Historic Theaters And Their Impact On Air Conditioning Today
This article was published in ASHRAE Journal, December 2019. Copyright 2019 ASHRAE. Posted at www.ashrae.org. This article may not be copied and/or distributedelectronically or in paper form without permission of ASHRAE. For more information about ASHRAE Journal, visit www.ashrae.org.The Golden Age of CoolingHistoric Theaters andTheir Impact onAir Conditioning TodayBY ROGER CHANG, P.E., MEMBER ASHRAEThe performing arts have been an integral part of the history and culture of society.Access to performance evolved significantly starting in the late 19th century, inextricably tied to developments in the conditioning of performance spaces. Overheatedtheaters had been a concern for centuries, with the cheapest seats often up higherand exposed to even higher temperatures. A theater presented significant challengesfor comfort and wellness, given they were often windowless, ornate, and most of all,packed with both performers and audience members. In an era before electric lighting, gas jets were used, often pushing temperatures past 100 F (38 C).¹First InnovationsMost theaters in New York City had no choice but tohalve performances during the summer. One of thefirst noted evolutions occurred at the Madison SquareTheater (Figure 1), newly renovated in 1880, and featuring a 650-seat house. The theater incorporated aventilation system for the first time, developed specifically for comfort. The system as envisioned by SteeleMacKaye, an actor/playwright/producer, is describedas costing 10,0001 and consisting of a 50 ft (15 m)high intake shaft on top of the theater’s roof with a3 ft (0.9 m) wide rotary fan. Outdoor air was drawnpast a bag-shaped cheesecloth filter, washed once aweek, forced through a chamber with racks of ice, thendistributed through a network of smaller “pipes” emerging throughout the auditorium. This system was notedby Mr. MacKaye as being able to keep butter solid.This system received a significant amount of coveragefrom the press but did not drive market transformation. The labor-intensive system used fans powered bysteam engines, and ice had to be replenished at a rateof two to four tons per performance. In 1885, two additional Broadway theaters incorporated similar systemsto the MacKaye concept—a low percentage of adoption.Reliability was a major concern, and The Evening Worldeven noted that a theater cooling system is “heard agreat deal more than it is felt.” Even if a system wasable to reduce air temperature a few degrees below theRoger Chang, P.E., LEED Fellow, is senior engineering leader with DLR Group in Washington, D.C.44ASHRAE JOURNALashrae.orgD E C E M B E R 2 0 19
ASHRAE — CELEBRATING 125 YEARSoutside temperature, the novelty of systems attractedmore scrutiny than if a theater had no system at all.Figure 1 Madison Square Theater. Source: Cool: How Air-Conditioning ChangedEverything [New York Public Library, Billy Rose Theater Division]20th Century ExperimentationThrough the remainder of the 19th century, emerging into the 20th century, experimentation continuedwith cooling systems but was seen through the lens offascination rather than pure necessity. A greater fascination occurred starting in 1882, when Thomas Edisonfirst made electricity available to consumers.1 Twobladed ceiling fans and tabletop fans became available,developed by Schuyler Skaats Wheeler. These electricfans were considered high-ticket items, costing up to 500 in today’s dollars. In 1895, the Chicago TelephoneCompany developed a custom ventilation system usingan “air washer,” prior to the much fuller understandingof air properties that would later come with psychrometrics. Humidity was not well understood, and an airwasher system on its own was also unreliable.In 1880, Alfred Wolff, at the age of 21, set up a businessas a “Steam Engineer.” In a decade, he became known asa heating-and-ventilation expert, with clients such asSt. Patrick’s Cathedral and Carnegie Hall. Although iceproduction had become more well-known by this time,Wolff knew using ice for cooling was limited in its potential. In 1899, he received a commission from CornellUniversity to develop a ventilation system for its MedicalCollege, as well as a refrigerating system for its dissecting rooms.¹ This led to the development of another commission for the New York Stock Exchange, which openedin 1903, considered the first high-profile application ofa cooling system specifically for comfort, rather thantextiles, manufacturing or food storage. Wolff would goon to develop systems for Columbia University, the NewYork Public Library, and the Metropolitan Museum ofArt, which interestingly noted the benefit of constanthumidity for preservation of art. When Wolff died in1909, the stage was set for broader adoption of comfortcooling systems, not only for those with means, but forall.Comfort Cooling EvolutionAt the beginning of the 20th century, Alexander Bellwas associated with the telephone and Thomas Edisonwith electricity, but comfort cooling still did not havea single champion. Willis Haviland Carrier, a graduate of Cornell University in 1901, set up Buffalo Forge’sDepartment of Experimental Engineering in 1902.Carrier first developed a system for the Sackett-WilhemsLithographic and Publishing Company. Printing in coloron paper was highly sensitive to humidity; Carrier useda steam coil as a chilled water coil, and coupled withcontrol of a fan and water temperature, was able to seeexcess humidity condensing on the coil. This initial system evolved over a decade of scientific exploration andexperimentation, resulting in the 1911 publication ofwork known as the “Rational Psychrometric Formulae.” 1By 1919, when Carrier published “The Story ofManufactured Weather,” increasing acceptance of cooling technology for manufacturers was well underway,but comfort cooling was still not widely embraced. Itnoted, “the non-industrial applications—residences,schools, churches, theatres, office buildings, etc.—havebeen comparatively few, because the Average Man is apeculiar animal in the way he dissociates the principleshe employs in his business and those he uses in the conduct of his home, his church, or even his amusements.”And again, the stage was set for the significant impact ofHollywood on exposing an entire generation to comfortcooling.In 1896, the first Vitascope showing occurred, aninvention of Thomas Edison. Tiny movie theaters startedto show up, and at 5 cents, the cost of admission wassignificantly less than for Broadway theater, or aboutD E C E M B E R 2 0 19ashrae.orgASHRAE JOURNAL45
ASHRAE — CELEBRATING 125 YEARSone-fifth the cost! In 1905,1 a Pittsburgh theater operaFigure 2 Rivoli Theater. The theater’s refrigeration plant was prominently featuredtor co-opted the name of a Boston music facility, Theon opening day on Memorial Day in 1925. Source: Cool: How Air-Conditioning ChangedEverything [Carrier]Nickelodeon, for a movie theater.1 By 1908, there wasestimated to be 8,000 theaters across the United States,with millions of attendees. The unintended consequence of this success was a generation exposed to theoppressiveness of spaces with no windows or ventilationin highly occupied spaces for hours at a time. Odor andstale air were associated with these nickelodeons andwere initially masked with perfume!Movie production houses saw the future of entertainment at their feet but also saw that the conditions wouldlimit the middle and upper class from seeing moviesunless interior conditions improved. Higher incomestreams were the way to further develop higher quality feature-length films. By the 1910s, movie theatersbecame more and more opulent. In 1915, the Rivoliin New York City (Figure 2) opened, the flagship of thereluctance to embrace ammonia-based refrigerationParamount Pictures chain. These theaters utilizedsystems. In 1912, the Isis Theatre in Houston installed antwo primary types of ventilation without mechanicalair washer, and ice continued to be used at several othercooling:theaters,1 either to cool water or airFigure3BalabanandKatzTheaterPoster. Exhaust-driven. Fans were useddirectly; outcomes were inconsistent.Advertisements for movie theaters in the 1910sto drive air from a space, relying onIn 1917, the New Empire Theaterand 1920s used air conditioning as a major feature,often emphasizing temperatures cooler than inmake-up air to enter as possible.in Alabama installed a 6 ton (21 kW)today’s ASHRAE thermal comfort zone. Source: AirOften these theaters had to keepvertical single-acting belt drivenConditioning America/Chicago Daily Tribune, 23 Junetheir lobby doors open, resulting inenclosed type refrigerating machine,1919discomfort for patrons at the rear ofbecoming the first known air-conthe theater. Very rarely were purposeditioned movie theater. There wasbuilt makeup air openings provided.little press coverage of this, as much Plenum system. In this case,of the attention on motion picturesoutdoor air was actively delivered towas occurring back in larger citiesthe space, but without exhaust fans.like New York City and Chicago. AtThe concept was that the supplya similar time, Barney Balaban andpressure would be enough to forceSam Katz opened the Central Parkout hot, stale air. The Typhoon FanTheater in Chicago (Figure 3), with acompany specialized in this type ofgoal of treating every patron, rich orsystem, which was used initially atpoor, as royalty. Balaban had beenthe Rivoli. The challenge with theseworking in the meat-packing tradesystems was air delivery. A simpleand was exposed to mechanicalsystem would introduce air by fanscooling.1 Frederick Wittenmeier, anengineer for the Kroeschell Brothersinto the theater, while others utilizedIce Machine Company, had beenmushroom-type ventilators at thedeveloping a large-scale refrigerationfloor. Both systems created discomfort, either due to too much or too little air movement. system using carbon dioxide, rather than ammonia, asthe refrigerant. The Central Park theater incorporated aEventually, movie theater operators realized thatWittenmeier system and used it as a prominent featuremechanical ventilation alone would not be enough forin drawing audiences. The Central Park Theater was ablecomfort. The air needed to be cooled, but there was a46ASHRAE JOURNALashrae.orgD E C E M B E R 2 0 19
ASHRAE — CELEBRATING 125 YEARSto maintain 78 F (26 C) space temperatures, but therewere still comfort complaints, due to use of floor-leveldistribution and “clammy” conditions.Carrier entered the movie-palace market around thetime of the Central Park Theater and studied the successes and failures of systems at many facilities. Henoted, with his team, that air distribution needed toevolve. Carrier engineer L.L. Lewis introduced an overhead supply air distribution strategy using custom-engineered diffuser cones (Figure 4). Interestingly, theaterdesigners were initially opposed to these, due to theirimpact on aesthetics. Over time, through integrateddesign between engineer and theater designer, overheadsupply systems gained acceptance.Figure 4 Carrier Theater Cooling System. An early diagram of Carrier’s system for airdistribution for a theater. Source: Historictheaters.orgOvercoming ObstaclesThere remained two major obstacles for comfort cooling in theaters: cost and space requirements. While a3,000-seat movie palace could better absorb the cost ofa 50,000 system within a basement, smaller facilitiescouldn’t absorb this cost and could not rely on ammonia-based equipment, although smaller. Carrier solvedthis issue with the invention of the centrifugal compressor, using dielene as a refrigerant. The compressor wasunveiled in 1922. A more refined version would later beinstalled at the Rivoli Theater in 1925. It is thought thatthe New York City inspector initially refused to issue apermit, due to a lack of familiarity with dielene and aconcern that it was flammable.1 The Rivoli opened withthe Carrier system on Memorial Day, with box officereceipts increasing by 5,000 a week. In the first summer, many other facilities took a wait-and-see approach,but quickly air conditioning became associated withthe movie experience, something included with theprice of admission. The Rivoli redoubled its investment in a 65,000 system in the first summer. Over thefollowing five years, Carrier outfitted more than 300theaters with refrigeration systems. It was not until 1927that Broadway theaters started to adopt air conditioning, rather than going on hiatus during the summer.The Ziegfeld Theater was outfitted with a new systemadvertising it as the “Coolest Theater in the World.” TheNew York Times reported, “There will be a cooling plant,capable of keeping the theater at 50 degrees if desired.”Refrigeration and air-washer evaporative cooling systems co-existed for quite some time. Between 1925 and1930, the Air Conditioning Corporation of Minneapolisinstalled 8,000 central-station evaporative-cooling systems.² In 1937, 11 out of 15 shows on Broadway were inair-conditioned theaters.1The chronology over 50 years—from 1880 and theMadison Square Theater to the air conditioning of RadioCity Music Hall in 1932—is deeply tied to entrepreneurship, monumental changes in technology, an everevolving demographic, and the formation of criticalengineering societies like ASHRAE, originally founded in1894 as the American Society of Heating and VentilatingEngineers (ASHVE). In 1954, the organization changedits name to the American Society of Heating and AirConditioning Engineers (ASHAE) almost 30 years afterthe 1920s golden age of air conditioning in theaters.Research and DevelopmentThrough the brief chronology already presented, theindustry experienced an intense demand for scienceand research to inform design. Movie exhibitors werebound by the same requirements for ventilation as public schools, but the exhibitors embraced air conditioning more quickly than in other markets. Outdoor airrequirements of 30 cfm (14 L/s) per person presented asignificant challenge for early air-conditioning systems.This 30 cfm (14 L/s) requirement was originally intendedfor mechanically ventilated spaces and published asa standard by ASHVE in 1914. Early system engineersfound a need to recirculate a portion of air to achieveD E C E M B E R 2 0 19ashrae.orgASHRAE JOURNAL47
ASHRAE — CELEBRATING 125 YEARSreasonable operating and first cost. At the same time,the engineering community was deeply focused on theimportance of humidity control on human thermalcomfort but found it hard to reconcile how operatorswanted to run systems, versus what evolving comfortresearch was showing. Carrier noted, “art never achievesits full possibilities, regardless of the market, until thebasic principles of its operation are thoroughly investigated and understood.”2In the early 20th century, tension rose amongthose who were proponents of mechanical ventilation versus air conditioning versus natural ventilation. Experimental data largely came from the ASHVEResearch Laboratory, established in 1919 at the U.S.Bureau of Mines in Pittsburgh, Penn. and led by F.Paul Anderson. This laboratory was first discussed byPresident Harry M. Hart at the 1917 ASHVE annual meeting. In 1922, the laboratory published its first findings,including a comfort chart, consisting of a graph of thecombinations of temperature and humidity at whichmost people would find thermal comfort.The historical record on July 4, 1919 for the RivieraTheater, a sister to the Central Park Theater, indicatedan outdoor temperature of 94 F (34 C), while theinside condition was between 74 F and 78 F (23 C and26 C) with 70% relative humidity.2 At this time, comfortwas considered qualitatively rather than quantitively.Wittenmeier was a proponent of an element of adaptivethermal comfort we see today, where the indoor temperature should be set to 15 F (–9 C) lower than the outdoortemperature.2 Wittenmeier disregarded relative humidity compared to Carrier and thought an RH of 75% wasacceptable, noting that while air could be sub-cooledto 50 F (10 C) and reheated, this required additionalequipment and operating cost. Carrier’s experience withhumidity control in industrial settings gave him valuable insights and a perspective that precision control ofthe indoor environment was important.In 1919, Balaban and Katz turned to the CarrierEngineering Corporation (CEC) to address the “cold andclammy” environment of Wittenmeier’s system in aneconomical manner. A major challenge was Chicago’sventilation requirement of 25 cfm (12 L/s) per person,lower than the 30 cfm (14 L/s) per person seen in NewYork City but still significantly higher than today’srequirement of 5 cfm (2 L/s) per person and 0.06 cfm/ft2 (0.31 L/s/m2). A tension continued to exist between48ASHRAE JOURNALashrae.orgD E C E M B E R 2 0 19Figure 5 Return Air Bypass. This diagram from 1928 showed a return air bypassstrategy that became dominant in providing cost-effective humidity control in 90% oftheaters during that era. Source: Air-Conditioning America / Refrigeration Engineering,15, May 1928proponents of mechanical ventilation alone versus airconditioning. CEC considered three options:2 Option 1: Reheat chilled water downstream of an airwasher. This was common to industrial systems but tooexpensive for comfort air conditioning. Option 2: Reduce airflow to 10 to 15 cfm(5 to 7 L/s) per person, but still at 100% outdoor air fraction, to better align with the temperature rise associatedwith occupant heat gain. This would require a variancefrom the Chicago Health Department.Option 3: Provide 25 cfm (12 L/s) per person, but as amixed air system, with 50% recirculated air. This wastechnically not compliant with the Chicago standards,which called for 25 cfm (12 L/s) of outdoor air.²The relationship between health and ventilation was asignificant topic of focus in the late 1910s through 1920s,driven by work at the ASHVE laboratory as well as theHarvard School of Public Health. At the 1923 ASHVEannual meeting, members voted to delete the term“fresh air” from its proposed ventilation standard, noting its imprecision and support of a perception that onlynon-recirculated air delivery systems were acceptable.Carrier’s team focused heavily on providing humidity control efficiently and developed what we still knowtoday as a return air bypass system (Figure 5). The earlyversion of this system called for 75% of the return airto bypass an air washer while allowing the remaining25% of outdoor air to enter the air washer. In 1921, theMetropolitan Theater in Los Angeles became the first touse a bypass arrangement. The air-conditioning systemwas estimated to cost 115,000. The system cost 500 permonth to run during the winter and 2,200 per monthduring the summer. The bypass system allowed for an
ASHRAE — CELEBRATING 125 YEARSindoor temperature of 78 to 80 F (26 to 27 C) at a relative humidity of 45 to 55%. The Metropolitan Theateralso incorporated an overhead supply air distributionsystem, even though it was still thought that a bottomup approach was beneficial given the natural upwardconvection generated by body heat, a concept that wouldemerge again as displacement ventilation many yearslater.The ASHVE laboratory produced a significant bodyof work supporting a thermal comfort envelope withbasic characteristics not too different from thoseof today; yet, theater managers pushed back on thenotion of a high-temperature/low-humidity environment. The early success of movie theaters was intertwined with the marketing of cold indoor temperatures, whether 70 F or 20 F (21 C or –7 C) less than theoutdoor temperature. CEC hoped research findingswould help convince operators to revise their viewsand not limit their focus to temperature. Marketingat the time used phrases like, “20 Degrees CoolerInside,” “Never Over 70 Degrees,” “Arctic Breezes,” and“Siberian Zephyrs.”2 Many theaters were designed witha positive pressure system. Theater managers left lobbydoors open to allow exfiltration of cool air and draw inpedestr
1 a Pittsburgh theater opera-tor co-opted the name of a Boston music facility, The Nickelodeon, for a movie theater.1 By 1908, there was estimated to be 8,000 theaters across the United States, with millions of attendees. The unintended con
ˆˇ This document is applicable to businesses that meet the following criteria: Seated theaters, cinemas, and performing arts centers primarily engaged in showing live or pre-recorded performances Examples of productions shown by theaters and cinema businesses include (non-exhaustive): plays, musicals,
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Applying the historic context to evaluations of historic properties Every evaluation "must place a property in its historic context to support that property's significance. Historic context means the information about the period, the place, and the events that created, influenced, or formed the backdrop to the historic resources.
4 Principles of repair and alteration to historic buildings 5 Specific reference to historic buildings in Part L Page 11, 0.19 6Meeting the Requirements of Part L Page 7, 1.11 - 1.14: Page 18, 1.58 - 1.62 (Improving energy efficiency in historic buildings) 7 Historic buildings as environmental systems Page 12, 1.3 - 1.35
iv Notes for Ward Tables: Map Number indicates the corresponding number identified on the actual Historic Building Map. If a building is not designated as historic, no number is provided in the column. Date Added is the date that the Mayor and Alderman designated the building as historic. Date Built is the known date of construction.Additional dates may indicate the period of
100 Historic, Contributing 311 W Holly St 1914 Meacham's Jewelry Co. 101 Historic, Contributing 111-13 E Magnolia St 1919 Bellingham Auto Laundry & Garage 102 Historic, Non-Contributing 114-22 E Magnolia St 1933 Howard's Stop & Shop 103 Historic, Contributing 115 E Magnolia St 1915 White House Market
theaters in the U.S. equipped for sound, of which 55 were for both disk and film and 102 for disk only. At the end of 1928, the 1046 ERPI theater in- stallations, 1032 were for disk and film. By the end of 1929 ERPI had equipped about 4000 theaters in the U.S. and 1200 abroad, and RCA Photophone had
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