From Hand Fans to High-Tech Comfort: How Southerners Have Kept Cool Through the Years

While we’re all anxiously waiting for the summer heat to finally give way to crisp fall mornings and cool evenings (with those perfect mid-70s afternoons in between), it’s worth remembering just how far we’ve come in turning our homes into retreats from Arkansas’s blistering summers.

The Original “Air Conditioning”: Nature and Architecture

Before electricity and central HVAC, Southerners leaned heavily on nature and home design to get relief:

• Wraparound porches gave shade during the hottest parts of the day and allowed air to circulate. After dinner, families would often spend evenings rocking on the porch, hoping for a breeze to provide some relief from the stifling heat and humidity.

• High ceilings helped trap and hold the warmest air overhead, keeping the lower living spaces cooler and more comfortable. Transom windows, those small openings above doors, created natural pathways for air to move through the house, encouraging cross-ventilation and allowing breezes to flow from room to room.

• Shade trees weren’t just for beauty, they were planted to be intentional heat-blockers, especially big oaks and pecans located on the south and west sides of homes.

  
  

Old Fashioned Tricks to Beat the Heat

Not all cooling came from a home design; our predecessors got creative with daily cooling hacks too:

• Hand fans & church fans were a staple, often with advertisements from local businesses or Bible verses printed on them.

• Ice deliveries became prized in the late 1800s and early 1900s, with blocks set in front of open windows or wrapped in towels to give off a little chill.

• Damp sheets hung in doorways so that passing breezes picked up a bit of moisture and felt cooler against the skin. It wasn’t exactly modern air conditioning, but this simple trick created a crude form of evaporative cooling, kind of like an early swamp cooler.

• Sleeping porches (often screened-in balconies or side rooms) let families catch cooler nighttime air.

  
  

The Arrival of Electric Fans and Window Units

By the early 20th century, electric fans began showing up in Arkansas homes, offering a small but meaningful escape from the relentless heat. For the first time, families could circulate air at the flip of a switch rather than relying solely on open windows or handmade fans. While it didn’t cool the air itself, the movement created by those early fans created a breeze that made sweltering summer days a little more bearable.

In the post-WWII boom of the 1950s and 1960s, window AC units came on the scene and started to spread quickly through many middle-class neighborhoods. What had once been a luxury for only the wealthiest families became a reachable purchase for many households, forever changing summer life indoors in the South.

For countless Arkansas families, that first humming window unit marked their very first taste of true indoor comfort in July and August. Once people experienced what it felt like to sleep through a Southern night without sweating through the sheets, air conditioning stopped being a novelty and quickly became a necessity.

The Central Air Revolution

It wasn’t until the late 1960s and 1970s that central air became widespread in Arkansas. This technological leap completely changed the way homes were built: closed windows, sealed ductwork, and that 20th Century transition from having a “parlor” to a “living room” all made sense in a cooled environment. By the 1980s, central air was expected in new construction, and life without it seemed unimaginable.

Where We Are Today

Fast forward to now, and Kennedy AC is proud to be part of this history of cooling. Today’s systems are quieter, more efficient, and healthier than anything those early Arkansans could have dreamed of. Smart thermostats, zoning systems, and high-efficiency models don’t just cool your home, they improve indoor air quality, save money on energy bills, and protect against Arkansas’s unpredictable weather swings.

So the next time you set your getting impatient waiting on a stubborn thermostat to hit 72° while the temperature outside is hovering in the high 90s, remember the hand fans, ice blocks, and porch naps of the past. And if your system isn’t keeping up with the demands of this late-season heat wave, the experts at Kennedy AC are just a phone call away, ready to make sure your home stays the comfortable retreat it was always meant to be.