[WhiskeyX]

You're right, but it wasn't just the Southern homes which had the high ceilings and transoms. We had them in our Victorian-Edwardian era homes in Missouri and Illinois.

I remember the Washington Hotel, St. Louis, Missouri,in 1957, where you opened the windows to the outdoors just like at home with the upper half lowered part way and the bottom half raised part way. The transom over the room door ventilated the hot air out of the upper half of the window, and the the lower admitted the cooler air and ran underneath the room door. You left your shoes in the hallway overnight to be cleaned and polished. A black electric fan in the room was for the warmer nights.

They used to have a riverboat on the Mississippi River for couples to dance into the late night, because the air temperatures over the river were cooler and a way of escaping the hot summer night air ashore. Some of the movie theaters were popular if for no other reason than they were one of the few places a person could go and experience “refrigerated air” for a few hours during the heat waves.

[rightly_dividing]

I'm sorry, I just plain forgot how hot and humid Mo is in the summertime, often worse than the deep south. I grew up in the deep south 20 miles from the gulf and am not familiar with older homes and offices above the Mason-Dixon. Some southern homes had a long straight hallway from the front to rear in the center. That would allow circulation throught the center to draw hot air from the rooms on each side through the transomes or doorways, creating a natural circulation through the house.

one of the few places a person could go and experience “refrigerated air” for a few hours during the heat waves.

The first time my wife had to go to the ER a few years ago, she was surprised at what she saw; The local poor Amish would come to the ER waiting room to watch cable TV and enjoy some AC, buying snacks and drinks from the machines. She thought that I was kidding at first, then after several hours of waiting and watching the people, she saw that they had nobody that was a patient; it was just a night out at the movies for them. LOL