This Month in History: York Ice Machinery Corporation
Members of the U. S. Capitol Power Plant inspection group (from left to right): L. Williams, Engineer-in-Chief; W. S. Shipley, York Ice Machinery Corporation president; Congressman John O’Connor and House Speaker William Bankhead (the House Office Building Commission); Congressman H. L. Haines (of York, Pennsylvania); David Lynn, Architect of the Capitol; and Charles S. Leopold, consulting engineer.
Oct. 1, 1937: York installs massive air conditioning system in U.S. Capitol
On October 1, 1937, the York Ice Machinery Corporation (later York International, which was acquired by Johnson Controls in 2005) finished installing refrigerating equipment in the new United States Capitol Power Plant to provide air conditioning for the U. S. Capitol Building, the Senate Office Building, and the two House Office Buildings in Washington, D. C.
At the time, the project, which began in 1933, was the world's largest installation of refrigerating machinery for air conditioning purposes.
Overall, the power plant had enough pumping capacity for a water system serving a city of 200,000 people.
Six 1,000 horsepower compressor motors were used to cool over eleven million gallons of water per day. Fifteen hundred-horsepower steam-driven turbines pumped water a half mile from the Anacostia River to the plant, where it was distributed to the condensers. In addition, the pumps circulated the chilled water from the plant to the air-conditioned buildings and returned the warmer water to the water coolers - a distance of more than a half-mile each way.
Overall, the power plant had enough pumping capacity for a water system serving a city of 200,000 people. The refrigerating capacity of the plant was described as being the equivalent of a 50' x 50' block of ice as high as a seven-story building melting every 24 hours. Or … it would take the cooling capacity of 200,000 refrigerators to equal that of the plant.