Scientifically Cooled! – The Dawn of Air-Condition Theatres
Imagine it is the dog days of summer — you are overheated and would like a place to relax and get out of the sun. You see a show is about to start at the local theatre, you buy a ticket, and take your seat. Now imagine that it is still hot in that theatre. I have a hard time with this one because I can say with a fair degree of certainty that all of my movie/theatre experiences have been in air conditioned theatres with the worst case scenario being that the air conditioning wasn’t working all that well but it was still on. In the early days of movie going this wasn’t always the case.
Tiffin Theatre, Chicago, IL
Some theatres left their doors opened and others closed up shop for the very hot months. Early methods to cool theatres saw owners storing ice underground in the cool months and then when temperatures rose they fanned cool air across the blocks of ice in the theatre. These methods had mixed results.
Carrier Theatre Cooling System
Above is a diagram of a Carrier system of air-conditioning developed after early systems. The Rivoli theatre in New York, NY, was one of the first major theatres Carrier worked on.
In 1917 Barney Balaban of the Balaban & Katz chain took ideas he learned while working as a chief clerk in a cold storage plant and applied them to the Central Park theatre in Chicago that the chain was building. They used “an electric, motor-driven refrigerating compressor and cooling coils, with air ducts to convey the ‘cooled’ air to the theatre auditorium” (”Annual Pioneer Award” 7). Due to some initial skepticism this idea had to be heavily marketed but once word spread it was a great success. Soon this was a major technology and draw that theatres could not do without.
Loews State Theatre, St. Louis(”Annual Pioneer Award to the Comforter of Millions…” Box Office, 1 March, 1947, p. 7)
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