As Central Illinois swelters in the summer heat, most people have someplace to go to cool off. Not so long ago, it wasn’t like that. Chilled air has been around for only a century yet there are few things that have had larger effects on civilization. Major cities in the southwestern U.S. would not be as large as they are now, or perhaps there at all. Even in the Midwest, air conditioning shapes us all.
“As utilities struggle to meet the ever-increasing demand for energy, that becomes very problematic with peak demand. Peak demand is often in the summer, during the hottest days or weeks, and peak demand occurs primarily because of air conditioning. It is a technological innovation, which we depend on, but which has led to problems,” said Bill Kemp, librarian, McLean County Museum of History.
“The latest design air conditioning, with automatic control, provides comfortable even temperatures, always. Healthful warmth in cold weather, refreshing coolness in hot weather, a part of your new Normal.” - 1937 advertisement for the Normal Theater.
An early cooling innovation came with the invention of commercial electricity: the oscillating fan. Fans didn’t work for large, enclosed spaces like theaters and movie houses which became a fixture of American culture in the 1920s.
“Theaters are ungodly hot and humid in the summer, so there's a precipitous decline in ticket sales during the summer months, so movie houses are the really one of the first businesses to accept this new innovation… air conditioning or air plants installed in individual buildings,” said Kemp.
The first movie house in the United States to have air conditioning was the Rivoli Theater, on Times Square in Midtown Manhattan. In 1925, Willis Carrier installed what he called an air-cooling plant.
“Much skepticism, right? A lot of the theater goers actually brought fans. They didn't believe that this new-fangled contraption would actually work. There were plenty of naysayers. Needless to say, the trial run is a tremendous success,” said Kemp.
In the next few years, Carrier and his company [that still exists today] installed the refrigeration systems in more than 300 theaters across the nation. Other firms got into the HVAC business including two in Bloomington-Normal.
Williams Oil-O-Matic was not only a regional and national player in heating and cooling equipment, but internationally. A smaller company, P.H. MaGirl Foundry and Furnace Works, was also involved in the early era of air conditioning. The MaGirl Foundry building still exists on Oakland Avenue in Bloomington, now occupied by a plumbing supply company.
“The state requirement for public buildings is 25 cubic feet of air per person, and the new Normal system doubles the requirement with 50 cubic feet, or a total of 75,000 feet per minute into the entire house.” - 1937 The Normalite
The Irvin Theater on East Jefferson Street, on the east edge of Downtown Bloomington, was the first to install air conditioning in Bloomington.
“That was the premier movie house, the Popcorn Palace, if you will, in Bloomington Normal,” said Kemp.
The theater opened in 1915. Air conditioning came in 1934.
“We believe it's July 1, 1934… and the movie that night is Murder of the Vanities, which is a musical mystery somewhat forgotten,” said Kemp. “And it was good to offer air conditioning in 1934 because that was a scorcher of a summer across the United States.”
The Irvin Theater was torn down in 1987 and the site today is a parking lot for Second Presbyterian Church.
“The Irvin Theater would emphasize the fact it had air conditioning. Its marquee and its advertising would often say ‘always cool here’ with the word cool in a kind of a snow draped chilly font,” said Kemp.
There were just a handful of other McLean County businesses that had air conditioning then.
“Wahls Cafe in Chenoa, an iconic Route 66 cafe, offers air conditioning for the first time in the summer of 1934. They actually installed a Williams Oil-O-Matic, what they call an air-cooling plant,” said Kemp.
“The air conditioning of passenger cars is more than just filling up a car trimmed with a new device for the comfort of the passengers. It is really a revolution in railroad travel, marking the beginning of a new era as did the sleeping car when it was introduced during the last century.” C.M. House, Alton Railroad Official.
Staying cool by rail
Most of America still moved by rail in the 1930s. Middle class homes had yet to fully adopt the automobile. Rail travel was miserable in the summer. Closed dining, parlor and sleeping cars were hot and humid.
“Often you don't want to bring the windows down, because you're going to welcome a lot of steam and soot and ash and things like that,” said Kemp.
Railroads were another early adopter of air conditioning. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was the first in 1931 on the Columbian line, which connects New York City to Washington, D.C. In that year the B&O bought the Chicago and Alton Railroad which controlled the main north-south tracks through Bloomington-Normal. The Chicago and Alton Railroad shop was also the largest employer in the community then. The yards built and repaired rolling stock.
Retrofitting railcars with air conditioning was a big effort at the yards in 1934. They ran two shifts of 50 workers each just to convert coach and parlor cars to cooling. Second shift was 4 p.m. until midnight.
“That was a transformation or a revolution for railroads and bought them a decade or so as they began to compete with automobiles,” said Kemp.
