This mid-1950s businessman is eager to get that era’s latest workplace amenity: central air conditioning.
Photographer: Harold M. Lambert/Archive PhotosHow Air Conditioning Took Over the American Office
Before AC, US office workers relied on building design features to adapt to high temperatures. But the promise of boosted productivity created a different kind of workplace.
When it opened in 1922, Detroit’s new nine-story police headquarters, designed by Albert Kahn, boasted reinforced concrete construction and the latest high-tech amenity for municipal workers: air conditioning.
Alas, the building’s early cooling system was no match for the deadly heat wave that roared through the Midwest US in July 1936, setting a string of records that still stand. During that long stretch of 100-plus-degree highs, which claimed more than 300 deaths in Detroit, police officers and staffers in the Renaissance Revival structure suffered along with everyone else (especially after the building’s top-floor radiators were accidentally turned on). “The only result ever attained by putting on the cooling system has been to blow soot out of the apertures and onto the faces of everyone in the building,” the Detroit News reported.