield, “47-Story, Windowless Dallas Hotel.” 133.  Rosenfield, quoted in R. G. Story to Walton & Walton, 30 March 1948, FLWA, fiche id. W182C03. See also John Rosenfield, “Dallas’ Dream Hotel Soon Coming to Life,” Dallas Morning News, 11 August 1946, 1. 134.  Wright also experimented with fiberglass for the outer surface. Wright to Rogers Lacy, [December 1946?], FLWA, fiche id. L101B03.

135.  Wright, quoted in Rosenfield, “47-Story, Windowless Dallas Hotel,” 3. 136.  Lacy, quoted in ibid. 137. Ibid. 138.  H. G. Swanson, Otis Elevator Co., Chicago, to H. W. Nugent, Otis Elevator Co., New York City, 27 November 1946, FLWA, fiche id. L100D10. 139.  Wright to John Rosenfield, 11 June 1947, FLWA, fiche id. R056A07. 140.  John Rosenfield, “Wright Bares Lacy Hotel Plans,” Dallas Morning News, 22 June 1947, sec. 5, p. 1.

Chapter 7

1.  HPAC 29, no. 6 (June 1957): 132, cited in Biddle, “Making Consumers Comfortable,” 1081. 2.  HPAC 28, no. 3 (March 1956): 120, cited in Biddle, “Early Decades of Commercial Air Conditioning,” 7–8. 3.  Meredith L. Clausen, “Belluschi and the Equitable Building in History,” JSAH 50, no. 2 (June 1991): 109–29; M. Clausen, Pietro Belluschi: Modern American Architect (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994), 164–72. See also “Equitable Builds a Leader,” AF 89, no. 3 (September 1948): 97–106. 4.  Pietro Belluschi, in “New Buildings for 194X—Office Building,” AF 78, no. 5 (May 1943): 108, quoted in David Arnold, “Air Conditioning in Office Buildings After World War II,” ASHRAE Journal 41, no. 7 (July 1999): 33. 5.  “New Type Double-​Glazed Window,” Scientific American 15, no. 4 (October 1934): 218–19; “Thermopane, New Type Window,” Commerce and Finance 23 (1 August 1934): 635; “Thermopane, New Type Window,” Glass Industry 15, no. 2 (August 1934): 152. See “Doubling All Windows,” BW, 5 December 1936, 30. See also Jeffrey Cook, “Postwar Prototype in Downtown Portland,” AIA Journal 71, no. 8 (July 1982): 83–89; M. Clausen, “Belluschi and the Equitable Building,” 119; and Leslie et al., “Deep Space, Thin Walls.” 6.  “The Heat Pump: A Study of Reverse Cycle Refrigeration,” AF 85, no. 5 (November 1946): 161–64. On Cake’s advocating a heat pump, see the American Society of Mechanical

Engineers’ dedication brochure, The Equitable Building Heat Pump System: A National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark, Dedicated May 8, 1980 (n.p., n.d.). On Kroeker’s systems, see “Heat Pumps,” Oregon State Tech Record 25, no. 3 (March 1950): 6–7, 24–27. On the Oregonian Building, see “Newspaper Plant, Portland, Oregon,” Progressive Architecture 30, no. 2 (February 1949): 43–47. 7.  “Heat Pump: A Study of Reverse Cycle Refrigeration,” 164. 8.  J. Donald Kroeker and Ray C. Chewning, “A Heat Pump in an Office Building,” HPAC 20, no. 3 (March 1948): 121. The system’s performance over its first thirty years was said to be excellent, but it was replaced in the 1990s by a conventional cooling system. 9. Ibid. 10.  Ralph H. Cake, “From the President’s Desk,” Equitable Newsletter 16, no. 4 (July 1949): 1, box 4, mss 2353, Equitable Savings and Loan Association, Portland, OR, Records, 1890–1980, Oregon Historical Society. 11.  Kroeker and Chewning, “Heat Pump in an Office Building,” 121. See J. Donald Kroeker, Ray C. Chewning, and Charles E. Graham, “Heat Pump Results in Equitable Building,” HPAC 21, no. 7 (July 1949): 115–21; and J. Donald Kroeker and Ray C. Chewning, “Costs of Operating the Heat Pump in the Equitable Building,” HPAC 25, no. 11 (November 1953): 135–44. 12.  “The Nation’s Largest Heat Pump Installation,” Weather Magic 12, no. 2 (May 1948): 1–2. This was a publication of the Trane Company, which supplied the equipment. 13.  Cook, “Postwar Prototype,” 87. 14.  Kroeker and Chewning, “Heat Pump in an Office Building,” 124. See American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Equitable Building Heat Pump System. 15.  Ralph H. Cake, “From the President’s Desk,” Equitable Newsletter 16, no. 1 (January 1949): 1, box 4, mss 2353, Equitable Savings and Loan Association, Portland, OR, Records, 1890–1980, Oregon Historical Society. 16.  Robert L. Davison, “Curtain Walls,” AF 92, no. 3 (March 1950):

81–96; William D. Hunt Jr., The Contemporary Curtain Wall: Its Design, Fabrication, and Erection (New York: F. W. Dodge, 1958); David Yoemans, “The Pre-​history of the Curtain Wall,” Construction History 14 (1998): 59–82. On the curtain wall in relation to the organizational culture of offices in this period, see Reinhold Martin, The Organizational Complex: Architecture, Media, and Corporate Space (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003), 95–105. 17.  “Work on U.N. Site Behind Schedule,” NYT, 25 November 1948, 3. 18. Newhouse, Wallace K. Harrison, 112–13; George A. Dudley, A Workshop for Peace: Designing the United Nations Headquarters (New York: Architectural History Foundation; Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994). 19.  Its shadow casting and that of nearby buildings on the UN campus were studied with a heliodon, a device for showing the sun’s apparent motion. Gertrude Samuels, “What Kind of Capitol for the U.N.?,” NYT Magazine, 20 April 1947, 9. 20.  Wallace K. Harrison, quoted in ibid., 59. See also “Plea for U.N. Home Moves Delegates,” NYT, 24 September 1947, 4; and “U.N. Headquarters, Progress Report,” Progressive Architecture 31, no. 6 (June 1950): 59. 21.  E[dward] J. Benesch, “Heating, Ventilating, and Air Conditioning the Secretariat of the United Nations,” Heating and Ventilating 46, no. 12 (December 1949): 57–62; “The Secretariat: A Campanile, a Cliff of Glass, a Great Debate,” AF 93, no. 5 (November 1950): 93–112. 22.  On the design of the Secretariat Building’s curtain walls, see Alexandra Louise Quantrill, “The Aesthetics of Precision: Environmental Management and Technique in the Architecture of Enclosure, 1946–1986” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2017), chap. 1, pp. 26–77. 23.  “U.N. Headquarters, Progress Report,” 61. John F. Hennessy, “Preliminary Report on Mechanical and Electrical Equipment,” in Engineering and Technical Studies of the Headquarters Planning Office (Lake Success, NY: United Nations, August 1947), 47–58.

Not e s to page s 157 – 167

259

24.  “United Nations Builds a Vast Marble Frame for Two Enormous Windows,” AF 90, no. 6 (June 1949): 83. 25.  “United Nations Secretariat,” AF 93, no. 5 (November 1950): 109. 26. Newhouse, Wallace K. Harrison, 128. 27.  Wallace K. Harrison, paper presented to Royal Institute of British Architects, London, 20 February 1951, 12, box 4, folder 5: U.N. (United Nations Building), series ii: collection ii (1989.003), subseries i: Professional Papers, Wallace Harrison Papers, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University. 28. Banham, Well-​Tempered Environment, 224–26; Lou R. Crandall, “Builders View Problems of Constructing United Nations Headquarters,” Civil Engineering 20, no. 2 (February 1950): 90; “The United Nations Secretariat,” Engineer 191, no. 4961 (23 February 1951): 265–66. 29.  Joann Gonchar, “Revival of an Icon: The United Nations Renovation Team Brings Back the Long-​Faded Luster of the Secretariat While Satisfying Ambitious Performance Goals,” AR 200, no. 9 (September 2012): 106–12; The United Nations at 70: Restoration and Renewal; The Seventieth Anniversary of the United Nations and the Restoration of the New York Headquarters (New York: Rizzoli, 2015). 30.  On the Weathermaster, see “Piped Air Conditioning,” BW, 14 June 1941, 68; “Production; Air Conditioning,” BW, 21 June 1941, 46; “Carrier’s Conduit,” BW, 9 December 1944, 76; and “Air Conditioning Spreads to Skyscrapers,” BW, 23 July 1949, 26. 31.  Carrier, “Cooling by Conduit Saves Space.” 32.  United Nations, Headquarters Planning Office, Special Meeting on Secretariat Air Conditioning, 29 June 1948, box S-0542-0045: Non-​registry Files of the Director—17. Air Conditioning—April 1948 to February 1950, folder 24380, United Nations Archives, New York. Syska and Hennessy’s consultation is documented in AG-025 United Nations Registry Section (1946–1979), Headquarters Planning, box S-0472-0030-S-0472-0031.

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33.  “United Nations Builds a Vast Marble Frame,” 85. See also “World Capital to Have ‘Push-​Button Weather,’ ” NYT, 10 August 1947, 20. 34.  “United Nations Secretariat,” 110. Each floor’s gross area was about 19,000 sq. ft. 35.  Kathleen Teltsch, “Climate à la Carte in U.N.’s New Home,” NYT, 5 September 1949, 8. 36.  “United Nations Secretariat,” 110. 37.  George Barrett, “U.N. Capital Plans Stress Function,” NYT, 22 May 1947, 19. 38. Ibid. 39.  “Plea for U.N. Home Moves Delegates,” NYT, 24 September 1947, 4. 40.  Teltsch, “Climate à la Carte,” 8. 41.  George Barrett, “Diplomat Boils Up in U.N.’s Icy Wind,” NYT, 11 May 1947, 28. 42.  Teltsch, “Climate à la Carte,” 8. 43.  “United Nations Secretariat,” 110. 44. Banham, Well-​Tempered Environment, 221–25. 45.  Benesch, “Heating, Ventilating, and Air Conditioning,” 58. 46.  C. Milton Wilson, “High Velocity Air Conditioning: Its Effect on Building Design,” AR 119, no. 5 (May 1956): 227–31. 47.  “ ‘Air Wash’ Sought for U.N. Building,” NYT, 19 September 1950, 33. See also “U.N. Capital Plans Stress Function,” NYT, 22 May 1947, 19; “Utility Sidesteps U.N. Plea on Smoke,” NYT, 24 September 1950, 18; and “City Seeks to Ease Smoke Evil at U.N.,” NYT, 8 August 1950, 22. 48.  “ ‘Air Wash’ Sought for U.N. Building,” 33. 49.  “Truman Rejects City’s Plea on Gas,” NYT, 5 August 1950, 17. 50.  “Utility Sidesteps U.N. Plea on Smoke,” 18. 51.  “ ‘Air Wash’ Sought for U. N. Building,” 33. 52.  “U.N. and Public Utility Find Way to Peace; Clear Up Smoke Problem, and Cheaply, Too,” NYT, 22 November 1950, 23. 53.  In 2004 the Consolidated Edison site was sold for development, and the old power plant was to be

demolished to create space for new luxury condominium towers set in a park. “A Place Apart Becomes a Place Discovered,” NYT, 19 June 2005, J11; “Dipping City’s Toes into the East River,” NYT, 10 November 2005, E1; Jeff Vandam, “A Lot to Soak Up, Even Outside the Bars,” NYT, 19 April 2009, RE7. 54.  “J’affirme ceci . . . c’est qu’il me parait insensé de construire à New-​ York, dont le climat est terrible en été, des ‘pans de verre’ qui ne soient pas munis de brise-​soleil.” “Une lettre de Le Corbusier à propos du gratte-​ciel de l’O.N.U.,” L’architecture d’aujourd’hui 2, no. 3 (December 1950): ix. See also Le Corbusier to Warren Austin, n.d., quoted in “United Nations Secretariat,” 108; and Le Corbusier, UN Headquarters (New York: Reinhold, 1947). The original correspondence is in folders 31–38, box 15, series v: United Nations, Max Abramovitz Architectural Records and Papers, 1925–1990, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York. 55.  See Gutiérrez, “ ‘Pierre, revoir tout le système fenêtres,’ ” and Brian Brace Taylor, Le Corbusier: The City of Refuge, Paris, 1929/33 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), esp. 111–22. 56.  Le Corbusier, in board of design meeting 12, Thursday, 6 March 1947, in Dudley, Workshop for Peace, 105. In one of his earliest written statements about the building, Le Corbusier refers to stone facades. Draft of Le Corbusier report, 27 May 1947, DAG 16/1.2.3., box 6, U.N. Archive, cited in Newhouse, Wallace K. Harrison, 127. 57.  See Le Corbusier, The Marseilles Block, trans. Geoffrey Sainsbury (London: Harvill Press, 1953), 21; “France Builds a Vertical City,” Engineering News-​Record 142 (2 June 1949): 18; and Jacques Sbriglio, Le Corbusier: L’Unité d’habitation de Marseille, 2nd ed. (Marseilles: Editions Parenthèses, 2004), 161–62. 58.  Brian Urquhart to Wallace Harrison, 14 August 1980, box 6, folder 5: United Nations—Art Committee & Miscellaneous, series ii: collection ii

(1989.003), subseries i: Professional Papers, Wallace Harrison Papers, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University. 59.  Neil MacFarquhar, “Renovating the U.N., with Hints of Green,” NYT, 22 November 2008, C1; Gonchar, “Revival of an Icon,” 108, 110, 112; United Nations at 70. 60.  Nadine M. Post, “Crisis Avoidance,” Engineering News-​Record 270, no. 8 (25 March 2013): 30–36. 61.  William Hesketh Lever, quoted in “New Lever House Opens,” Soap and Sanitary Chemicals 28, no. 5 (May 1952): 34. These words are in an inscription on the plaque unveiled at the opening, on 29 April 1952. See Carol Herselle Krinsky, Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (New York: Architectural History Foundation; Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988), 18–25; Yoemans, “Pre-​history of the Curtain Wall,” 74; Nicholas Adams, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill: The Experiment Since 1936 (Milan: Electa, 2007), 64–75; Adams, “How the Leopard Got Its Spots: Lever House as a Skyscraper,” SOM Journal 7 (2011): 176–88; and Adams, Gordon Bunshaft and SOM: Designing Corporate Modern (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019). 62.  Nathaniel A. Owings, “The Office Building of Tomorrow,” Skyscraper Management 32 (November 1947): 11. See Adams, “How the Leopard Got Its Spots.” 63.  Owings, “Office Building of Tomorrow,” 25. 64.  Ibid., 26. 65.  Suzanne Stephens, “The Restoration of New York City’s Lever House Is Not So Same-​Old Same-​Old, As Architects SOM and William T. Georgis Demonstrate,” AR 191, no. 3 (March 2003): 124. 66.  “Soap Company Bathes Mechanically,” Plant Engineering 6, no. 7 (July 1952): 69. 67.  G[uy] V. Bond, “The Inside Story of Lever House,” Refrigeration Engineering 61 (April 1953): 388–90. 68.  Ada Louise Huxtable, “Does Good Architecture Pay,” NYT, 11 January 1965, 125.

69.  Bond, “Inside Story of Lever House,” 388. 70.  Ibid., 388. See “New York’s Blue Glass Tower: An Insider’s View,” Contract Interiors 112 (August 1952): 63. 71.  Bond, “Inside Story of Lever House,” 389. 72. Ibid. 73.  Thomas Leslie, “Fluorescent Lamps: Visual and Thermal Comfort in Modern Interiors,” paper delivered at the Society of Architectural Historians annual meeting, Providence, Rhode Island, 25 April 2019. 74. Krinsky, Gordon Bunshaft, 21. On the curtain wall’s restoration, see “Exterior Enclosure Replacement: Lever House, New York City,” SOM Journal 3 (2004): 90–99. 75.  Martin Hirschorn, “How Air Intake Was Silenced at Lever House,” HPAC 25, no. 8 (August 1953): 92–93. See also “Noise Reduction Unit Operates at Lever House,” Sheet Metal Worker 44 (June 1953): 46. 76.  Franz Schulze and Edward Windhorst, Mies van der Rohe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 278–83; Promontory Apartments, Chicago, Illinois, job #4604, 1946–49, folders 4–6, Mies van der Rohe Archive, Museum of Modern Art, New York City. The drawing was published in Arthur Drexler, ed., The Mies van der Rohe Archive (New York: Garland, 1992), 13:477, and Carsten Krohn, Mies van der Rohe: The Built Work (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2014), 148. 77.  “Mies van der Rohe,” AF 97, no. 5 (November 1952): 102. 78.  Joseph Fujikawa, letter to the editor, Robert W. Rouse, HPAC, 10 December 1956, 860/880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments, Chicago, Illinois, job #4807, 1948–51, folder 6, Professional Papers, Mies van der Rohe Archive, Museum of Modern Art, cited in Phyllis Lambert, “Mies Immersion,” in Mies in America, ed. Lambert (Montreal: Canadian Centre for Architecture; New York: Whitney Museum of American Art; Harry N. Abrams, 2001), 372; Lambert, Building Seagram (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 263n54.

79.  See 860/880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments, Chicago, Illinois, job #4807, 1948–51, folder 7, Mies van der Rohe Archive, Museum of Modern Art, New York City. 80.  “Aber wenn man Mies’ Wohnhäuser am Lake Shore Drive mit den Luftkühltruhen, die wie Vogelkäfige an die Fassade herausgehängt sind, betrachtet, ist es nicht verwunderlich, wenn gesagt wird: ‘Seht, er hat sich um das Kühlproblem nicht gekümmert! Hintendrein mußte man es dann so einrichten, daß die Menschen hinter diesem Glas überhaupt leben können—und die Architektur ist damit totgeschlagen!’ ” “Wohnhochhäuser an der Commonwealth-​Promenade in Chicago,” Bauen und Wohnen 15 (March 1960): 89. See Jordy, American Buildings and Their Architects, 5:228–51; Lambert, “Mies Immersion,” 354–71; Schulze and Windhorst, Mies van der Rohe, 285–94; Marc Boxerman, “Chicago’s ‘Glass Houses’: Restoring the Recent Past at 860–880 Lake Shore Drive,” Historic Illinois 32, no. 3 (October 2009): 7–9; and Lisa Skolnik, “Less Is More: Returning a Lakefront Residence in Chicago to Its Miesian Roots,” Preservation 63, no. 3 (May/June 2011): 94–101. 81.  Joseph Fujikawa, letter to the editor, HPAC, 10 December 1956. The towers, now known as the Esplanade Apartments, were at 900–910 Lake Shore Drive. 82.  “Wohnhochhäuser an der Commonwealth-​Promenade,” 88. Chief Engineer, 900/910 Lake Shore Drive, emails to author, 25 and 26 July 2016. Drexler, Mies van der Rohe Archive, 15:397, 398, 5304B.125 and 5304B.126, dated 16 July 1956. George W. Meek, “Air Conditioning Systems for Rental Buildings,” AR 100, no. 6 (December 1946): 111–16. 83.  Among comparable projects of the period, Chicago architect Milton M. Schwartz designed the twenty-​ one-​story building at 320 W. Oakdale, with all glass walls and central air-​ conditioning, completed in 1955, in the East Lakeview neighborhood two blocks north of Mies’s Commonwealth Promenade Apartments. Professor

Not e s to page s 174– 182

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Robert Bruegmann, emails to author, 17 and 19 July 2016. “Eight Chicago Apartment Projects,” AF 103, no. 5 (November 1955): 149. 84.  On the air-​conditioning, see Lambert, Building Seagram, 59–61. Mies’s buildings at the Illinois Institute of Technology from 1938 on did not at first include comfort air-​conditioning, nor did his Farnsworth House (built 1949–51), in Plano, Illinois. See James J. Williams, “Living with Nature: The Farnsworth House and The Environmental Successes and Failures of Modernist Architecture (1945–1951)” (MA thesis, University of Cincinnati, 2015). Mies’s later glass-​walled National Gallery in Berlin (1961–68) had severe condensation problems. See Bettina Vismann and Jürgen Mayer H., “The Perspiration Affair, or the New National Gallery Between Cold Fronts,” trans. Sara Ogger, Grey Room, no. 9 (Autumn 2002): 80–89. 85.  “Carrier Gets Big Contract,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 22 February 1957. On the bronze, see Lambert, Building Seagram, 62–66. 86.  “A Skyscraper Crammed with Innovations,” Engineering News-​Record 158, no. 24 (13 July 1957): 48. 87.  Seagram Building Committee, Building Bulletin No. 1, December 1954, box 844, subseries A: Construction and Development Files (1954– 1956), Seagram, HML. 88.  Memorandum, “Suggested Outline of Program for Development of Building to House the Seagram Companies,” 16 July 1951, Seagram, HML. 89.  “Skyscraper Crammed with Innovations,” 45. 90.  J. Clydesdale Cushman to Lou R. Crandall, president, George A. Fuller Co., 29 April 1952, Seagram, HML. 91.  Ibid. The ultimate tonnage was noted in “New Building Under the Sun,” Buildings: The Magazine of Building Management 56, no. 6 (June 1956): 54. 92.  Alfred Jaros Jr., “Project Reports; Air-​Conditioning Large Monumental Buildings; Seagram Building—New York City,” Consulting Engineer 9, no. 9 (September 1957): 89.

262

Not e s to page s 183 – 193

93.  Ibid., 89. The Seagram Building’s glass area was noted in “Seagram House Re-​reassessed,” Progressive Architecture 40, no. 6 (June 1959): 144. 94.  Jaros, “Project Reports,” 92–93. 95.  “Largest Air Conditioner for Newest Skyscraper,” Buildings: The Magazine of Building Management 57, no. 7 (July 1957): 50. 96. Ibid. 97.  “New Building Under the Sun,” 54. The steam also heated the building, which required about sixty-​one million pounds of steam per year. See Jerry Miller, “Air-​Conditioners Hoisted High Free Space for Rental Purposes,” NYT, 1 September 1963, R1, R5. 98.  “Skyscraper Crammed with Innovations,” 49. 99.  Jaros, “Project Reports,” 93. 100.  “38-Story Seagram Building Features Wall of Air over Tinted Window Areas,” Air Conditioning and Refrigeration News 80, no. 8 (25 February 1957): 49. 101.  Charles V. Fenn, vice president, Carrier Machinery and Systems Division, quoted in “Air Conditioning Units for Seagram Building Take Less Space, Do Bigger Job,” press release, 13 February 1957, CCA. 102.  “Air Conditioning Units for Seagram Building.” 103.  “Skyscraper Crammed with Innovations,” 49. 104.  Phyllis Lambert, “Light Changes: Philip Johnson, Richard Kelly, and Stimmung at Seagram,” in The Structure of Light: Richard Kelly and the Illumination of Modern Architecture, ed. Dietrich Neumann (New Haven: Yale University Press in association with the Yale School of Architecture, 2010), 88–95. 105.  See Scott G. Knowles and Stuart W. Leslie, “ ‘Industrial Versailles’: Eero Saarinen’s Corporate Campuses for GM, IBM, and AT&T,” Isis 92, no. 1 (March 2001): 1–33; Martin, Organizational Complex, 126–55; Antonio Román, Eero Saarinen: An Architecture of Multiplicity (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2003), 155–70; Jayne Merkel, Eero Saarinen (London: Phaidon, 2005), 69–75; and Rosamond Fletcher, “The General Motors

Technical Center: A Collaborative Enterprise,” in Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future, ed. Eeva-​Liisa Pelkonen and Donald Albrecht (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 230–35. 106.  “Establishment of G.M. Technical Center to Provide Vitally Needed Postwar Facilities,” Michigan Manufacturing and Financial Record 86, no. 3 (September 1950): 17. 107.  “New Center Blends Beauty, Practicality, and Flexibility,” New York Herald Tribune, 16 May 1956. 108.  “Architecture of Center Heralds World’s Industrial Trend,” St. Louis Globe-​Democrat, 16 May 1956. See Eero Saarinen on His Work (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962), 24. 109.  “Establishment of G.M. Technical Center,” 17. 110.  “Architecture of Center Heralds World’s Industrial Trend.” 111.  Fred H. Couts, “High Velocity System Air Conditions GM Technical Center,” HPAC 28, no. 6 (June 1956): 78–81. 112.  “Architecture of Tech Center Frees Bonds on Imagination,” Detroit News, 15 May 1956, 23. 113.  “Establishment of G.M. Technical Center,” 18. 114.  “Architecture of Center Heralds World’s Industrial Trend.” 115.  Eero Saarinen on His Work, 28. See “General Motors Technical Center,” AF 95, no. 5 (November 1951): 117, and “Research Buildings of Metal and Glass,” Engineering News-​Record 147 (1 November 1951): 57. 116. Jordy, American Buildings and Their Architects, 5:218–19. 117.  Aline Saarinen, quoted in Joy Hakanson, “A Walk in the Shadow of Genius,” Detroit News Pictorial Magazine, 26 June 1956, 21. 118.  “Architecture of Tech Center Frees Bonds on Imagination.” 119.  Louis Kahn, quoted in James Marston Fitch, “A Building of Rugged Fundamentals,” AF 113, no. 1 (July 1960): 86.

Chapter 8

1.  “Kahn on Beaux-​Arts Training,” Architectural Review 155, no. 928 (June

1974): 332. See Kenneth Frampton, “Louis Kahn and the French Connection,” Oppositions 22 (Fall 1980), 20–53; Patricia Cummings Loud, The Art Museums of Louis I. Kahn (Durham: Duke University Press in association with the Duke University Museum of Art, 1989), 15–17; and Robert McCarter, Louis I. Kahn (London: Phaidon Press, 2005), 18–24. 2.  Louis I. Kahn, “The Mind Opens to Realizations,” in Louis I. Kahn: In the Realm of Architecture, by David B. Brownlee and David G. De Long (New York: Rizzoli, 1991), 78–79, quoted in Leslie, Louis I. Kahn, 95. 3.  “Public to Receive Frick Art in Fall,” NYT, 19 January 1933, 17. See Stern, Gilmartin, and Mellins, New York 1930, 137; and Steven M. Bedford, John Russell Pope: Architect of Empire (New York: Rizzoli, 1998), 185–91. 4.  “Frick Art Home to Open Jan. 14,” NYT, 6 January 1935, N6; Katharine McCook Knox, The Story of the Frick Art Reference Library: The Early Years (New York: Frick Art Reference Library, 1979); Colin B. Bailey, Building the Frick Collection: An Introduction to the House and Its Collections (New York: Frick Collection in association with Scala, 2006). 5.  “Frick Art Museum Opened to Public,” NYT, 17 December 1935, 20. 6.  “National Gallery of Art in Washington to Be Air Conditioned; Other Galleries Report Highly Favorable Experiences,” Heating and Ventilating 36, no. 3 (March 1939): 60. 7.  After Pope died, in 1937, his associates Otto R. Eggers and Daniel P. Higgins completed the project. See Henry H. Saylor, “Air Conditioning,” in The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (New York, 1941); Christopher A. Thomas, The Architecture of the West Building of the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1992); Steven M. Bedford, “The Architectural Career of John Russell Pope” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1996), 377–409; and Bedford, John Russell Pope, 185–203. 8.  Charles Moore to Gilmore Clarke, Washington, DC, 24 April 1936, Commission on Fine Arts project

files, quoted in Bedford, “Architectural Career of John Russell Pope,” 384–85. 9.  Henry H. Saylor, “Mechanized Treasure House,” Popular Science Monthly 139, no. 2 (August 1941): 40–41. 10.  L. L. Lewis, “Air Conditioning for Museums,” 141. 11. Loud, Art Museums of Louis I. Kahn, chap. 2, 52–99; Sarah Williams Goldhagen, Louis Kahn’s Situated Modernism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), chap. 2, 40–63; Leslie, Louis I. Kahn, 47–90; Roberto Gargiani, Louis I. Kahn: Exposed Concrete and Hollow Stones, 1949–1959 (Lausanne: EPFL Press; Abingdon, Oxford: Routledge, 2014), 29–61. On the restoration, see Amanda K. Hurley, “As Kahn Intended,” Architect 96, no. 4 (April 2007): 66–71; Jayne Merkel, “Yale Art Gallery,” Architectural Design 77, no. 3 (May/June 2007): 110–15; and Paula Dietz, “Yale Revival,” Architectural Review 221, no. 1321 (March 2007): 50–55. Only in 1957–62 did Yale’s Gallery of Fine Arts (1926–28) acquire air-​conditioning. A. C. Ritchie, “Director’s Report for the Years 1957–1962,” Yale Art Gallery Bulletin 29 (April 1963): 5–6. 12.  George A. Sanderson, “Extension: University Art Gallery and Design Center,” Progressive Architecture 35, no. 5 (May 1954): 89. On the funding for the galleries, see C. G. Rogan, Meyer, Strong and Jones, to Office of Douglas Orr, 23 July 1951, 030.II.A.107.44, LIK. 13.  “Art Gallery Scenes—Plans and Progress,” Yale Daily News, 7 November 1952, 5; Sanderson, “Extension: University Art Gallery,” 90. 14.  Sanderson, “Extension: University Art Gallery,” 92. 15.  “Design/Techniques 1953: Structural Methods,” Progressive Architecture 34, no. 1 (January 1953): 92. 16.  Charles H. Sawyer to Louis I. Kahn, 8 January 1951, 030.II.A.107.42, LIK. Charles H. Sawyer to A. Whitney Griswold, 8 January 1951, folder 247, box 27, series i, Alfred Whitney Griswold, president of Yale University, Records, RU-22, YUMA.

17.  H. D. Palmer, Office of Douglas Orr, to Louis I. Kahn, 15 February 1951, 030.II.A.107.44, LIK. 18.  Charles H. Sawyer to John M. Phillips and Lamont Moore, “Some Comments on Recommendations and Assumptions for Art Gallery Space Assignments,” 6 February 1951, 030.II.A.107.42, LIK. 19.  H. D. Palmer, Office of Douglas Orr, to Louis I. Kahn, 2 April 1951, 2, 030.II.A.107.44, LIK. 20.  C. G. Rogan, Meyer, Strong and Jones, to Office of Douglas Orr, 23 July 1951; H. D. Palmer, Office of Douglas Orr, to Louis I. Kahn, 30 August 1951, 030.II.A.107.44—both LIK. 21.  “Design Laboratories and Exhibition Space for Yale University,” enclosed with H. D. Palmer, Office of Douglas Orr, to Louis I. Kahn, 2 April 1951, 030.II.A.107.44, LIK. 22.  C. G. Rogan, Meyer, Strong and Jones, to Office of Douglas Orr, 23 July 1951; Douglas W. Orr, Louis I. Kahn, Architects, “Design Laboratory, Yale University; Memorandum Description and List of Materials,” 20 March 1952; Frank W. Hay, Meyer, Strong, and Jones, to H. D. Palmer, Office of Douglas Orr, 14 April 1952, 030.II.A.107.44—all LIK. 23.  Ritchie, “Director’s Report for the Years 1957–1962,” 5–6. 24.  “Order and Form: Yale Art Gallery and Design Center,” Perspecta 3: The Yale Architectural Journal (1955): 47. 25.  Louis I. Kahn, “How to Develop New Methods of Construction,” in Writings, Lectures, Interviews, ed. Alessandra Latour (New York: Rizzoli, 1991), 57, quoted in Goldhagen, Kahn’s Situated Modernism, 57; Leslie, Louis I. Kahn, 58–59. 26. Leslie, Louis I. Kahn, 60–62. 27.  Louis I. Kahn, “Monumentality in Architecture” (1944), in Louis Kahn: Essential Texts, ed. Robert C. Twombly (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), 21, 22. 28.  Henry A. Pfisterer, quoted in Sanderson, “Extension: University Art Gallery,” 94; “Building Engineering, 1: Tetrahedral Floor System,” AF 97, no. 5 (November 1952): 148–49.

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29.  “Building Engineering, 1: Tetrahedral Floor System,” 148–49. 30.  Vernon Read, handwritten notes to “Tetrahedral Floor System,” typescript draft for AF 97, no. 5 (November 1952): 148–49, 030.II.A.107.44, LIK. 31.  Sanderson, “Extension: University Art Gallery,” 88, 89. 32. Neumann, Structure of Light, 36, 146–47. 33. Jordy, American Buildings and Their Architects, 5:361–26; Brownlee and De Long, Louis I. Kahn, 324–27; Leslie, Louis I. Kahn, chap. 3, 91–127; Gargiani, Louis I. Kahn, 130–81. 34.  Medical School Planning Committee, “Tentative Layout,” 28 September 1956, box 46, folder 40, I. S. Ravdin Papers, UPT 50 R252, ARC-​UPENN [hereafter Ravdin Papers]. 35.  Medical Research Building, University of Pennsylvania, 8 January 1958, box 46, folder 37, Ravdin Papers. 36.  Dr. Norman Topping to Dr. Jonathan E. Rhoads, 16 October 1957, box 46, folder 40, Ravdin Papers. See Brownlee and De Long, Louis I. Kahn, 324, and Leslie, Louis I. Kahn, 133. 37.  August E. Komendant, 18 Years with Architect Louis I. Kahn (Englewood, NJ: Aloray, 1975), 7. 38.  Dr. William S. Blakemore to Dr. I. S. Ravdin, 24 June 1957, box 46, folder 34, Ravdin Papers. 39.  Louis I. Kahn, “Form and Design” (1960), in Louis Kahn: Essential Texts, 71–72. 40.  Alan C. Davis. “A Medical Research Building Dedicated to a Man with Foresight,” Franklin Field Illustrated 45, no. 1 (24 September 1960), 39, ARC-​UPENN. 41.  Thomas J. Leidigh, structural engineer, Keast & Hood Co., Philadelphia, “From Architect’s Conception to Concrete Reality,” Prestressed Concrete Institute Journal 6, no. 3 (September 1961): 80. 42.  Kahn, “Form and Design,” 72. See Leslie, Louis I. Kahn, 84, and William H. Jordy, “Medical Research Building for Pennsylvania University, Philadelphia,” Architectural Review 129, no. 768 (February 1961): 103.

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43.  Harry E. Seifert and E. Grady Callison Jr., “Filters in Bacteriological Hoods,” Air Conditioning, Heating, and Ventilating 53, no. 4 (April 1956): 72–73. 44.  “Laboratory for Life Science Designed to Defy Time,” Engineering News-​Record 176 (27 January 1966): 79. In the rehabilitated Richards Building of 2016, the wet laboratories have been eliminated, and the air no longer exhausts through the shafts appended to the towers. 45.  Memorandum, Thomas F. Whayne to Dr. Isidore Ravdin, 4 October 1957, box 46, folder 34, Ravdin Papers. 46.  “Laboratory for Life Science,” 79. 47.  Thomas R. Vreeland Jr. to Dr. Theodore Ingalls, Department of Epidemiology, Harvard University School of Public Health, 25 November 1957, 030.II.A.25.28, LIK. 48.  Joseph W. Molitor, “Art Serves Science: Alfred Newton Richards Medical Research Building, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa.,” AR 129, no. 2 (August 1960): 152. 49.  J. B. Smythe, “Concrete Results,” Prestressed Concrete Institute Journal 6, no. 3 (September 1961): 86–91. 50.  Leidigh, “From Architect’s Conception to Concrete Reality,” 81–82. 51.  Leonard Weger to Louis Kahn, 25 November 1957, 030.II.A.25.25, LIK. 52.  J. H. Clark to Dr. T. F. Whayne, 4 December 1957, 030.II.A.25.28, LIK. 53.  Medical Research Building, University of Pennsylvania, 8 January 1958, box 46, folder 37, Ravdin Papers. 54.  Vice Dean Tom F. Whayne, memorandum for Dr. John Mitchell, dean, meeting of the Planning Committee for the Medical Research Building, 17 January 1958, box 46, folder 37, Ravdin Papers. 55.  Leonard Weger to Louis Kahn, 17 February 1958, 030.II.A.25.27, LIK. 56.  Memorandum for record, meeting of the Planning Committee, 11–12 September 1958, Medical Research Building, University of Pennsylvania, box 46, folder 38, Ravdin Papers.

57.  “New Research Building Construction to Begin Behind Dorms Next Week,” Daily Pennsylvanian, 3 October 1958; “Medical Research Bldg. Will Open Thursday,” Daily Pennsylvanian, 13 May 1960. 58.  A. N. Richards Medical Research Bldg., meeting of architect and university and contractor, Thursday, 15 December 1960, 030.II.A.25.4, LIK. 59.  Kahn, “Form and Design,” 72. 60.  George H. Turner, director of Physical Plant Planning, Medical Research Building Project, minutes of meeting in Dr. Topping’s office, 9:00 a.m., 5 February 1958, 030.II.A.25.8, LIK. 61. Leslie, Louis I. Kahn, 103–4. 62.  Louis I. Kahn, “On the Responsibility of the Architect,” Perspecta 2: The Yale Architectural Journal (1953): 47, in Writings, Lectures, Interviews, 53. 63.  Fitch, “Building of Rugged Fundamentals,” 185. 64.  Marshall Meyers, interview with Alex Soojung-​Kim Pang, 12 December 1986, quoted in Brownlee and De Long, Louis I. Kahn, 325. 65.  Fitch, “Building of Rugged Fundamentals,” 84. Leonard R. Bachman, Integrated Buildings: The Systems Basis of Architecture (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2003), 86. 66.  See Borg-​Warner Corporation, How to Use the Ingersoll Koolshade Sunscreen: Sun Position, Heat Gain, Shading Data Calculator (Chicago: Borg-​Warner Corp., 1953); and “Glass Encased Sun Screen Reduces Heat Gain,” HPAC 29, no. 10 (October 1957): 119. On early problems with solar gain in the Richards Building, see Arnold J. Levine, “Life in the Lewis Thomas Laboratory,” in The Architecture of Science, ed. Peter Galison and Emily Thompson (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999), 414–15. 67.  David Wisdom, for Louis I. Kahn, to Koolshade Division, Reflectal Corporation, Chicago, 17 December 1957, 030.II.A.25.1, LIK. 68.  J. H. Clark to Dr. T. F. Whayne, 4 December 1957, 030.II.A.25.28, LIK. 69.  Jordy, “Medical Research Building,” 105–6. 70.  John E. MacAllister, Office of Louis I. Kahn, A. N. Richards Medical

Laboratory, job meeting, Friday, 10 March 1961, 030.II.A.25.5, LIK. 71.  Leonard Weger to David Wisdom, Office of Louis I. Kahn, 21 March 1961, 030.II.A.25.25, LIK. 72.  Robert Gutman, “Who Decides What a Building Wants to Be? A Study of Louis Kahn and His Clients,” in The Discipline of Architecture: Inquiry Through Design; Proceedings of the 73rd Annual Meeting of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, 1985, ed. Patrick Quinn and Thomas Regan (Washington, DC: Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, 1986), 182; Gutman, “Human Nature in Architectural Theory: The Example of Louis Kahn,” in Architects’ People, ed. William Russell Ellis and Dana Cuff (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 115–17. 73.  John Morris Dixon and James T. Burns Jr., “Kahn’s Second Phase at Pennsylvania; New Biology Building,” Progressive Architecture 45, no. 9 (September 1964): 208–13; N[orman] D. Kurtz, “Structure and Services Are Mated in Bio Labs,” HPAC 37, no. 5 (May 1965): 114–17. See David Hollenberg, “Rehabilitating Richards,” Context [AIA Philadelphia] (Winter 2016): 24–27. 74.  Hugh F. Johnson, “Air Conditioning Vital to Salk Polio Vaccine Process,” HPAC 27, no. 4 (May 1955): 116–17. 75.  “Laboratory 1: Procession of Massive Forms,” AF 122, no. 5 (May 1965): 36. 76. Leslie, Louis I. Kahn, 130–31; Suzanne Bourgeois, Genesis of the Salk Institute: The Epic of Its Founders (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 23–26, 107–10. See also Jeffrey Kluger, Splendid Solution: Jonas Salk and the Conquest of Polio (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2004), and Charlotte D. Jacobs, Jonas Salk: A Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). 77.  Mary H. Hall, “Gift from the Sea,” San Diego 14, no. 4 (February 1962): 41. Esther McCoy, “Dr. Salk Talks About His Institute,” AF 127, no. 6 (December 1967): 32. 78.  Brownlee and De Long, Louis I. Kahn, 330.

79. Bourgeois, Genesis of the Salk Institute, 107–8; Brownlee and De Long, Louis I. Kahn, 330; Leslie, Louis I. Kahn, 134–35. 80.  Louis I. Kahn Office, “Abstract of Program for the Institute of Biology at Torrey Pines, La Jolla, San Diego,” n.d., 1, 5, in file marked “Salk— Program Notes, June 19 [1961?],” 030.II.A.27.16, LIK. Brownlee and De Long, Louis I. Kahn, 330, 339n24, note that this abstract was referenced in the contract of 26 July 1961. The contract and related documents are in 030.II.A.89.22 and 030.II.A.89.23. An apparently later version of this document, entitled “Abstract of Architectural Program for Salk Institute for Biological Studies, San Diego, California,” with a handwritten note “prepared by Louis Kahn,” is enclosed with a letter to Mr. Fletcher, city manager of San Diego, 14 December 1961, box 374, folder 1: Plans ii—Design and Construction, Salk Papers, UCSD. Kahn’s associate John E. MacAllister kept a handwritten record with dates, participants, and locations of meetings related to the Salk project in 1961 and 1962: 030.II.A.26.28, LIK. 81.  Brownlee and De Long, Louis I. Kahn, 332–33; Jan C. Rowan, “Wanting to Be: The Philadelphia School,” Progressive Architecture 42, no. 4 (April 1961): 140–49; Komendant, 18 Years with Architect Louis I. Kahn, 44–50; Leslie, Louis I. Kahn, 138–44. 82. Bourgeois, Genesis of the Salk Institute, 115. 83.  “Starlux Sheds Light on Research Institute,” Creative Ideas in Glass 7 (Winter 1966). 84.  Harold L. Mindelt [Mindell] and Fred S. Dubin, “Flexible Power Plan Serves Research Center,” Electrical Construction and Maintenance 66, no. 3 (March 1967): 110. 85.  Jonas Salk, quoted in Michael J. Crosbie, “Dissecting the Salk,” Progressive Architecture 74, no. 10 (October 1993): 42. 86.  Allan Temko, “Evaluation: Louis Kahn’s Salk Institute After a Dozen Years,” AIA Journal 66, no. 3 (March 1977): 45–46; Marc S. Harriman, “Venting the Laboratory,”

Architecture 82, no. 3 (March 1993): 111. 87.  Mindelt [Mindell] and Dubin, “Flexible Power Plan,” 111. 88.  Fred S. Dubin, quoted in Richard Rush, “From Salk to SERI,” Progressive Architecture 61, no. 4 (April 1980): 122. 89.  Mindelt [Mindell] and Dubin, “Flexible Power Plan,” 110. 90.  Tim Ball, senior director, Facilities Services, Salk Institute, conversation with author, 15 May 2018; The Salk Institute: Architecture and Engineering (La Jolla, CA: Salk Institute, 2000). 91.  Dubin, quoted in Rush, “Salk to SERI,” 122. 92.  McCoy, “Dr. Salk Talks About His Institute,” 31. 93.  “Laboratory 1: Procession of Massive Forms,” 36. 94.  Tim Ball, conversation with author, 15 May 2018. 95.  Kahn, quoted in “The Salk Institute: Triumph in Concrete,” typescript enclosed with Barbara Schlosser to Richard S. Huhta, editor, Concrete Construction Publications, Inc., 9 December 1966, 030.II.A.58.44, LIK. The text was written by Joe Bell after an encounter with Kahn in summer 1966. See “The Salk Institute: A Triumph in Concrete,” Concrete Construction 12, no. 4 (April 1967): 119–22. Partly quoted in Anna Rosellini, Louis I. Kahn: Towards the Zero Degree of Concrete, 1960–1974 (Lausanne: EPFL Press, 2014), 122–23. 96.  Quoted in Leslie, Louis I. Kahn, 152. See David J. Wickersheimer, “The Vierendeel,” JSAH 35, no. 1 (March 1976): 54–60. 97.  Tim Ball, conversation with author, 15 May 2018. 98.  Salk Institute for Biological Studies, Publicity Kit, pt. 3: Facilities, n.d. (1963?), p. 3, box 345, folder 6: Publicity Kit, Salk Papers, UCSD. 99.  “Laboratory for Life Science,” 79–80. 100.  Jonathan Barnett, “Laboratory Buildings: The Architecture of the Unpredictable,” AR 138, no. 5 (November 1965): 186; “Laboratory for Life Science,” 79–80. With the rise of computational experiments, the need

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for large laboratories and extensive bench space began to diminish. Adam Ames, senior planner, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, email to author, 6 September 2016. 101.  An estimate of 1 March 1962 figured the laboratories’ cost at $5,262,312 and the cost of their mechanical equipment as $4,930,735. See 030.II.A.108.7, LIK. 102.  McCoy, “Dr. Salk Talks About His Institute,” 27. 103.  Kiel Moe, “Extraordinary Performances at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies,” Journal of Architectural Education 61, no. 4 (May 2008): 20. 104.  Ibid., 19. 105. Bourgeois, Genesis of the Salk Institute, 115, 118. 106.  “Laboratory 1: Procession of Massive Forms,” 36. 107.  “Laboratory for Life Science,” 79. 108. Leslie, Louis I. Kahn, 151–52. 109.  Mindelt [Mindell] and Dubin, “Flexible Power Plan,” 112. 110. Leslie, Louis I. Kahn, 155. 111.  Fred S. Dubin to Louis I. Kahn, attn. John E. MacAllister, 17 January 1967, 030.II.A26.34, LIK. 112.  John E. MacAllister to Ferdinand T. Fletcher, 26 January 1967, 030.II.A26.34, LIK. 113.  Ibid. On the north building’s initial operation, see Salk Institute: Architecture and Engineering, cited in Leslie, Louis I. Kahn, 167. 114.  Mindelt [Mindell] and Dubin, “Flexible Power Plan,” 110. 115.  “Salk Institute—Infrastructure Renewal/Expansion Project,” Consulting-​Specifying Engineer, 15 August 2013, http://​www​.csemag​ .com​/single​-article​/salk​-institute​ -infrastructure​-renewalexpansion​ -project​/4f6ec81199b9b75713975b37797 68e81​.html. 116.  See Komendant, 18 Years with Architect Louis I. Kahn, 115–32; Kimbell Art Museum, In Pursuit of Quality: The Kimbell Art Museum; An Illustrated History of the Art and Architecture (Fort Worth: Kimbell Art Museum, 1987); Loud, Art Museums of Louis I. Kahn, chap. 3, 100–171;

266

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Brownlee and De Long, Louis I. Kahn, 396–99; Louis I. Kahn: The Construction of the Kimbell Art Museum (Milan: Skira, 1999); and Rosellini, Louis I. Kahn, 280–345. 117.  “Three Museums,” AR 139, no. 4 (April 1966): 201; “Los Angeles County Museum of Art,” Architectural Digest 22, no. 3 (January 1965): 96–103. 118.  Richard F. Brown, Kimbell Art Foundation, Pre-​architectural Program, 1 June 1966, 030.II.A.37.18, LIK. Kimbell Art Museum, In Pursuit of Quality, app. 2, 326. 119.  “Louis I. Kahn on the Kimbell Art Museum,” interview with William Marlin, 24 June 1972, 030.II.A37.19, LIK. 120.  Richard F. Brown, Kimbell Art Foundation, Pre-​architectural Program, 1 June 1966, 030.II.A.37.18, LIK. Kimbell Art Museum, In Pursuit of Quality, app. 2, 320. 121.  Brownlee and De Long, Louis I. Kahn, 396, 399n3. 122. Komendant, 18 Years with Architect Louis I. Kahn, 115–31; Aurelio Muttoni, “An Analysis of the Structure,” in Construction of the Kimbell Art Museum, 105–11. 123.  Frank H. Sherwood, Office of Preston M. Geren, to Richard F. Brown, 25 June 1971, 030.II.A.37.8, LIK. 124. Loud, Art Museums of Louis I. Kahn, 110. 125.  T. E. Harden Jr., Office of Preston Geren, to Thomas Thacker, Office of Louis Kahn, 28 November 1969, 030.II.A.37.6, LIK. 126.  Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, Summary of Conclusions Reached at Meetings During Week of April 13, 1970, 030.II.A.37.18, LIK. 127.  T. E. Harden Jr., Office of Preston Geren, to Thomas Thacker, Office of Louis Kahn, 28 November 1969, 030.II.A.37.6, LIK. 128.  T. E. Harden Jr., Office of Preston M. Geren, to Marshall D. Meyers, Office of Louis Kahn, 22 May 1969, LIK. 129. Baird, Architectural Expression of Environmental Control Systems, 22.

130.  Preston M. Geren to Marshall Meyers, 13 November 1968, 030.II.A.37.5, LIK. See also “Addendum No. 1 to the Mechanical and Electrical Specifications for Museum for Kimbell Art Foundation, Fort Worth, Texas, June 1, 1970,” 030.II.A37.11, LIK. 131. Baird, Architectural Expression of Environmental Control Systems, 22. 132.  See Jules David Prown, The Architecture of the Yale Center for British Art, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982); Loud, Art Museums of Louis I. Kahn, 172–243; Peter Inskip and Stephen Gee, in association with Constance Clement, Louis I. Kahn and the Yale Center for British Art: A Conservation Plan (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, 2011); Rosellini, Louis I. Kahn, 458–91. 133.  Patricia Cummings Loud, “Yale Center for British Art,” in Brownlee and De Long, Louis I. Kahn, 410–12. 134.  Stanley Abercrombie, “Yale Center for British Art,” Contract Interiors 136, no. 12 (July 1977): 52–59. 135.  Inskip and Gee, Yale Center for British Art, 27. 136.  Van Zelm, Heywood, and Shadford, Consulting Engineers, “Resume—1970; Partial List of Projects and Clients.” Richard J. Shadford Jr. to Louis I. Kahn, 8 December 1969, 030.II.A.110.A7, LIK. Jules Prown, conversation with author, 29 June 2016. 137.  Abba A. Tor, “The Structure of the Yale-​Mellon Center for British Arts and British Studies,” lecture, Yale Center for British Art, 4 November 2005, quoted in Inskip and Gee, Yale Center for British Art, 125. 138.  Jules D. Prown, “Lux et Veritas: Louis Kahn’s Last Creation,” Apollo 165, no. 542 (April 2007): 50. See also Inskip and Gee, Yale Center for British Art, 126. 139.  Loud, “Yale Center for British Art,” 412. 140.  Jules Prown to Louis Kahn, 20 November 1972, 3, 030.II.A.109.6, LIK. 141.  Mellon Center for British Art, “Operating and Maintenance Handbook,” 1977, sec. 1, p. 2. The author

thanks Harry Hemstock, lead museum technician, Yale Center for British Art, for access to this unpublished typescript. 142.  Ibid., sec. 1, p. 8. 143.  Ibid., sec. 1, p. 8; sec. 1, p. 14. 144.  Interview with Harry Hemstock, lead museum technician, Yale Center for British Art, 29 June 2016. 145.  Tor, “Structure of the Yale-​ Mellon Center,” quoted in Inskip and Gee, Yale Center for British Art, 126. 146.  “Integrated Air Floor System Combines Four Air Conditioning Components,” HPAC 34, no. 7 (July 1962): 167–68; Harold P. Brehm, “Variable Volume System Coupled with Air Floor in Office Building Design,” HPAC 40, no. 4 (April 1968): 87–92. 147.  Mellon Center for British Art, Operating and Maintenance Handbook, sec. 1, p. 13. 148.  Edward R. Ford, The Details of Modern Architecture, vol. 2, 1928–1988 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996), 333–35. 149.  Mellon Center for British Art, Operating and Maintenance Handbook, sec. 1, p. 2. 150.  Louis I. Kahn to Richard J. Shadford Jr., 28 August 1973, 030.II.110.17, LIK. 151.  Ronald M. Luzi, Van Zelm, Heywood, and Shadford, to David Wisdom, Office of Louis I. Kahn, 22 January 1974, 030.II.A.110.17, LIK.

Coda

1.  See Giovanna Borasi and Mirko Zardini, eds., Sorry, out of Gas: Architecture’s Response to the 1973 Oil Crisis (Montreal: Canadian Centre

for Architecture; Mantua: Corraini Edizioni, 2007); and Mirko Zardini, “A Crisis That Made Architecture Real,” Perspecta 42: The Yale Architectural Journal (2010): 79–82. 2.  Adam Rome, The Genius of Earth Day: How a 1970 Teach-​In Unexpectedly Made the First Green Generation (New York: Hill & Wang, 2013). On the global development of environmental initiatives since the early 1970s, see Joachim Radkau, The Age of Ecology, trans. Patrick Camiller (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2014). 3.  On consciousness of sustainability in the 1990s, see Union of International Architects, “Declaration of Interdependence for a Sustainable Future,” UIA/AIA World Congress of Architects, Chicago, 18–21 June 1993. See Bradford McKee, “World Congress Takes on the Environment,” Architecture 82, no. 8 (August 1993): 23; and “The Chicago Declaration,” in Climate Responsive Architecture, ed. Arvind Krishan, Nick Baker, Simos Yannas, and S. V. Szokolay (New York: Tata McGraw-​Hill, 2001), 19. 4.  John Galsworthy, preface to The Forsyte Saga (1922; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 6.

Appendix

1.  Samuel R. Lewis, Air Conditioning for Comfort (Chicago: Engineering Publications, 1932), 22–25; William H. Severns, Heating, Ventilating, and Air Conditioning Fundamentals (New York: John Wiley, 1937), 432–33; Burgess H. Jennings and Samuel R. Lewis, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration, 4th ed. (Scranton, PA: International

Textbook, 1958), 532–43. An earlier account of mechanical refrigeration using compressed refrigerants is Gideon Harris and Associates, Audel’s Answers on Refrigeration and Ice Making (New York: Theo. Audel, 1911), 59–70. See Rees, Refrigeration Nation, 35–37. 2.  William Bodinus, “The Rise and Fall of Carbon Dioxide Systems,” in Will, First Century of Air Conditioning, 29–34. 3. Ingels, Willis Haviland Carrier, 54–55. On centrifugal compressors, see W. H. Carrier’s writings: “Centrifugal Compression as Applied to Refrigeration,” Refrigerating Engineering 12, no. 8 (February 1926): 253–68, 277; “Progress in Air Conditioning in the Last Quarter Century,” HPAC 8, no. 8 (August 1936): 447–59; and “American Developments in Air Conditioning and Refrigeration During the Last Decade,” Proceedings; Institution of Mechanical Engineers 157 (1947): 357–60. See also such textbooks as Jennings and Lewis, Air Conditioning for Refrigeration, 4th ed., 343–50. 4.  Colonel A. C. Downey, president, Airtemp, quoted in “Rotary Compressor for Air Conditioning,” Scientific American 157, no. 5 (November 1937): 287. 5. Ingels, Willis Haviland Carrier, 56–62. 6.  Walter T. Grondzik and Alison G. Kwok, Mechanical and Electrical Equipment for Buildings, 12th ed. (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2015), 464–77.

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Albert Kahn Collection, Detroit Institute of Arts Albert Kahn Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan Alfred Whitney Griswold, president of Yale University, Records, RU-22, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library Architect of the Capitol, Curator Division, Records Management and Archives Branch, Washington, DC Architectural Records for Buildings by Rapp and Rapp, Chicago History Museum Carrier Corporation, Historical Records, United Technologies Archives, Syracuse, NY Darwin Martin Papers, University Archives of the University Libraries, University of Buffalo, The State University of New York Eero Saarinen Collection, ms 593, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives, The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York George Howe Collection, 1974.005, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York H[erbert] F. Johnson Jr. Papers, SC Johnson Co. Archives, Racine, Wisconsin I. S. Ravdin Papers, UPT 50 R252, Archives and Records Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia John Howe Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison Jonas Salk Papers, mss 1, Special Collections and Archives, University of California at San Diego Louis I. Kahn Collection, Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Max Abramovitz Architectural Records and Papers, 1925– 1990, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York Mies van der Rohe Archive, The Museum of Modern Art, New York The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York New York Stock Exchange Archives, Mahwah, NJ Pietro Belluschi Papers, Arents Library, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY PSFS Archive, Hagley Museum and Library, Greenfield, DE Seagram Building Materials, Accession 2126: The Seagram Company, Ltd., Hagley Museum and Library, Greenfield, DE United Nations Archives, New York

Wallace Harrison Papers, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York Yale University Building Project Records, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library

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Inde x

Italicized page numbers indicate illustrations. Endnotes are referenced with “n” followed by the endnote number A & P stores, 53 Aalto, Alvar, 191 Ackerman, Frederick L., 242n14 Acme Air Washers, 32 Adler, Dankmar on cooling the Chicago Auditorium Theater, 17–18 on the organic analogy in architecture, 15, 18, 227 on the tall office building, 18 Adler and Sullivan, 3 tall office buildings of, 15, 18–21 theories of functionalism, 15–16 See also Chicago Auditorium Building; Chicago: Chicago Cold Storage Exchange; Chicago: Chicago Stock Exchange Building; Buffalo, New York: Guaranty Building; St. Louis: Union Trust Building; Wainwright Building (St. Louis, Missouri) air-​conditioning and building envelopes, 9 costs of, 119, 130, 174, 235 and efficiency and productivity, 8, 80, 95, 110, 147, 173, 235 in factories, 2, 4, 40, 41–43, 44–46, 57–58, 63 in offices, 37, 49, 98–101, 106, 120, 130, 138, 145–47 electrical systems for, 9, 45, 109, 239 and energy consumption, 2, 9, 12 and environmental movement, 235 for federal government, 83–107 and film manufacturing, 71–72 and Great Depression, 9, 40–41, 74, 82, 107, 121 and health, 117–18, 121, 130–31 historiography of, 1–3, 5, 6, 10, 258 and human emission of Btus, xxi, 25, 243n52 and mechanical engineers, 1, 7, 11 and national politics, 111–12 and natural gas, 109 and OPEC oil embargo, 235 and organic metaphor, 15–16, 18, 128, 149, 197, 218, 227



residential, 2, 107, 110, 111 and steam tunnel districts, 9, 125 and water systems, 9–10, 93-94, 117, 125–26 window units for, 110 American Blower Co., 45 American City, 93 American Cyanamid Co., 249n65 American Iron and Steel Institute, 108 American Saint Gobain Corporation, 213 American Society of Heating and Ventilating Engineers, 85–86, 121, 257n89 American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), 7 Andrews & Johnson Co. (Chicago), 242n12 Anemostat Corporation of America, 60 apartment buildings, air-​conditioning of, 10, 91, 111, 159, 242n24 Argentina, air-​conditioning in, 10, 249n48 Arsenault, Raymond, 107 art museums, air-​conditioning of, 8, 10, 194–95 See also Frick Collection (New York City); Kimbell Art Museum (Fort Worth, Texas) National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.); Yale Center for British Art (New Haven, Connecticut); and Yale University Art Gallery Addition (New Haven, Connecticut) Associated Architects (New York City), 74 See also Rockefeller Center Atlanta, Georgia, air-​conditioning in, 107 Austin, Texas, air-​conditioning in, 91 Austin, Warren, 173 Austin Co., 55, 58 See also Owens-​Illinois Glass Co. (Gas City, Indiana); Simonds Saw and Steel Co. Building (Fitchburg, Massachusetts) Baird, George, 226 bakeries, air-​conditioning of, 40, 51, 107

Balaban, Abraham J., 63 Balaban, Barney, 63 Balaban and Katz theaters, 63–65, 67, 69 Banham, Reyner, 28, 29, 32, 34, 118, 126, 170, 180 Architecture of the Well-​Tempered Environment, 1, 3, 4, 6 banks, air-​conditioning of, 12–15, 107, 111, 121–32 barber shops, air-​conditioning of, 62, 107 beauty parlors, air-​conditioning of, 107 Beersman, Charles G., 41 Bel Geddes, Norman, 147 Bell, Joe, 265n95 Belluschi, Pietro, 2, 5, 159, 160, 161 See also Equitable Building (Portland, Oregon) Benesch, Edward J., 167 Bergstrom, G. Edwin, 100 Berlage, Hendrik, 37 Berlin National Gallery, 262n84 Biddle, Jeffrey, 62 Bock, Richard, 37 Boston Filene’s Sons and Co., 53 Brewster, Kingman, 226 Brown, Dr. Richard F., 195, 221, 222, 223, 224 See also Kimbell Art Museum (Fort Worth, Texas) Brown, William S., 176 Buffalo, New York Guaranty Building, 18 Larkin Co. Administration Building (see Larkin Co. Administration Building [Buffalo, New York]) Buffalo Forge Co., 25, 26, 27, 28, 40 Bunshaft, Gordon, 2, 5, 7, 176, 178, 180 See also Lever House (New York City) Cake, Ralph H., 160, 161 See also Equitable Building (Portland, Oregon) California Coastal Commission, 212 Canney, A. Warren, 40, 74, 79, 80, 236 See also Rockefeller Center (New York City)

275

Carbondale Machine Co., 22 Carnegie Institute of Technology (Pittsburgh), 211 Carrère and Hastings, 194 Carrier, Willis, 3, 17, 29, 39, 40, 69, 116, 238 Carrier Air Conditioning Co. of America, 28, 40 Carrier Engineering Corporation, 26, 40, 42, 55, 62, 65, 69, 73, 86, 94, 107, 109, 116, 118, 169, 178, 186, 239, 249n48 Grauman’s Metropolitan Theater, later Paramount Theater (Los Angeles), 65–68, 67, 68, 69 Igloo of Tomorrow, New York World’s Fair (1939–40), 54–55, 55 Johnson, SC, and Co. Administration Building (Racine, Wisconsin), 139 Lever House (New York City), 168, 174–81, 175, 177, 178, 179, 180 “Manufactured Weather,” 71, 86 Milam Building (San Antonio, Texas), 114–18, 114, 116, 117, 118, 119, 147, 168 Northwestern Terra Cotta Co. (Chicago), 42–43 Pentagon, 100–104, 101, 102, 103, 168 Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building, 121–32, 122, 123, 125, 127, 128, 129, 147, 168 RCA Building (Rockefeller Center, New York City), 73, 82 Radio City Music Hall, 75–78, 76, 77, 78, 79 Rivoli Theater (New York City), 69–70, 238, 239 Seagram Building (New York City), 185–87, 183, 184, 186, 187, 188 United Nations Secretariat Building, 165–74, 166, 167, 169, 170, 171, 172 United States Capitol, 84, 85, 86–91, 86, 87, 88, 89, 92, 93, 93, 95 Weathermaster System, 100–4, 168, 170, 171–72, 176, 179–80, 186, 252n92 White House (Washington, D.C.), 98–99, 103 Wrigley Chewing Gum Factory (Chicago), 41–42, 42 ceilings, and air-​conditioning, 16, 18, 21, 22, 35, 47, 47, 48, 67, 68, 76, 76, 77, 87, 88, 118, 119, 129, 129, 131– 32, 132, 151, 154, 155, 163, 165, 169, 179, 179, 186, 188, 188–90, 190, 192, 196, 197–99, 197, 198, 199, 203–5, 205, 219–20, 220, 222, 223–26, 225, 227, 230–33, 231, 232, 233

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Century of Progress Exposition (Chicago, 1932–33), 4, 49–50, 52, 53 Chewning, Ray C., 163 Chicago Abraham Lincoln Center, 245n104 air-​conditioning in, 50–51 atmosphere of, 15 Carson Pirie Scott Building, 53 Central Park Theater, 63, 238 Chicago Board of Trade, 51 Chicago Cold Storage Exchange, 243n21 Chicago National Bank Building (see Chicago National Bank Building [Chicago]) Chicago Stock Exchange Building (see Chicago Stock Exchange Building) Chicago Tribune Building, 51 Clearing Industrial District, 135 Commonwealth Promenade Apartments, 182, 261n83 860–880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments, 181–82, 181, 262n80 Englewood shopping district, 51–53, 62 Esplanade Apartments (900–910 Lake Shore Drive), 181, 182, 261n81 Harris Trust Bank building, 242n2 Health Commissioner, 64 Marshall Field & Co., 53 meatpacking in, 22, 238 Merchandise Mart (Chicago), 51, 246n53 movie theater air-​conditioning in, 63–65 Palmer House, 51 Promontory Apartments, 181 Prudential Building (Chicago), 246n53 Schiller Building, 18 theater ventilation in, 17 320 W. Oakdale, 261n83 Tivoli Theater, 64 Wrigley Building (see Wrigley Building [Chicago]) Wrigley Chewing Gum Factory (see Wrigley Chewing Gum Factory [Chicago]) Chicago Auditorium Building, 16 Auditorium Theater, 16–18, 16, 38, 76 Chicago National Bank Building (Chicago), 12–15, 13, 14, 15, 31, 32, 33 Chicago School, 13 Chicago Stock Exchange Building, 18, 30 Trading Room, 21, 21 China, air-​conditioning in, 11

Chronicle Cotton Mills (Belmont, North Carolina), 28 Cité de Refuge (Paris), 173 Clausen, Meredith, 159 Cologne, Germany Municipal Theater, 248n11 comfort, air-​conditioning and, 62, 120–21, 130–31, 146–47, 148, 235 Commonwealth Edison Co., 51, 53 compressive refrigeration, for air-​ conditioning 27, 237–39, 238 condenser water, 54, 75, 92–94, 102, 105–6, 109, 125–26, 237 Congress of the United States, air-​ conditioning for, 4, 8, 82, 84–96, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89 Consolidated Edison, 65, 172, 173, 260n53 cooling towers, 54, 75, 109, 127–28, 226, 237 condenser water for, 9, 54, 75, 90, 102, 109 Cooper, Gail, 10 Cope and Stewardson, 200 Copeland, Royal S., 84–85, 95 Corbett, Harrison, and MacMurray, 74 Corning Glass Works, 141 Cowan, Love, and Jackson, 221 Cramer, Ambrose C., 135 Cramer, Stuart W., 28, 107 Cret, Paul Philippe, 98, 193 and Frank Lloyd Wright, 251n66 Cronheim and Weger, 204–05 Croton Aqueduct, 75 Crystal Palace (London), 50 curtain walls, and air-​conditioning, 161, 164–65, 174, 177–79 Cushman and Wakefield, 184 Dallas, Texas, air-​conditioning in, 82, 91, 107 Palace Theater, 69 dehumidification, and air-​ conditioning, 2, 17, 19–28, 63, 67, 85–88, 142–43, 194–95, 253n27 department stores, air-​conditioning of, 8, 10, 51–53, 62, 94, 104, 106, 107, 111, 116 Detroit Hudson’s Department Store, 53 Disney, Walt, 72 Disney, Walt, Productions, Animation Building (Burbank, California), 72–73, 72 Dubin, Fred and Salk Institute for Biological Studies, 212–15, 236 Dubin Mindell Bloome, 212, 213–14, 220

Dudley, George, 165 Earth Day, 235 Edison Electric Institute, 62 Eli Lilly and Co., 210 Equitable Building (Portland, Oregon), 5, 159–65, 160, 164, 165, 176, 179, 259n8 air distribution, 163–64 cold cathode lighting, 163, 165 geo-​exchange heating and cooling, 163 heat pump, 161–63, 162 Equitable Savings and Loan Association (Portland, Oregon), 159, 165 Europe, air-​conditioning in, 10–11 factories, air-​conditioning of, 4, 6, 10, 37, 40, 42, 43–44, 44, 45, 46, 47, 47, 48, 48, 49, 55–59, 56, 57, 58, 62, 67, 72, 83, 104, 107, 108–9, 116, 120, 121, 134–35, 231 Fallingwater, 133 Farnsworth House (Plano, Illinois), 262n84 Fenn, Charles, 159 film manufacturing and film studios, air-​conditioning of, 40, 71–73, 72 Fitch, James Marston, 207 Florida, air-​conditioning in, 110 Ford, Henry, 43 Ford Motor Co., air-​conditioning, 4, 43 Engineering Laboratory (Dearborn, Michigan), 46–47, 47 factories at Highland Park, Michigan (1908), 44 (1913–14), 42, 44–46, 44, 45, 47, 49 production of Model T automobile, 44 River Rouge plant, 46, 48, 49 Motor Assembly Building, 48–49, 48 Tool and Die Shop (Dearborn, Michigan), 58 unionized workers, 44, 49 Fort Worth, Texas, 223 Carter, Amon, Museum of Western and American Art (Fort Worth, Texas), 223 Kimbell Art Museum (see Kimbell Art Museum [Fort Worth, Texas]) Freedman, Lionel, 199 Freon, 87, 143, 237 Frick Collection (New York City), 59, 194, 195

Frigidaire, 54 Fujikawa, Joseph, 181, 182 Fuller, Buckminster, 198 Fuller, George A., Co., 184 Galsworthy, John, 235–36 Garczynski, Edward, 18 General Electric Corporation, 72, 78 General Motors Technical Center (Warren, Michigan), 6, 187–92 Dynamometer Building, 188, 190– 92, 191, 192 Engineering Building, 188–90, 189, 190 Research Staff Administration Building, 190 General Services Administration, 106 Geren, Preston M., 221, 225, 226 Giedion, Sigfried Mechanization Takes Command, 3 Gilbert, C. H. P., 25 glass block, 58–61, 58, 60, 61 Glickman, Mendel, 140, 149 Goodwin, Philip L., 59 Graham, Anderson, Probst and White, 41, 51 Grauman, Sidney, 65, 66, 68, 76 Grauman’s Metropolitan Theater, later Paramount Theater (Los Angeles), 65–68, 67, 68, 69, 76. Gray, Edward, 4, 44 The Greatest Story Ever Told, 247n72 Haines, Harry L., 95 Harbula, M. G., 53 Harrison, Wallace, 2, 4, 75, 166, 236 See also United Nations Secretariat Building (New York City) Harrison and Abramovitz, 5, 165, 166, 170, 187 See also United Nations Secretariat Building (New York City) Hart, Sara, 7 Hartford, Connecticut, 94 Hattis, Robert E., 135, 136 hay fever, and air-​conditioning, 117, 121, 130, 131, 147, 164 heat pump, 161–63, 162, 239–40 Heath, William R., 37 Hershey Chocolate Corporation (Hershey, Pennsylvania), 138, 256n22 Holabird and Root, 51, 252n92 Holophane, 233 Hood, Godley, and Fouilhoux, 74 See also Rockefeller Center (New York City) Hoover, Herbert, 98 Horwitz, Will, Jr., 69

hospitals, air-​conditioning of, 106, 107 hotels, air-​conditioning of, 8, 50, 51, 104, 106, 107, 111, 131, 156, 183 houses, air-​conditioning of, 10, 11, 50, 109, 110, 111, 178 Houston, Texas; air-​conditioning in, 10, 69, 107, 108, 110–11 Astrodome, 111 Humble Oil and Refining Co. Building, 108 Second National Bank Building, 108 Texan Theatre, 69 University of Houston, 111 Houston Power and Lighting Co., 111 Howe, George, 2, 8, 121, 123, 125, 128, 195, 227, 236 See also Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building Howe and Lescaze, 2, 5, 113, 121, 123, 126, 129 See also Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building Illinois Institute of Technology (Chicago), 188, 262n84 Illinois Manufacturers Association, 74 Impellitteri, Vincent, 173 Imperial Hotel (Tokyo), 149 Ingels, Margaret, 27, 69 Insulux glass block, 58–59 Internal Revenue Service, 96 International Style, 5, 61, 113, 129, 147, 159 exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York City (1932), 61, 122 interstitial space, for air-​conditioning, 8–9, 129, 189, 193, 203, 215, 224, 231 Janes, Les, 52–53 Japan, air-​conditioning in, 11, 249n48 Jaros, Alfred, Jr., 7, 178, 182–83, 184–85, 236 See also Seagram Building (New York City) Jenney, William LeBaron, and Mundie, William Bryce, 12–13, 15, 32 See also Chicago National Bank Building Johnson, Herbert, 138, 148 and Frank Lloyd Wright, 139, 148 Johnson, Philip, 182 Johnson, Samuel, 145 Johnson, SC, Co., 145 Johnson, SC, Co. Administration Building (Racine, Wisconsin), 5, 29, 39, 132, 133–48, 134, 140, 143, 144, 146, 159, 258n104

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Johnson, SC, Co. Administration Building (continued) Aeroshades in, 141, 144–45 cooling system of, 133, 142–45, 149, 256n26, 256n30, 257n78 dendriform or lily-​pad columns in, 133, 134, 140, 140, 146, 149, 256n35 heating system of, 133, 149, 256n21, 256n30, 257n78 influence on SC Johnson Co., 145 Kahn, Louis I., response to, 156 and Larkin Co. Administration Building (Buffalo, New York), 139 main workroom in, 133, 134, 134, 140, 141, 142, 144–45, 144, 148 nostrils of, 134, 134, 143, 143, 144, 148, 206 Pyrex tubing in, 140–42, 140 and streamlined aesthetics, 147–48, 257n82 as windowless office building, 5, 133–34, 140, 141, 148, 156 Wright, Frank Lloyd, on, 134, 140, 147–48, 256n30 Johnson, SC, Co. Research Tower (Racine, Wisconsin), 5, 7, 133, 134, 148–56, 150, 151, 153, 154, 155, 202, 258n104 air-​conditioning of, 149–55 as corporate symbol, 155 fire protection for, 154 fume hoods in, 154, 202 Kahn, Louis I., response to, 206–7 Pyrex tubing in, 149, 150–51, 155 structural system of, 149–52, 150, 151 taproot foundation of, 133, 150 Wright, Frank Lloyd, on, 149–50, 155 Jordy, William, 122, 191, 209, 210 Kahn, Albert, 2, 55, 188, 210, 235, 236 and Ford Motor Co., 4, 43, 46–47, 47 and General Motors and Chrysler corporations, 47 organization of firm, 47–48 Kahn, Louis I., 2, 6, 7, 8, 156, 187, 190, 191, 236 and Beaux-​Arts education, 193 on mechanical systems, 197, 216, 227 and Mies van der Rohe, 193, 200 on served and service spaces, 6 See also Kimbell Art Museum (Fort Worth, Texas); Richards, Alfred Newton, Medical Research Building, University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia); Salk

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Institute for Biological Studies, (La Jolla, California); Yale Center for British Art (New Haven, Connecticut); Yale University Art Gallery Addition (New Haven, Connecticut) Katz, Samuel, 63 Keast and Hood, 202 Kelly, Richard, 199–200, 221 Kelvin, Lord, 240 Kelvinator Co., 54, 138 Kimball, Dwight D., 70 Kimbell Art Foundation, 221 Kimbell Art Museum (Fort Worth, Texas), 6, 195, 221–26, 222, 223, 224, 225 Komendant, August, 201, 212 Korean War, 196 Kresge stores, 53 Kroeker, J. Donald, 161, 163 See also Equitable Building (Portland, Oregon) Kroeschell Bros. Ice Machine Co. (Chicago), 238, 245n98 Kroger stores, 53 Kwan Yew, Lee, 11 laboratories, air-​conditioning in, 8, 10 See also Johnson, SC, Co. Research Tower (Racine, Wisconsin); National Aluminate Corporation (Chicago); Richards, Alfred Newton, Medical Research Building, University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia); and Salk Institute for Biological Studies (La Jolla, California) Lacy, Rogers E., 156, 157 Lacy Hotel project (Dallas), 5, 156–58, 157 Lamb, F. W., & Co. (Chicago), 242n12 Lamb, Thomas, 69 Larkin, John D., 30, 38 Larkin Co. Administration Building (Buffalo, New York), 3, 12, 13, 21, 28–39, 29, 31, 33, 34, 35, 98, 113, 114, 133 and Chicago National Bank Building, 30–32, 33 context of, 28, 30, 33, 36, 37 employees in, 30, 37 exterior expression of mechanical systems of, 29, 37–39 heating, cooling, and ventilating of, 15, 28–37, 63 and Niagara Falls, 37 open interior spaces of, 35, 36–37 skylight roof of, 30–32, 36 Latour, Bruno, 1

Le Corbusier, 191, 213 and brise-​soleil, 173–74 Cité de Refuge (Paris), 173 and United Nations Headquarters, 165–66, 171, 173–74, 181, 260n54 Unité d’habitation (Marseilles), 173–74 legislative halls, air-​conditioning in, 91, 113 See also United States Capitol (Washington, D.C.) Leidigh, Thomas, 202, 203 Leopold, Charles S., 100, 103 Lescaze, William, 123, 129 See also Howe and Lescaze; Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building (Philadelphia) Lever House (New York City), 5, 7, 161, 168, 168, 174–81, 175, 177, 178, 179, 180, 184, 185, 186 Lewis, [L.] Logan, 65, 67, 69, 93 Lewis, Samuel R., 7, 141, 149, 152, 257–58n89 Libbey-​Owens-​Ford Glass Co., 60, 161 Lie, Trygve, 165, 170, 172 lighting, artificial, and air-​ conditioning, 4, 6, 12, 16, 52, 57, 57, 66, 67, 72, 76, 76, 86, 88, 119, 129, 132, 136–37, 141, 142, 145, 155, 165, 179, 188, 189, 190, 195, 197, 198, 220, 222, 232, 247n88 Lipman, Jonathan, 138, 139, 148, 149 Los Angeles See Grauman’s Metropolitan Theater, later Paramount Theater (Los Angeles) Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 221 Luckman, Charles, 176 Lyle, Irving, 26, 27 Lynn, David, 85, 86, 94 MacAllister, Jack, 218, 265n80 Manship, Paul, 81 Prometheus, 81 Marlo fan coil units, 181, 182 Marseilles Unité d’habitation, 173–74 Martin, Darwin, 29, 30 Martin, Joseph, 96 Matson, J. Mandor, 138–39, 256n19, 256n21, 256n22, 256n23 McBride, Henry, 60 McKenzie, Voorhees, and Gmelin, 115 McKim, Mead, and White, 124 mechanical engineers, collaborations with architects, 1, 6–7, 83, 236 See also Canney, A. Warren; Dubin, Fred; Jaros, Alfred W., Jr; Lewis, Samuel R; and Wolff, Alfred

Meigs, Montgomery C., 84, 89 Mellon, Andrew, 195 Mellon, Paul, 195, 226 Mellor, Meigs, and Howe, 123 Mendelsohn, Erich, 129 Metro-​Goldwyn-​Mayer, 72 Mexico, air-​conditioning in, 249n48 Meyers, Marshall, 223, 226, 232 Miami, Florida, air-​conditioning in, 10, 107–8 Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig, 2, 5, 7, 159, 181–87, 188, 193, 200 archive of, Museum of Modern Art (New York City), 186 See also Berlin, National Gallery; Chicago, Commonwealth Promenade Apartments; Chicago, 860–880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments; Chicago, Esplanade Apartments; Chicago, 900–910 Lake Shore Drive; Chicago, Illinois Institute of Technology; Chicago, Promontory Apartments; Farnsworth House (Plano, Illinois); Seagram Building (NewYork City) Milam, Col. Benjamin, 113, 115 Milam Building (San Antonio, Texas), 5, 112, 113–21, 114, 116, 119, 130, 131, 147, 172, 178, 253n27 Millard, Charles, 114 Mindell, Harold, 212–14, 221 Minneapolis Honeywell, 103 Moe, Kiel, 218 Moses, Robert, 173 movie theaters, air-​conditioning of, 4, 8, 10, 50, 63–71, 70, 85, 107, 108, 121, 238 Mueller, Paul, 38 Mullet, Alfred D., 251n67 Mumbai, India, air-​conditioning in, 11 Museum of Modern Art (New York City), 4, 59–61, 60, 61 Nash Kelvinator, 54 National Aluminate Corporation (Chicago), 135–39, 135, 136, 137, 138, 156 National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, 210 National Institutes of Health, 220 Neass and Murphy, 246n53 New Deal, 4, 94, 99, 100 New Orleans, Louisiana, air-​ conditioning in, 10, 108 New York City air-​conditioning in, 51 Barclay-​Vesey Building, 115 Bloomingdale’s, 53



Board of Health, 85 Carnegie Hall, 22 Department of Water Supply, 75 Empire State Building, 121 Frick Art Reference Library, 194 Frick Collection, 59, 194, 195 Frick Mansion, 59, 194 Lever House (see Lever House [New York City]) Lord and Taylor, 53 Macy, R. H., Co., 53 Madison Square Garden, 49 movie theater air-​conditioning in, 64–65, 69–71 Museum of Modern Art (see Museum of Modern Art [New York City]) New York Stock Exchange (see New York Stock Exchange Building [New York City]) Parkchester (Bronx), 10 Radio City Music Hall (see Radio City Music Hall [New York City]) Rivoli Theater, 69–70, 238, 239 Rockefeller Center (see Rockefeller Center [New York City]) Rockefeller, John D., Jr., Mansion, 59–60 Sackett and Wilhelms Lithographing and Printing Co. (see Sackett and Wilhelms Lithographing and Printing Co., Brooklyn [New York City]) Seagram Building (see Seagram Building [New York City]) Smoke Nuisance Committee, 71 summer climate of, 23 25 East 83rd Street, 242n24 United Nations Secretariat Building (see United Nations Secretariat Building [New York City]) New York Stock Exchange Building air-​conditioning of, 21–25, 26, 236, 243n52 Trading Room (formerly Board Room) in, 21, 22, 24, 26 New York Telephone Co., 115 New York World’s Fair (1939–40), 4, 49, 53–55 Igloo of Tomorrow, Carrier Corporation, 54, 55, 55 Newhouse, Victoria, 165 Niemeyer, Oscar, 165, 166 Nimmons, George C., 52 Nimmons, Carr, and Wright, 52 Northwestern Terra Cotta Co. (Chicago), 42–43 Nygren, Werner, 24

O’Connor, Basil, 210, 211 O’Dwyer, William, 172 office buildings, air-​conditioning of, 4, 5, 12, 15, 18, 28, 29, 51, 92, 94, 96, 100–104, 105, 106, 108, 111, 113–32, 172, 178, 184–85, 135–48, 159–90, 230, 231 Orr, Douglas, 196 Owens-​Illinois Glass Co. (Gas City, Indiana), 58–59, 58 Owings, Nathaniel, 176 Paris Cité de Refuge, 173 Pellecchia, Anthony, 226 Pellecchia and Meyers, 226 Pentagon, air-​conditioning of, 4, 83, 100–104, 101, 102, 103, 113, 168 Pereira, William L., and Associates, 221 Perkins, G. Holmes, 201 Persian Gulf, air-​conditioning in, 11 Perspecta, 197 Peters, William Wesley, 140, 149, 157, 257n82 Pfeiffer, Annie M., Chapel, Florida Southern College (Lakeland), 140 Pfisterer, Henry A., 198–99, 226–27 Philadelphia Girard Trust Building, 124 Fidelity-​Philadelphia Trust Company Building, 124 Richards, Alfred Newton, Medical Research Building (see Richards, Alfred Newton, Medical Research Building, University of Pennsylvania [Philadelphia]) Wanamaker’s Department Store, 53 Philadelphia Electric Co., 125 Philadelphia Saving Fund Society (PSFS) Building, 5, 113, 121–32, 122, 123, 125, 127, 128, 129, 130, 132, 135, 147, 159, 168, 171, 195, 254n62 banking hall of, 122, 124, 125, 128, 129–30, 129, 131–32, 132 Philadelphia Savings Fund Society, 122, 254n62 Phoenix, Arizona, air-​conditioning in, 157–58 Piano, Renzo, 221 Pittsburgh Kauffmann’s Department Store, 53 Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co., 161 Place, Clyde R., 60, 74 See also Rockefeller Center (New York City) Pope, John Russell, 59, 96, 194, 195

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Portland, Oregon, 165, 176, 180 Equitable Building (see Equitable Building [Portland, Oregon]) Post, George B., 21, 22 Potomac Electric Power Co., 106 Price, H. C., Co. Tower (Bartlesville, Oklahoma), 140, 156, 157 Prown, Jules David, 226, 227, 228 Putnam, George, 140 Quinan, Jack, 13, 28, 30, 32, 37, 38 Radio City Music Hall (New York City), 73, 75–78, 76, 77, 78, 79 air-​conditioning of, 4, 73, 75–78, 77, 78, 79, 80, 249n68 opening of, 4, 73 restoration of, 249n68 radio stations, air-​conditioning of, 107 railway cars, air-​conditioning of, 107, 121 Ramsey, George, 242n14 Rapp, W. C., and George Rapp, 63 Reinhard and Hofmeister, 54, 74 restaurants, air-​conditioning of, 51, 62, 63, 107, 111, 121 retail stores, air-​conditioning of, 49, 52, 62, 107, 108, 121, 248n4 Rialto Theater Corporation, 69 Richards, Alfred Newton, Medical Research Building, University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia), 6, 156, 191, 200–210, 200, 202, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 211, 213, 216, 217, 219, 220–21, 264n44, 264n66 Kahn, Louis I., on, 208–09 Robinson, Cervin, 208 Rockefeller, John D., Jr., 165 Rockefeller Center (New York City), 73 air-​conditioning of, 4, 9, 40, 54, 60, 73–75, 83, 94–95, 108, 236 Ice-​Skating Rink, Rockefeller Center Plaza, 81–82, 81 NBC Broadcasting Studios, 78–80, 80, 81, 82, 138 RCA Building, 73, 74, 75, 78, 80, 81, 82, 249n65 RCA Building West, 73, 78–79 RKO Building, 74 and United Nations campus, 165 See also Radio City Music Hall (New York City) Roosevelt, Franklin, 99 Rothafel, Samuel L., 69 Rouzer, Horace D., 94 Saarinen, Aline, 191 Saarinen, Eero, 2, 6, 8, 187 See also General Motors Technical Center (Warren, Michigan)

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Sackett and Wilhelms Lithographing and Printing Co. (Brooklyn, New York City), 25–28, 26, 40 St. Louis, Missouri, air-​conditioning in, 107 Union Trust Building, 18 Wainwright Building (see Wainwright Building [St. Louis, Missouri]) Salk, Dr. Jonas, 210–12, 213, 217, 218 Salk Institute for Biological Studies (La Jolla, California), 6, 210–21, 211, 212, 213, 214, 216, 217, 219, 220, 221, 225, 227, 233, 236, 265–66n100, 266n101 abstract of program, 265n80 San Antonio, Texas, 9, 113–15, 116, 121 Milam Building (see Milam Building [San Antonio, Texas]) San Antonio Public Services Co., 121 San Francisco May’s Department Store, 53 SC Johnson Co. See Johnson, SC, Co. schools and universities, air-​ conditioning in, 107, 109 Schwartz, Milton M., 261n83 Seagram Building (New York City), 5, 7, 182–87, 183, 184, 186, 187, 188, 200, 203, 236, 262n97 Sears, Roebuck & Co., 53 Englewood Store, Chicago, 51–53, 52, 62 Shadford, Richard, 227 Simon and Simon, 124 Simonds Saw and Steel Co. Building (Fitchburg, Massachusetts), 55–58, 56, 57, 247n88 Singapore, air-​conditioning in, 11 Sirocco fan units, 45, 143 Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, 5, 159 See also Lever House, New York City Sleeper, Harold R., 242n14 Smith, Hinchman, and Grylls, 187 Snow White, 72 Snyder, M. A., 120 Solex glass, 161, 168, 177 South Africa, air-​conditioning in, 249n48 Southern and Southwestern United States, air-​conditioning in, 10, 64–65, 96, 107–12 Stanger, Howard, 30 Starlux plate glass, 213 Starrett, Col. William A., 121 Steinle, J. Vernon, 148, 150 Stern, Robert, 122 Stone, Edward Durell, 59, 75,

Sturgis, Russell, 18 on Larkin Co. Administration Building (Buffalo, New York), 37–38 Sullivan, Louis, 2, 3, 13, 15–21, 38 and “form follows function,” 203 on the organic analogy, 18–19 ornamental expression of mechanical systems, 18, 20 “The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered,” 19 See also Adler and Sullivan Syska and Hennessy, 166, 167, 168 See also United Nations Secretariat Building (New York City) Texas, air-​conditioning in, 4, 69, 110–12 Thermolux glass block, 60–61, 60, 61 Thermopane, 161, 167, 208 Thomas and Smith Co. (Chicago), 32 Thompson, Emily, 122 Timmis, Walter, 25, 26 Tor, Abba, 227, 228, 231 Torbett, Charles R., 91 Torrance, Henry, Jr., 22, 25 Travis, William B., 113 Travis Investment Co., 113 Tuthill, William B., 22 Twain, Mark, 71 Tyng, Anne, 197 Unité d’habitation (Marseilles), 173–74 United Nations Headquarters, 165 in Sperry Gyroscope Co. Factory (Lake Success, Long Island), 169–70 United Nations Secretariat Building (New York City), 5, 161, 165–74, 166, 167, 169, 170, 171, 172, 176, 177, 179, 180, 183, 184, 185, 186 renovation of (2010), 174 shadows cast by, 259n19 United States Capitol (Washington, D.C.), 9, 63, 84, 84, 85, 86, 92 air-​conditioning of, 4, 22, 84–91, 87, 88, 89, 93, 95, 105, 112, 250n42 Architect of the Capitol, 85, 91 Capitol Power Plant, 92, 93, 93, 94, 98, 100, 105, 106, 107 House of Representatives chamber, 84, 85, 86, 86, 87, 87, 105 Senate chamber, 84, 85, 86, 87, 91, 105 United States Geological Survey, 94 United States Public Health Service, 85–86 United States War Production Board, 104

United States Weather Bureau, 104 Unity Temple (Oak Park, Illinois), 38, 140 University of California at San Diego, 210 University of Pennsylvania Biology Building, 210 Biology Pond, 209 Botanical Gardens, 202 School of Medicine, 200–01 Anatomy-​Chemistry west addition, 200–01 Medical Laboratories (John Morgan Building), 200 See also Richards, Alfred Newton, Medical Research Building University of Texas, 110 Van Zelm, Heywood, and Shadford, 229, 231–32 Wainwright Building (St. Louis, Missouri), 18, 19–20, 19, 20, 38, 243n32 Walgreen’s stores, 53 Walker, Ralph, 15 Walls, Earl, 212 Walter, Thomas U., 84 Wantz, R. E., 74 Washington, D.C., air-​conditioning in, 4–5, 82, 83–107, 95, 105 Botanic Garden, 92 Capitol Hill, 4, 92–93, 94–95, 95, 96, 98, 105, 107 Central Heating Plant, 97–98, 98 Department of Commerce Building, 96, 97, 98 Department of Justice Building, 96, 97, 98, 99–100, 99, 100, 104 Department of Labor Building, 96, 97, 98, 99 Department of the Interior Building, 92 Executive Office Building, 251n67 Federal Reserve Building, 98 Federal Trade Commission, 96, 99 Federal Triangle, 4, 83, 96–100, 97, 98 Government Printing Office, 92 House and Senate Office Buildings, 4, 92, 93, 95, 99, 105, 105 Internal Revenue Service, 96, 97, 98, 111 Interstate Commerce Commission, 96, 97, 98, 99 Library of Congress, 89, 92, 105, 105



National Archives, 96, 97, 98, 99, 99 National Gallery of Art, 83, 195 Post Office Department, 96, 97, 98, 99 Statler Hotel, 83, 252n92 Supreme Court Building, 92, 105, 105 United States Capitol (see United States Capitol [Washington, D.C.]) War Department, 100, 104 Washington Monument, 95 White House, 96, 98, 103 Westinghouse, 54, 109 Willcox, James E., 121, 123, 125, 130–31 Willis, George Rodney, 5, 113, 114 See also Milam Building (San Antonio, Texas) windowless construction, department stores, 51–52, 52, 53, 62 exhibition buildings, 50, 54–55, 55 factories, 4, 55–59, 56, 57 hotels, 156–57 office buildings, 5, 133–38, 140, 148, 156 See also Century of Progress Exposition (Chicago, 1932–33); Johnson, SC, Co. Administration Building (Racine, Wisconsin); National Aluminate Corporation (Chicago); Sears, Roebuck & Co., Englewood Store (Chicago); and Simonds Saw and Steel Co. Building (Fitchburg, Massachusetts). windows, operable, and air-​ conditioning, 5, 15, 119, 168, 173, 177–78, 196 windows, sealed, and air-​conditioning, 4, 29–30, 33, 129, 160, 164, 168, 176, 177–78, 197, 180 Winslow, Charles-​Edward Amory, 250n9 Witmer, David J., 100 Wittenmeier, Fred, 238 Wolff, Alfred, 3, 17, 22–24, 25, 39, 236 and New York Stock Exchange Building, 22–25 Wollett, William Lee, 66 World’s Columbian Exposition (Chicago), 13 Worthington Corp., 109 Wright, Frank Lloyd, 8, 114 and Adler and Sullivan, 15–16, 18, 21, 28 on air-​conditioning, 139–40 An Autobiography, 32



Capital Journal newspaper plant project (Salem, Oregon), 140 and Chicago Auditorium Building, 15–16 and Cret, Paul Phillipe, 98, 251n66 fees of, 30, 149, 258n90 and integration of mechanical systems in architecture, 2, 8–9, 13, 45, 132, 152, 236 Lacy, Rogers, Hotel project (Dallas), 156–58 Larkin Co. Administration Building (Buffalo, New York), 3, 12, 28–39, 244n71 Lincoln, Abraham, Center (Chicago), 245n104 Johnson, SC, Co. Administration Building (Racine, Wisconsin), 5, 133, 139–48 Johnson, SC, Co. Research Tower (Racine, Wisconsin), 7, 148–56 The Natural House, 139–40 and organic metaphor for architecture, 38, 133, 147–48, 149, 152, 227 Pfeiffer, Annie M., Chapel, Florida Southern College (Lakeland), 140 Price, H. C., Co. Tower (Bartlesville, Oklahoma), 140, 156 on Louis Sullivan, 38 at Taliesin, 139 Unity Temple (Oak Park, Illinois), 140 and George Rodney Willis, 114 Wrigley, William, Jr., 41 Wrigley Building (Chicago), 41–43, 41 terra-​cotta fabrication for, 42–43 Wrigley Chewing Gum Factory (Chicago), 41–42, 42 Yale Center for British Art (New Haven, Connecticut), 6, 195, 226–34, 227, 228, 229, 231, 232, 233 Yale School of Architecture, 195 Yale University Central Power Plant, 227 Gallery of Fine Arts, 263n11 Yale University Art Gallery, 226 Addition (originally Yale University Art Gallery and Design Center), 6, 195–200, 196, 197, 198, 199, 226 tetrahedral ceiling of, 196–99, 197, 198, 199 York Ice Machinery Corporation, 94, 99

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Buil dings, La ndscape s, a nd Socie tie s Serie s Series Editor Jesús Escobar Advisory B oard Cammy Brothers, University of Virginia David Friedman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Diane Ghirardo, University of Southern California D. Fairchild Ruggles, University of Illinois at Urbana-​Champaign Volker Welter, University of California–Santa Barbara

Other B o ok s in the Series The Nature of Authority: Villa Culture, Landscape, and Representation in Eighteenth-​Century Lombardy by Dianne Harris The Romanesque Revival: Religion, Politics, and Transnational Exchange by Kathleen Curran Cities and Saints: Sufism and the Transformation of Urban Space in Medieval Anatolia by Ethel Sara Wolper The Renaissance Perfected: Architecture, Spectacle, and Tourism in Fascist Italy by D. Medina Lasansky Constantinopolis/Istanbul: Cultural Encounter, Imperial Vision, and the Construction of the Ottoman Capital by Çiğdem Kafescioğlu The Culture of Architecture in Enlightenment Rome by Heather Hyde Minor Making Modern Paris: Victor Baltard’s Central Markets and the Urban Practice of Architecture by Christopher Mead Architecture and Statecraft: Charles of Bourbon’s Naples, 1734–1759 by Robin L. Thomas Gunnar Asplund’s Gothenburg: The Transformation of Public Architecture in Interwar Europe by Nicholas Adams Freedom and the Cage: Modern Architecture and Psychiatry in Central Europe, 1890–1914 by Leslie Topp