I once knew someone who had a screened-in party room at their house, and behind it was another screened-in room with a bed! It was a sleeping porch, used when it was too hot inside. This one caught breezes from three sides. Sleeping porches are one of many methods people used to keep cool before air conditioning became common. Pictured above is the freestanding sleeping porch President Taft had installed on the roof of the White House in 1910.
Evaporating water has been used for cooling for thousands of years, especially in dry areas. But it was used in the swampy city of Washington DC in 1881 after President Garfield was shot. His room in the White House was rigged with a device that blew air through wet fabric cooled with ice, and lowered the temperature by 20 degrees. It went through half a million pounds of ice over two months until Garfield died of his wounds.
Read about these and other clever methods that people used to keep cool in hot weather at Smithsonian.
