Innovative Ways in Which People Have Kept Cool Throughout Human History

From sleeping porches to coastal escapes, these tips and tricks have been helping people cope with intense heat since before air conditioning even existed.

As cities in many countries experienced record-breaking temperatures in July, it became necessary to look back in history to find out the innovative methods that people of the past used to combat the heat. It turns out that before the advent of home air conditioners in the mid-20th century, people were quite inventive when it came to keeping cool. Here are six of history's favorite ways to protect against summer climate extremes.

When it became too stuffy indoors, families often traveled outdoors - at least partially. At the turn of the 20th century, many homes were built with sleeping porches, a type of screened deck, usually located on the second or third floor of a home, where families slept to enjoy the fresh air. Sleeping porches were usually located on a corner or along the back wall of the house to catch cross breezes.

It was an era when sleeping in the fresh air was considered a great health boon. Sanitariums incorporated sleeping porches into their designs, relying on the light breeze coming through the windows to keep diseases like tuberculosis (one of the leading causes of death in the U.S. at the time) at bay. Residential builders soon picked up on the idea, and by the early 1900s, sleeping porches were appearing in homes from Minneapolis to Brooklyn, New York.

Historic examples of bedroom porches include several porches adorning the iconic Gamble House in Pasadena, California, and the porch at the Brucemore, a Queen Anne style mansion in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The Brucemore porch is the work of Grant Wood, the same artist who later painted American Gothic, one of the most famous paintings of 20th-century American art.

Even U.S. President William Howard Taft got in on the action. In 1910, the commander-in-chief built a separate sleeping porch on the roof of the White House, where it is said to have stood for at least another ten years.

These rustic structures were modeled after summer houses on English and French estates of the 18th century. Small, freestanding sheds with a roof to shelter from the summer heat were often found in gardens. Less polished than pergolas, they became especially popular in New York's Hudson Valley in the late 19th century, thanks to landscape designers such as Andrew Jackson Downing, who influenced the pergolas in Manhattan's Central Park.

Unfortunately, the untreated wood that is synonymous with summer houses requires constant maintenance, so most of the park's original structures had fallen into disrepair by the mid-20th century. The best surviving example stands in the center of the Rambla, a 36-acre wooded area.

Just south of New York's Catskill Mountains, the 40,000-acre 1869 Mohonk Mountain House Museum is home to about 125 summer cottages. Most were built between the 1870s and 1917, and no two are exactly alike. Built mostly by amateur carpenters, they were made of found materials such as American chestnut and later red and white cedar wood, and fitted with thatched roofs, which have since been replaced by cedar shingles.

Many of Mohonk Mountain House's summer cabins are located on rock ledges, while others overlook lakes and hiking trails. Most are equipped with benches, but all provide a respite from the relentless sunlight.

Walking through the streets of Guyana's capital, Georgetown, you will notice many wooden colonial buildings that have survived since the British and Dutch rule. Many of them have a unique feature on the upper floors: windows specially designed in the 18th and 19th centuries to cool the houses in the sweltering heat of the region.

Named after a historic region on the northern coast of South America, Demerara windows once adorned everything from cottages to department stores in Georgetown. They have perforated sides and louvers, individual horizontal planes angled to let in light and air while cutting off direct rays.

Demerara windows are traditionally made of imported pine, which holds up stronger than local wood in Guyana's high humidity conditions. They are fitted with a top hinge so that the window can be opened from the top by leaning outward. Residents often placed a block of ice or some water on the sill, cooling the warm air that passed through the window and helping to cool the interior of the building.

This distinctive window style later spread throughout the Caribbean on islands such as Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados. The Walter Roth Georgetown Museum of Anthropology, which houses a three-story colonial-era wooden structure built in the early twentieth century, features some remarkable examples.

The method of using evaporating water to keep cool dates back thousands of years. Ancient Egyptians fought the heat by wetting reed mats or curtains with water and then hanging them in doorways and windows. As the air passed over these surfaces, it became much cooler, adding some humidity to the hot desert climate.

In Persia, many homes used a type of underground conduit called a qanat (rope) in combination with a badgir (Iranian wind catcher) to keep their homes from overheating. According to the Tehran Times, "the water in the qanat cools the warm air coming in through the shaft, then flows into basements and out through the upper openings of the badgir." The result: tolerable indoor temperatures during the hottest months in the region.

When U.S. President James A. Garfield was fatally wounded by gunfire in July 1881, the nation's naval engineers developed their own form of "evaporative air conditioner" in an attempt to save him. It consisted of a large cast-iron box with fine cotton mesh, a tank filled with pounded ice, salt, and water, and an electric fan.

Although the device reduced the temperature in the president's room in the White House by 20 degrees Fahrenheit, it used up half a million pounds of ice in just two months, which did not prevent Garfield from dying from his injuries on September 19, 1881.

Not surprisingly, coastal and mountainous areas are often cooler than cities with heat-retaining infrastructure (and huge populations to boot). When temperatures rise, so historically, people move out of the city. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, some wealthy families from the East Coast spent summers in the Adirondack Mountains, visiting such expansive vacation spots as Camp Pine Knot and Camp Uncas. These places were set among shady forests and along bodies of water, natural elements that help mitigate the unfavorable climate.

For people, the idea of heading to beach resorts for fresh air and coastal breezes has its roots in Europe, especially in the UK, where "the concept of the 'revitalizing sea' was born," as described in Smithsonian magazine in 2016. In the early 17th century, Scarborough became the first seaside resort in England, and with the advent of railroads, other coastal settlements quickly followed.

Soon resort villages began to appear in the United States as well. The oldest sea resort in the country is Cape May, New Jersey, which became a vacation spot in the middle of the XVIII century. Palm Beach, Florida, appeared in the late XIX century.

Another means of keeping cool that originated in ancient times is the awning. These shade-giving awnings can be attributed to the Egyptians and Syrians, who often stretched woven mats over their market stalls or the outer walls of their homes. This provided much-needed shelter from the beating rays of the sun.

In the Roman Empire, canopies were also an essential attribute, especially in the Colosseum, which was equipped with a retractable canopy system called the velarium (velarium) that provided coolness for 50,000 spectators. The velarium consisted of long, interconnected strips of fabric hanging from 240 masts set in nests at the top of the amphitheater. Hundreds of sailors were required to raise and lower the awning.

Awnings became increasingly stylish and decorative over time, becoming a popular addition to American homes and businesses in the late 19th century. They were even used to cool the White House until the installation of central air conditioning in 1930. But with the advent of residential air conditioning after World War II, these protective coverings were no longer considered a necessity.

In 2019, Peter Liebhold, curator of the Division of Labor and Industry at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, discussed how the United States has long used technology to adapt to changing climatic conditions. He said, "Americans tend to change nature and make it work for themselves rather than be one with it."