At Home: From Fireplaces to Heating Systems
By • March 11, 2025 0 47
Despite the charming images of the 18th-century family gathered around the fireplace, all warm and cozy, staying warm in winter was a daily challenge for settlers in colonial America.
The colonists were too busy establishing settlements to concern themselves much with comfort, as in … staying warm. So, up through the 1800s, they built their homes with fireplaces as their heating mainstays.
Fireplaces warmed the person — a comfortable front and a cold backside — not the room. On the coldest days, even with a fire blazing all day, room temperatures a few feet from the fire would often hover just above freezing. Families confined themselves to one or two rooms for the long, cold winters.
The typical American family in the late 1700s burned 18 to 20 cords of firewood a year. There was so much wood in this richly forested new settlement, and so few people to clear it, that wasteful practices became the norm. Wood went from abundance to scarcity, resulting in fuel shortages in the settled areas of the colonies.
The fuel crisis was so acute in some areas, and the price of wood so high, that Benjamin Franklin was prompted to consider more efficient ways to heat homes. Accommodating the English desire for a visible fire, in 1741 Franklin introduced a cast-iron insert for the firebox called the Franklin Stove, really a cross between a cast-iron stove and a fireplace. However, in high winds, it tended to blow smoke back into the room. It became quite controversial — and then completely unpopular.
Later in that century, the Rumford fireplace, introduced by Benjamin Thomas of Massachusetts (who preferred a European moniker, Count Rumford), was designed to be more efficient by reflecting heat into the room and minimizing smoke. The Rumford and similarly shaped fireplaces became architectural mainstays through the mid-19th century.
The real transformation in home heating took place later in the 19th century, with centralized heating systems. Low-cost, cast-iron radiators brought central heating to America’s homes; a coal-fired boiler in the basement delivered hot water or steam to radiators in every room. With the adoption of coal, a lower-cost fuel, some homeowners installed coal fire grates and furnaces. Consumer demand for improved heating systems grew, as did the number of foundries producing boilers, heaters and stoves.
In 1885, the first riveted-steel coal furnace was introduced. Without electricity and fans to move air, these early furnaces transported heat by natural convection through ducts from the basement furnace to the rooms above, dominating home heating until 1935.
Although the 1920s are referred to as “The Jazz Age,” or “The Roaring Twenties,” they are also “The Home Appliance Decade.” Improved appliances and central heating technology were adopted by many homeowners. Although coal was used in most furnaces, it required regular stoking and — despite the invention of automatic stokers in the mid-1920s — coal dust often spread throughout the home.
With the advent of World War I came a civilian coal shortage, but there was no oil shortage. Hence, a new design of furnace with a more efficient oil-gas burner came on the market. Earlier, Honeywell had designed an oil burner composed of a damper flapper connecting to a start-stop component linked to a thermostat. Honeywell’s oil burner relay made its debut in 1923 and the use of oil spread throughout the country. Later in that decade, gas entered “the fuel battle.” Since, unlike coal or oil, it did not require delivery, by 1927 many homeowners had switched to natural gas.
In 1919, Alice H. Parker patented an indoor heating system using natural gas that she called a “heating furnace.” Although coal and wood were still commonly used as fuels, she chose gas since it was an easily accessible alternative and did not require a fireplace. Living in Morristown, New Jersey, with her family, she noticed that they had difficulty heating their entire home at the same time. She went to work designing a central furnace unit consisting of a head of burners, a heat exchanger and a ductwork system. Although it did not go into mass production for various reasons, it inspired many later heating (and cooling) systems.
Approximately 66 percent of homes had electricity by the 1920s. Though it was still not used so much as a heating fuel, it did power thermostats and fans, which made possible the development of the automatic central heating system. By the mid-1930s, the forced-air furnace used the power of an electric fan to distribute the heated air through ductwork throughout the home.
After World War II, there was rapid growth in the development and distribution of electricity. Alongside conventional heating systems, electric heating systems made their way into homes and businesses.
In 1940, electricity as a heating fuel was so rare that its use was not even counted by the Census Bureau. Even by 1960, electricity was only used by 1.8 percent of the country. But after 1960, electricity usage began to climb with each decade. The demise of heating oil as heating fuel was further prompted by the oil crisis of the 1970s.
While electricity’s share has grown, most American homes are still heated with gas, due to its affordability. Even while gas remains the dominant heating source today, efforts to cut the use of fossil fuels and decarbonize the U.S. economy could further prompt a shift toward electricity-based heating systems, as well as other alternatives, including solar, geothermal and wind power.
Michelle Galler is an antiques dealer, painter and columnist residing in both Maryland and Virginia.
