Historian’s Archives: Chapter Historian Ryan Westlund

For the last year and a half, I have devoted substantial time (and savings) on renovating a small 1937 apartment house around the corner from my home in Northeast DC. Intensive structural work has uncovered interesting pieces of the building’s history. These included bituminized fiber drainage pipe known as Orangeburg pipe, corroded galvanized plumbing lines that were nearly completely clogged with leached lead and generalized crud, and countless beer bottles and cans that made there way into the walls and crawlspace over the years.

The plans call for a complete electrification of the 85-year-old building in the first phase of creating net-zero subsidized housing for the neighborhoods most financially stressed tenants. As such, we would no longer need the chimney that had previously been repurposed as a vertical shaft for the various gas appliances throughout the four apartments. Looking at the dozen or so exhausts that fed into the shaft, evolving technology in the HVAC industry had shifted and necessitated adaptation of the buildings heating system.

Evidence of the chimney used to burn coal, oil and/or gas boilers, as well as natural gas furnaces are all present in this 2-story 30 in. by 36 in. glimpse back into history. It shows the progress of our field, but doesn’t quite do justice to the thousands of pioneers whose innovations have pursued better IEQ and pursue increased energy efficiency. Looking through these past patent holders that changed our industry I stumbled upon one grad of DC’s Howard University that caught my attention. Two days before Christmas in 1919, Alice H. Parker was awarded patent number 1,325,905 for an indoor heating system using natural gas for a home and office “heating furnace”.

Reading into the “known facts” about Ms. Parker’s development, it raised more questions than answers, as recorded by this 2022 article by Audrey Henderson titled “What we know about Alice Parker, a ‘hidden figure’ in modern heating”. It is an intriguing read that seems to buck a lot of the internet’s storyline of the early pioneers of HVAC.

Regardless of the exact details of her life, Ms. Parker’s “groundbreaking whole house heat distribution system was much more efficient than either coal-burning stoves or fireplaces. And while natural gas is no longer a novelty as a heating source, Parker’s innovation fundamentally changed how indoor heating systems operate by being the first to incorporate separate, individually controlled heating elements in each room.” Celebrating this, and acknowledging her hidden past as a function of how African American scientists have often remained in the background (see NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson), further accentuate the need of celebrating their achievements, so that today’s generation of black girls see that they are part of innovation and STEM education.