{"id":92490,"date":"2026-01-21T12:19:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T12:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/92490\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T12:19:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T12:19:08","slug":"philadelphia-energy-transitions-since-the-american-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/92490\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphia energy transitions since the American Revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

Heating with wood, then coal, then gas<\/p>\n

When Berryman\u2019s home was built in the mid-1700s, it was heated by fireplaces, one on each floor. Today, they\u2019re paneled over, with book shelves covering the old fireplace on the first floor.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were massive, and the one in the kitchen in particular was not just for heating, but for cooking,\u201d Berryman said.<\/p>\n

At the time of the American Revolution, Philadelphians heated their homes \u201calmost exclusively\u201d with wood, said Christopher Jones, a historian at Arizona State University who has studied the history of energy transitions in the mid-Atlantic.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs the population grew, wood became more expensive, because it got somewhat more scarce,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in the 1820s, the cost of coal produced in Pennsylvania began to fall, as canals were built to transport it more easily, Jones said.<\/p>\n

By 1830, heating homes with coal was cheaper than using wood, Jones said. But many households delayed switching over because while Pennsylvania anthracite coal burns efficiently, it\u2019s difficult to light without a stove.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a lot of resistance to switching over, in part because you had to invest in a stove, which was an upfront capital cost that made it more challenging,\u201d Jones said. \u201cYou had to learn new [cooking] techniques, and you lost some of the aesthetics of what the old things were.\u201d<\/p>\n

Efforts to make stoves more affordable and promote anthracite coal as the \u201cworkingman\u2019s fuel\u201d led to most Philadelphians heating their homes with coal<\/a> by the mid-1800s, Sean Adams, an energy historian at the University of Florida, wrote in the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

Coal was first carried in buckets to stoves on each floor, Jones said. Later, it was burned in a furnace or boiler in the basement, with warm air, hot water or steam piped throughout the home.<\/p>\n

In 1940<\/a>, census records show most homes in Philadelphia were still heated with coal. By 1960<\/a>, oil passed coal as the dominant home heating fuel, followed closely by gas piped into the house by a utility.<\/p>\n

By 1970<\/a>, utility gas had become the dominant fuel in the city, as it remains today.<\/p>\n

Berryman\u2019s home is now heated with a gas-fired furnace. She said her heating and cooling ducts run through the old chimneys.<\/p>\n

Similar to how residents of her home may have heated only the rooms they were using before the advent of central heating, Berryman uses electric fireplaces on each floor to supplement her gas furnace.<\/p>\n

\"JaneJane Berryman warms herself beside an electric fireplace in her historic rowhouse in Old City. (Emma Lee\/WHYY)<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy are you paying big bucks to heat a whole house if basically \u2014 in my case \u2014 I hardly ever use the top floor of my home?\u201d she said. \u201cI want to be cozy in my bedroom. I don\u2019t want to be shivering if I\u2019m down here watching Stephen Colbert. So I tend to turn on the electric fireplace in the room that I\u2019m in and within 20 minutes, bam, I\u2019m at 70 degrees.\u201d<\/p>\n

No air conditioning: \u2018Back in the day, you suffered\u2019<\/p>\n

While brick rowhouses are good at retaining heat, they are \u201cawful\u201d when it comes to cooling, said Drexel adjunct professor Bruce Laverty.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring the summer months, they bake, and bricks will get hot and then during the darkness hours, they radiate heat,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Back around the time of the American Revolution, homes like Berryman\u2019s would have been cooled simply by opening the windows.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was it,\u201d Laverty said.<\/p>\n

While the first modern air conditioning unit was invented around the turn of the 20th century<\/a>, home air conditioning units did not become widely available until the 1940s.<\/p>\n

\"AA smart thermostat controls the heat in Jane Berryman\u2019s historic home. (Emma Lee\/WHYY)<\/p>\n

Berryman\u2019s home had central air conditioning when she bought it in 2014. She said she does not romanticize what it would have been like to live in her house during the time of the American Revolution. She imagines wearing the layers of clothing typical of the time, with nowhere cool to take refuge from the summer heat, other than perhaps a root cellar.<\/p>\n

\u201cBack in the day, you suffered,\u201d Berryman said. \u201cI count my lucky stars all the time that I have the [modern conveniences] that I do.\u201d<\/p>\n

A colonial-era rowhouse goes solar<\/p>\n

In 2019, Berryman decided to make another upgrade that would further modernize her historic home.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought, \u2018Okay, I give PECO a lot of money every month,\u201d she said. \u201cWhy am I doing that? And what can I do to not be contributing to environmental problems?\u201d<\/p>\n

She decided to go solar.<\/p>\n

Berryman said she needed to replace her roof before the panels could be installed, and the system cost around $13,000. But she\u2019s grateful she made the investment.<\/p>\n

She expects the panels will raise the value of her home, and they\u2019ve already lowered her electricity bills significantly. She now pays PECO around $15 per month in the winter and over $100 per month in the summer, which she said is less than half of what her neighbors pay.<\/p>\n

\"AShelves and framed photographs fill the space once occupied by a massive fireplace in Jane Berryman\u2019s historic Old City house. (Emma Lee\/WHYY)<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just proud that this home can stand as an example,\u201d she said. \u201cRegardless how old the home is, if you have a south-facing aspect, you too can go solar.\u201d<\/p>\n

Berryman sees the solar panels as part of her contribution to the legacy of her more than 250-year-old home.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re a caretaker, not really an owner,\u201d she said. \u201cYou\u2019re taking care of this for the next generation. You\u2019re making sure the home stays current and keeps up.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Heating with wood, then coal, then gas When Berryman\u2019s home was built in the mid-1700s, it was heated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92491,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,4001,71,70,2312,45539,45540,10209,5206],"class_list":{"0":"post-92490","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-philadelphia","9":"tag-philadelphia-250","10":"tag-philadelphia-headlines","11":"tag-philadelphia-news","12":"tag-planphilly","13":"tag-rowhouses","14":"tag-solar-panels","15":"tag-utility-bills","16":"tag-whyy-news-climate-desk"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92490\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}