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Chronological List of District Heating
Systems in the United States |
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| Alexandroffsky House | Alexandroffsky Site Plan Note the boiler house close to the corner of Baltimore Street and Freemond Avenue. |
Thomas deKay Winans (1820-1878) was the son of Baltimore engineer and railroad equipment manufacturer Ross Winans. Early in his career, Thomas Winans traveled to Czarist Russia to plan and construct the Moscow-St. Petersburg railway, a venture that paid handsomely. In 1847, Thomas Winans boasted he was building 134 locomotives and 1,200 cars, and completing "a mile of cars a month!" Describing the project in 1858, travel writer Bayard Taylor claimed the route was �as straight as a sunbeam.� Returning to Baltimore in 1850, Thomas Winans acquired a block square property formerly owned by the McHenry family on Hollins Street; by 1852 and on it built a magnificent home which he called Alexandroffsky after the city in Russia where he lived during his stay there.,
Winans' estate of twenty buildings was heated by a hot water system based on systems common in Russia. Built by Hayward, Bartlett & Company, the system used natural circulation to warm some 20,000 square feet of coils in some twenty buildings with a cubic content of half a mile. The heating coils were placed beneath the floors of the rooms, and fresh air was drawn over them through holes in the floorboards. The current of air, which passed finally through ceiling ventilators, was created by a prominent tall stack, the whole arrangement constituting an exhaust draft system quite the opposite of the modern blower system. The plant operated most efficiently, with a daily consumption of some 800 pounds of coal.
He first slept in the building on February 24, 1852. The estate passed to his daughter after he died and the house was torn down in 1929.
References
1801 The
Picture of Petersburg, by Heinrich Friedrich von Storch
Page 50: The Tauridan Palace. The heat is maintained by
concealed flues practised in the walls and pillars, and even under the
earth leaden pipes are conveyed, incessantly filled with boiling water.
1823 "Chaleur,"
Dictionnaire technologique, ou Nouveau dictionnaire universel des arts
et m�tiers et de l'�conomie industrielle et commerciale 4:326-378
(1823)
Page 377: Bonnemain
1827 "Incubation Artificelle," Dictionnaire technologique, ou Nouveau dictionnaire universel des arts et m�tiers, et de l'�conomie industrielle et commerciale 11:160-169 (1827)
1828 The
Gardener's Magazine, and Register of Rural and Domestic Improvement
3:430
It is probable, also, that the circulation of hot water in the
conservatory of the Palace of Taurida, mentioned by Storch, in his
Description of St. Petersburgh, as having been in use in the time of
Prince Potemkin was effected by some French engineer who had seen the
invention of M. Bonnemain.
1835 "Observations on the comparative Advantages and Disadvantages of the various Systems of heating by Hot Water now in Use; and on the System in general," by Censor, The Architectural Magazine and Journal of Improvement in Architecture, Building, and Furnishing and in the Various Arts and Trades Connected Therewith 2(91):407-422 (September 1835)
1838 "Review
of A practical Treatise on Warming Buildings by Hot Water and an Inquiry
into the Laws of radiant and conducted Heat : to which are added,
Remarks on Ventilation, and on the various Methods of distributing
artificial Heat, and their Effects on Animal and Vegetable Physiology,
by Charles Hood," The Gardener's Magazine, and Register of Rural
& Domestic Improvement 14(94):50-54 (January 1838)
Page 50: A short sketch of the origin and history of this mode of
heating is given, in which we regret to find that the first inventor.
Bonnemain (see Gard. Mag., vol. iv., for 1828), is not once mentioned. In
Petersburg, also, during the time of the Empress Catherine, the immense
conservatory built by Prince Potemkin, as a part of the Taurida Palace,
was heated by hot water, which, Storck informs us, was circulated both
above and under ground, in leaden pipes.
1838 "Official Report Made to Charles Boyd, Esq., Collector of Her Majesty's Customs, for the Information of the Honourable Board of Commissioners, upon Bernhardt�s Stove-Furnaces," by Andrew Ure, The Architectural Magazine and Journal of Improvement in Architecture, Building, and Furnishing and in the Various Arts and Trades Connected Therewith 5(1):31-36 (January 1838)
1839 "Incubation, Artificial," A Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures, and Mines, Etc, by Andrew Ure 663-665 (1843)
1843 Winans applied for a passport, March 27, 1843
1850 Winans returns to New York from Russia with his wife Celeste and two sons on the U.S. Mail Steam Ship Arctic, December 5, 1850
1867 Biographical
register of the officers and graduates of the United States Military
Academy from 1802 to 1867
Page 189: George W. Whistler, Class of 1819; Civil Engineer in
Russia from 1842 to 1849
Pages 271-272: Thompson S. Brown, Class of 1825; Civil
Engineer in Russia from 1859 to 1854
Page 275: William Fenn Hopkins, Class of 1825; Professor of Natural
and Experimental Philosophy in the U. S. Naval Academy, at Annapolis, Md.,
Sep. 1, 1850, to Mar. 1, 1859.
1878 Thomas DeKay Winans (6 Dec 1820 - 10 June 1878) Grave
1889 "Thomas
J. Hayward," Progressive Age 36(1):4 (January 1, 1908)
At the same date the firm designed and constructed a low temperature hot
water heating and ventilating apparatus in the extensive buildings of Mr.
Thomas Winans, in Baltimore, which was the pioneer hot water heating plant
of the world, prior to which nothing of the kind had ever been attempted.
1938 "Messrs. Harrison, Winans & Eastwick," by Richard E. Pennoyer, The Railway and Locomotive Historical Society Bulletin 47:46-53 (September 1938)
1941 Iron
men and their dogs, by Ferdinand C. Latrobe
Pages 11-13: At that time Jonas Hayward was pointed out as �the principal
in introducing most successfully in many of the largest cities in this
country the system of heating public and private buildings with Hot
Water." Notable among the innumerable early installations that we have
discovered were those in the United States Treasury at Washington and the
Custom Houses at Norfolk and Alexandria, Virginia, Baltimore, Maryland,
Portland, Maine, and Buffalo, New York. Probably the firm's unique
installation was that at Alexandroffsky, the palatial residence of Thomas
Winans, who, in 1843, had been called by the Czar of Russia to build the
government's railroad, an extremely lucrative enterprise.
In 1853, Thomas Winans erected his mansion upon a part of the former
McHenry property, at Baltimore and Fremont Streets. The estate was
supplied with many conveniences of the family's invention, including the
revolutionary heating system, built by Hayward, Bartlett & Company,
which connected with some 20,000 square feet of coils in some twenty
buildings with a cubic content of half a mile. The heating coils
were placed beneath the floors of the rooms, and fresh air was drawn over
them through holes in the floorboards. The current of air, which passed
finally through ceiling ventilators, was created by a prominent tall
stack, the whole arrangement constituting an exhaust draft system quite
the opposite of the modern blower system. The plant operated most
efficiently, with a daily consumption of some 800 pounds of coal.
1950 "American Pioneers in Russian Railroad Building," by Alexandre Tarsaidze, The Russian Review 9(4):286-295 (October 1950)
1979 "Alexandroffsky,"
Maryland Magazine 12(2):26-31 (Winter 1979))
Page 29: Amidst the elegance, Thomas Winans' flair for the
experimental was evident. One-inch holes perforating the floor
allowed steam to rise from hot water pipes fitted across the basement
ceiling below, providing heat for the room. After all, Alexandroffsky
was the first house in Baltimore to enjoy a central heating system.
A special building had been constructed in the early 1850's to house the
Haywood-Bartlett boiler for it. In a cold winter, as much as 1/3-ton of
coal was burned daily to heat most of the twenty buildings on the
estate. Gaslight fixtures, so designed by Winans as to prohibit
noxious fumes from permeating the house, glowed warmly from many of the
main house's walls.
1998 Russia
enters the railway age, 1842-1855, by Richard Mowbray Haywood
Includes several references to Thomas Winans.
2006 "Jean Simon Bonnemain (1743-1830) and the Origins of Hot Water Central Heating," by Emmanuelle Gallo, paper presented at the Second International Congress on Construction History, Queens� College, Cambridge, 29 March-2 April 2006, Construction History Society 1:1045-1060 (17 June 2006)
2011 "Alexandroffsky, The Crimea and Orianda: Thomas Winans in Baltimore County," by John McGrain, History Trails of Baltimore County 42(3):1-12 (Winter 2010-2011)
2011 "A
world behind a wall," Baltimore Style, April 19, 2011
Like his neighbors, Alexandroffsky�s owner, Thomas Winans, also had
railroad connections. The son of Ross Winans, an inventor responsible for
designing the B&O�s first locomotive (whose St. Paul Street home was
designed by renowned architect Stanford White), Thomas Winans made much of
his fortune in Russia, where in 1843, Czar Nicholas I gave him, his
brother and two partners (one the father of the artist James McNeill
Whistler) a $5 million contract to supervise the building of a railroad
between Moscow and St. Petersburg. During the construction, Thomas Winans
and his team stayed in Alexandroffsky, a town outside St. Petersburg.
� 2024 Morris A. Pierce
Si