Passenger Trains > A Place That Boasts Of Cooled Air

Located across the street from Kingman's train depot, the Hotel Beal boasts that they cool the air, certainly a welcome slogan when weary travelers on Route 66 pulled into town.

The hotel was closed, and number 3 tardy when I snapped this photo yesterday.

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IIRC it is a good place to eat.
We had lunch there and watched the parade of trains.
It seemed to be the place many local "establishment" folks met for working lunches.  Folios and laptops were out in some other tables.
A wonderful break from the McFastfood that has become the norm for eating on road trips.

Beale has been closed since 2008. The City has condemned the deteriorating building. Unclear whether it will be saved or razed. 

Overnighted in Kingman in 2019 while driving from Phoenix to Las Vegas.  Downtown seemed somewhat downtrodden, although with a bit more of pulse than some Rte 66 places, like Winslow.

Dave

Signs like this were seen all along highway 66. It was a big selling point back when air conditioning on cars was a very rare thing.

I used to live near Mammoth Cave National Park, KY. The restaurant there had a large (about 5 ft. diameter) fan that sucked air out of the cave to cool their dining room. The air was a bit moist and musty but a whole lot cooler than the outside air in the summer. Back about 1959, I remember staying in an Indianapolis hotel that advertised air cooled. It was a window fan that directed the air through a mesh where water was dripped. The unit almost looked like a window air conditioner and that is what  we thought it was at first.
 

POW Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I used to live near Mammoth Cave National Park,
> KY. The restaurant there had a large (about 5 ft.
> diameter) fan that sucked air out of the cave to
> cool their dining room. The air was a bit moist
> and musty but a whole lot cooler than the outside
> air in the summer. Back about 1959, I remember
> staying in an Indianapolis hotel that advertised
> air cooled. It was a window fan that directed the
> air through a mesh where water was dripped. The
> unit almost looked like a window air conditioner
> and that is what  we thought it was at first.
>  

That would have been a swamp cooler, something pretty rare east of the high plains as they work on the theory of evaporation. The lower the humidity in the atmosphere the more efficient they are. The high humidity and dew points east of the high plains in the summer make them pretty ineffective in Midwest summers.

Regards

Posted from iPhone

POW Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I used to live near Mammoth Cave National Park,
> KY. The restaurant there had a large (about 5 ft.
> diameter) fan that sucked air out of the cave to
> cool their dining room. The air was a bit moist
> and musty but a whole lot cooler than the outside
> air in the summer. 

Back in the day, some buildings in Chicago were cooled with air drawn from the Chicago Tunnel RR. The rail service ended in the '50s, but the tunnels are still used for utilities.