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A General Electric air conditioner from 1963.

Probably everyone has had this thought at least once a summer, while sweating through their clothes on a subway platform or in a parking lot, desperate to locate their car: how did people survive before air conditioning? Although we may not be able to imagine summer without it, prior to its invention in 1902, people did still manage to live and go about their business in New York, and even in cities like Savannah and New Orleans. Here's how they did it.

They built their houses differently.

We may not think about it much, but the invention of the air conditioner radically changed the way people built buildings, especially in the south. You may have noticed that older buildings tend to have much higher ceilings: this allowed heat to rise so that inhabits could enjoy the cooler space below. Deep eaves and porches protected windows from the heat of the sun, and it was common to plant trees on the east and west sides of a house for additional shade.

In addition to this, rooms were designed with windows on opposite sides of the space, which allowed for cross ventilation. Air likes to have a place to go, so opening up a single window won't generate much air movement. But open two windows right across from each other and you can get a nice breeze going. In cases where it wasn't possible to have two windows on opposite sides of a single room, architects would line up rooms in a row, allowing air to flow between them. You can see this in old shotgun homes in New Orleans, or in railroad apartments in New York.

They got outside.

Currently the porch, like the fireplace, is a charming but somewhat vestigial architectural feature. But in the past porches were incredibly important, not just for shading the windows of a home, but also for providing a place where people could sit outside, out of the glare of the sun, and perhaps enjoy a breeze. These days, when it's hot, people flock inside, but in the past it was the opposite: temperatures indoors and out were more or less the same, and the porch was much less stuffy http://www.dlpower88.com/plumbing-issues-contact-a-professional-for-best-results/