09/29/2026
Before air conditioning, a Texas house was built to survive the summer rather than defeat it. 🌙
You got deep eaves and tall ceilings and windows lined up across from each other so whatever breeze existed could go straight through. You got the sleeping porch, screened in off the back or the upstairs, where the whole family hauled the mattresses out in June and stayed until fall. Neighbors sat on the front porch after supper because the house was still holding the day's heat, and everybody knew everybody's business because everybody was outside.
Window units started showing up in Texas homes in the 1950s, and central air followed in the new suburbs. The change was enormous. People moved to Texas in numbers that would have been unthinkable before, Houston and Dallas grew into the cities they are now, and the front porch quietly went out of use. The heat did not go anywhere. We just stopped organizing our lives around it. 🏡 Do you remember a house before the air conditioning went in?
