“Manufactured Weather” at the Carolina Theatre

Most early movie houses had to close down or run on an abbreviated schedule during the summer months, as temperatures in auditoriums became intolerable, a problem that was especially acute in the South. As technologies for cooling equipment were developed in the 1910s and 1920s, a handful of the bigger movie houses began installing “manufactured weather” systems to keep their auditoriums at a comfortable temperature year-round. Such venues, like the Carolina Theatre, boasted that patrons would enjoy “weather that is ideal; weather such as you have experienced only during rare spring days . . . regardless of outdoor conditions.”

Sources:
Douglas Gomery, “The Movies Become Big Business: Publix Theaters and the Chain Store Strategy,” Cinema Journal
18, No. 2 (Spring 1979): 26-40.
“Carolina System Makes its Own Ideal Theater Weather,” Charlotte Observer, March 6, 1927.