DITCHING YOUR HOME’S OUTDATED GAS (1916)
******************************************************************************************************************************** Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes. The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations. Do you know the history of YOUR house? ******************************************************************************************************************************** Every winter, old house owners hear the same old conversations that they heard the winter previous: “I’m thinking about making the switch from oil to gas.” “O, man, you’re going to love it. We did it and it saved us a ton on energy last winter.” “But it’s so expensive.” “But so worth it – you’ll see.” Back in the 1910s, though, no one was converting TO gas – they were converting AWAY from it. NO HOUSE TOO OLD TO BE ELECTRIFIED There is an irony to a 1916 ad which claims that no home was “too old to be electrified.” It begs the question: “How old is too old?” Did people believe that only new homes could be electrified? Did they think that if theirs had not been wired for electricity when it was built that it could not be electrified after the fact? Or maybe they just thought that the house would not be standing long enough for the owner to get any enjoyment out of getting it wired. All good questions. Perhaps they lead to misconceptions that the Edison Electric Illuminating Company of Brooklyn (a forerunner to “ConEd”) was trying to correct – so that they could sell more homeowners their services. WHEN WERE HOUSES ELECTRIFED? If your […]
