Anyone who has been in Houston in the summer knows the way to survive is moving from the air conditioned vehicle to the air conditioned building – without too much stopping in between.  It’s only been a little over a century that humans have used “manufactured weather” to control the temperature of office buildings and homes.

In 1980, Houston was described as the Most Air Conditioned Place on Earth.  It was in 1922 that the Rice Hotel Cafeteria became the first air conditioned room in Houston and in 1922 the Second National Bank became the first building to have “man-made weather”.  It took almost another 10 years before air conditioning started to become available and accessible private homes.  And the  first consumers wouldn’t really be considered the general public.  Only the very wealthy could afford this luxury.  One of the first Houstonians to take advantage of this new commodity was Glenn McCarthy – otherwise known as Diamond Glenn.  He was the oil tycoon that James Dean’s character was based on in the epic movie Giant.  It wasn’t until after World War II that the blessing of air conditioning began to spread to the masses, making life in Houston much cooler!!