Research Seminar: Kara Schlichting

Virtual Event
December 16, 2026
Time 12:00-1:30
Registration via Eventbrite

Air conditioning was a novelty in the early 20th century. By the 1920s and 1930s, business leaders and real estate investors promised “manufactured weather” would soon be the norm in New York City. In fact, AC’s cool comfort became a commodity principally found in theaters and department stores before World War II, but heat remained an accepted part of summer for those whose comfort was not a priority. This manuscript (a chapter of my book in progress) uses two early examples of installation of AC systems to explore the priorities of those who invested in it. Both instances took place in 1902. That year, Alfred Wolff received approval to place his AC system into the New York Stock Exchange (for worker comfort) and Willis Carrier installed the world’s first modern AC system at a Brooklyn factory (to stabilize product). “Manufactured weather found its inception in the demands of industry,” Carrier explained, “in order that the manufacturing of certain weather-sensitive products might be independent” of weather and seasons. Carrier, like Wolff, recognized the components of New York’s UHI and turned to technology to mitigate its effect on indoor atmospheres. Factories (such as the facility cooled by Carrier’s system) gained AC not to protect sweltering workers but the products they produced. With access to the private archives of the New York Stock Exchange, I mine building committee meeting minutes to reveal the logic behind AC adoption, finding that only certain classes, like white-collar traders, received protections from workplace heat exposure for their own sake.

Kara Schlichting is an Associate Professor of History at Queens College, CUNY, + CUNY Graduate Center.

Jay Cephalas of Princeton University will deliver an introductory comment.