Forgetting why things were built that way.

Recently, a series of events has reminded me of how much people have forgotten why certain things were built a certain way, to our occasional detriment.

One of these events happened when I was at Sunday Mass.  A power substation blew out that morning and took power down to at least half the town, including my house, and the Church. When I entered the Church, built in the classic style, the reason for the big stained glass windows was immediately apparent.  The interior was fairly well lighted via the windows alone.

Now this particular church was built in the teens or early twenties; well before audio systems.  At some point within the last 30 to 40 years, an audio system has been put in.  Somebody, used to the audio system, must have thought that we'd be unable to hear the Mass as everyone was seated as close to the front of the Church as possible, given a pretty compact feeling to the the pews.

That was completely unnecessary.  In actuality, traditionally built churches require no audio system at all.

 St. Luke's Church, Forest Hills, New York, circa 1940s.  This church has electric lights, clearly, but it wouldn't be hard to see inside without them. And it wouldn't have had a PA system at the time this photograph was taken.

The large vaulted interiors of traditional churches are more than ample to naturally amplify a person's voice, at least if they are speaking in a manner which projects their voice, which not all people do, of course. But for those who know how to do that, and it's an easy thing for at least most men to do, the mere design of a church is all the amplification enhancement that they'll require.  Indeed, the first speaker of the morning, prior to the audio coming back on, was plenty loud enough simply through his own voice.  We've just forgotten that churches were designed that way for a reason.

So were courtrooms.

The only people who really need to hear in a courtroom are the lawyers, the witnesses, the judge and the jury.  And just about any courtroom fulfills that requirement just as is.  Be that as it may, in recent years courthouses have been almost completely retrofitted to give everyone a microphone.  It isn't necessary, and I don't like it.  My voice is plenty loud enough without amplification, and I often find myself brushing the microphone aside or walking away from it, as I don't need it, and it's just an irritating distraction. But nobody else needs it either.  In those instances in which a person is extremely soft spoken, the microphone actually doesn't help much anyhow, so they aren't really achieving anything.   None the less, all the new courthouses have audio (and visual) systems and by this point in time, probably nearly all the old ones do as well.

 This is the photograph we use as a flag on this site.  It depicts the original Federal Courthouse in Cheyenne, now no longer standing.  Note the extremely high ceiling.  This room was built for natural audio, and natural cooling as well.

Just as older churches and courthouses have been retrofitted with audio systems, older office buildings have been retrofitted with new windows and air conditioning systems.  The two don't always work well, or even work together.

I work most days in a century old office building.  It's a nicely preserved building, but it was clearly built before any kind of air conditioning.  It was also basically framed up while in progress, which was very skillfully done, but which also meant that the windows were set by workers in a less standard way than today.  Indeed, only the front of the building really has a uniform window pattern, as the original thought was that the sides would probably not need them long, as it was anticipated other buildings would be built of a similar five story height along side of it.

None of that is a problem, but some years ago, quite a few now, the decision was made, and wisely, to put in a set of nice new windows. They look great, but they're modern office windows.  I.e., they seal up very nicely but they aren't really made to open.  Indeed, they take a key to open them, and when we first had the windows in, we never opened them up.

The problem there is that the building wasn't built with an air conditioning system in mind.  The air conditioning system was the windows.  As noted, an air conditioning system was put in, years ago, but its always fighting the basic design of the building.  At first, we would try to assist it by not opening the new windows, but over time, everyone has given up on that and we've unlocked some of them, although they don't open wide like the original, not very attractive, windows did.  The other day the air conditioning system was down and we actually had a very warm day. By the time I went home in the afternoon, I was sick from the hot, still, air.  It isn't that high heat actually bothers me, it does not.  But dead still air trapped in a building does.

I'm not suggesting that we do away with the air conditioning and put old style windows back in.  But what I do think is interesting is that it's been forgotten in most buildings of this type that when they were built, they worked in hot weather.  The east and west facing windows were opened, and the ceilings were high.  Probably a decent breeze flowed through them on such days.

Indeed, the 19th Century buildings at Ft. Laramie remain very cool even on blistering hot days.  I've been in them when the temperature was over 100F outside, and they were cool. The reason has to do with the construction.  They were built with very high ceilings. The builders knew that if the windows and doors were left open there'd actually be a nice cooling breeze flowing through them.  I'm sure today, if they were in private ownership, somebody would be trying to put in air conditioning.

 Old Bedlam, the oldest building in Wyoming, on the grounds of Ft. Laramie.

In the southwest there are very old, very stout, buildings also built with cooling in mind.  Thick adobe buildings were common in the Southwest, and quite a few still stand.  They do not get hot, in spite of very hot weather.  People just knew how to build them.

For that matter, when I was a kid here people generally did not have air conditioning.  A few people did, but it was uncommon.  For the most part, people just opened windows.  My parents house, before some additions were made to it, stayed uniformly comfortable in very hot weather.  An addition of a glassed back porch partially defeated that, but even then, comfortable areas of the house could be found.  Basically, you didn't need air conditioning.  When people did have it, at first, they tended to have a window mounted unit or a swamp cooler.

The schools here didn't even have air conditioning when I attended them.  Granted, school gets out here in May, before the weather generally gets really hot.  Some of the schools are pretty hot in the summer, based upon the limited number of times I've been in them. But I'll bet they're all built today with an air conditioning system.  When we attended them, if it was warm, they just opened the windows.

We have, at home, a swamp cooler.  Truth be known, I hate it.  It may be just me, but I always find about any setting on air conditioning in houses to be annoying, or even arctic.  I never turn ours on, but my wife, who likes air conditioning, and who is always hot, does.  I tend to be always cold, so I'm not keen on it.  It'd be different, no doubt, if we lived in a really hot climate.  And, indeed, a person needs to be careful what they complaint about.  While it was blistering hot in her recently, now the air conditioning is on line and it's absolutely freezing, in my view, in the building.  The system may be old, but it sure works.

Another thing that people have forgotten the purpose of is the strip of land, found in some areas of this town, and in many towns, that runs between the sidewalk and the city streets.  This feature is a thing of the past for the most part. The feature existed so the city could expand the streets if it needed to. It's nice for property owners, and pedestrians, as it allows people to walk away from the street.  But it's really just a convenience and that small strip of land actually belongs to the city.

This presents no sort of problem at all for the most part, but one somewhat bad thing is that in older neighborhoods people planted trees in these strips, which is again, perfectly find, unless they're obstructing vision on busy corners, which on some here they really do.  Nobody seems to recall that the strip actually belongs to the city, and perhaps the city ought to take those trees down when they obstruct vision at busy corners.  Of course, they aren't going to, and people would be upset, as the trees are nice. But, as with the other day when the traffic lights were out, some of those corners are really scary.

Traffic lights themselves are something that they city seems to have forgotten the purpose of.  In recent years the City, to save fuel, has changed the setting on traffic lights on weekends so that some of them, on very busy streets, just flash red (or yellow), rather than turn green.  Well, saving fuel isn't their purpose.  Stopping traffic on really busy intersections is. The weekend streets are really now a little scary.

Here's one that takes younger people completely off guard:

That's an ash tray.

More specifically, it's a nice stainless steel ashtray affixed to the wall by our elevator.  Nobody every uses it, but at one time people did. That's because at one time smoking was so common, and so accepted, that it could be anticipated that people would need an ash tray just standing there, waiting for the elevator.  Now, if you got on the elevator smoking, people wouldn't be happy, and smoking isn't allowed anywhere in this building. The very few smokers who work in the building have to go outside to smoke. But even when I started work here (which, granted, is a quarter century ago) people smoked in the building. Some smoked at work.  And just a little earlier than that, people smoked in waiting rooms and lobbies.  A thing like this was then needed.  Now, it's just a weird stainless steel oddity.

Speaking of weird oddities, how about this:

There's one of these on every floor of this building, in the stairwells.  What are they?  Little access panels for banks of phone connections. . .long since out of operation and disconnected, and totally inadequate for a modern phone system.  Indeed, updating a building, such has been done, is not easy, but one oddball thing it does is leave the entire old phone system there, just not connected.

Here's one that we were using up until just a couple of years ago, but which I've still heard people wonder about.  It's a mail box. That is, an official U.S. Mail drop box.  The post office doesn't let us use it anymore, however.

The reason that we can't use it is that the lobby of this building isn't open 24 hours a day, and there's a postal regulation that requires 24 hour, seven day a week, access to mail boxes.  That is, they must be open for people to drop mail in, 24 hours a day, and this one isn't.  But, at one time, every office in this building dropped its mail here, and the Postal carrier picked it up.  Pretty handy.  It's still here, of course, but it's blocked so that we cannot use it, and they don't pick the mail up from it anymore.  My guess is that people occasionally forget, and some mail will be in it forever.

From the obscure to the ultra obscure, this is a display case for cigars.  At one time some small scale merchant had his small shop here in this lobby.  It probably was that way from day one, up until maybe the 50s or 60s.  A little cigar shop that also sold newspapers and magazines.  No doubt a lot of businessmen bought their newspapers, and cigarettes and cigars, in the lobby everyday. There's still a cigar shop up the block, which also sells malts, but not newspapers.  Even when I first practiced law that cigar shop did a thriving business, in a space about the size of a closet, selling newspapers, cigars, cigarettes, candy and, oddly enough, pornography.  It was bizarre.  Now it's returned, under a new owner in a much cleaner fashion, selling only malts, cigars and, oddly enough, history magazines.