Lectures on Ventilation / Being a Course Delivered in the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia

by Lewis W. Leeds

I have not been in any of the public schools in this city for many years, but a gentleman told me the other day that he called at one of the fashionable schools up town to get his son and take him home under his umbrella, as it had commenced raining since morning, and as he opened the school room door he was perfectly shocked, as he staggered back from the gust of horrible foul air that came rushing out of that room.

I have examined most of the public schools in New York since I have those of Philadelphia.

They have a way of their own of doing public business over there. There has been a good deal said about ventilating public schools of late years, and as it was such a scientific and fashionable matter they must have their schools ventilated of course.

I was very unfortunate in my intercourse with the Directors of the Public Schools. I did not happen to meet with many of those high toned, liberal, scientific gentlemen that are on many of the committees, of course.

Those beautiful and ornamental gratings called registers are accepted as the external proof of good ventilation, suggesting as they do the flow of an abundance of pure fresh air. So registers were bought freely and put in all the rooms, top and bottom, with splendid red and green and blue tassels, altogether making a handsome show and doing the very able and scientific gentlemen on the School Boards great credit for their enterprise and great care for the welfare and interest of the pupils under their charge.

Now, let us examine the operation of these registers. Holding a handkerchief in front of them, there it remained perfectly motionless. It neither blew hot nor cold—it was perfectly lukewarm, motionless. Go to another—the same. And to another—the same. Well that is singular. Let us go on the roof and see what can be the matter. A careful search fails to discover any flues at all, but a mechanical examination shows that the coping-stone has been put on them, making all the flues as thoroughly air-tight as the solid wall—more perfectly capped than that chimney. There had been no attention paid to having the holes for the ventilating flues cut through the coping-stone.

Yes, I believe that to-day a large proportion of all those flues with the elegant ventilating registers at the top and bottom of the room, are capped and made as thoroughly air-tight as the solid wall, and are as perfect shams and as useless as the elegant frescoed ventilator on the solid wall of the church hospital in Washington.

I do not believe that Philadelphians have gone quite thus far in satisfying the public demand for ventilation in the public schools. They may not have done any more, but I believe they have not pretended to do quite as much.

Excuse me a few minutes; I must illustrate another very great deficiency. The simple illustration I will give you represents almost the universal condition of our hot-air furnaces.

Much complaint was made of the uncomfortable feeling in one of the large public schools, where they had some 1200 or 1500 scholars. I was called to examine it. I asked, as is my usual habit, if they evaporated plenty of water. "Oh, yes; they had given the janitor full directions about keeping the evaporating pans always full." I found the evaporating pans full, sure enough, rather to my surprise, but what do you think they were filled with? Several old brooms, half charred, and some old water buckets all fallen to pieces, and other rubbish thrown in there out of the way.