Hot Radiators

I very recently started using an electric oil filled radiator to keep warm while sitting at the kitchen table next to our bay window overlooking the backyard. There is sometimes a cold chill coming from the windows and this radiator helps me stay comfortable as I spend a lot of time sitting there on my laptop. That radiator has been up on the third floor for twenty years or so but I've not been up there regularly on the old desktop computer since it died a few years ago and I started spending my retirement on the laptop.

This hot radiator has brought back memories of growing up in a house full of hot water radiators. On Greene Street we had cast iron radiators in every room and often multiple ones like the living room where there were was a large one across the front of the room under the windows and another large one along the side wall also under the windows. Some were painted. You had to be careful around radiators because they got very hot. It was one of the first things you learned as a toddler not to touch.

We had a radiator in our enclosed glass porch that had a special place in the family. There was a rubber mat in front of it where we put our snowy boots and wet shoes to dry. It was often covered with gloves and mittens. 

All the radiators in the house had a cover across the top where Mom would often have a plant or something sitting there. There were also some specific rituals involved with living with radiators such as draining accumulated water. There were special little keys used to release the valves that would bleed the radiator.

It has been said that steam and water radiators installed below windows in homes and apartment buildings became popular during the 1918 pandemic to allow people to keep their windows open for ventilation during cold weather.

Our house on Greene Street was built in 1922. 

The house I lived in on Seymour Street also had radiators although I don't remember them quite as well as the ones on Greene Street. The only radiator I remember vividly was the one in the dining room which of course was the room we had made into our hangout party room with lots of couches and chairs and certainly no dining room table. I remember the radiator next to the window.

No other place Becky and I lived in had radiator. The three places we have lived in Buffalo all have had force air furnaces even though they were all older homes built in the early 20th century. 

Oddly, in the basement of our current home on Crescent Avenue that was built i 1907 I found a radiator key hanging from a nail in the little workroom. I've never seen any signs that there may have been radiators in our house at some time but I've never looked.

Becky has radiators in her art studio on Hertel Ave and deals with them all the time.