A Warm Tribute to Cooling : Comfort: L.A.’s little-known Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Museum chronicles mankind’s efforts to beat the heat.

These are the times that truly separate the haves from the have-nots--those who have air conditioning from those who have not. Those who are reading this paragraph in crisp, climate-controlled comfort versus those who are, shall we say, getting dewy. Those who can look forward to a big fat electric bill next month versus those who are itching from heat rash.

It’s on days like these that one goes in search of perspective.

And for that, there are few cooler heads than those who staff the little-known Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Industry Museum--where, despite temperatures topping 90 on Wednesday, the air conditioning was turned off.

“My boss is really into energy management, and usually, nobody’s here during the day,” said Laurie Meador, who runs the office of the refrigeration workers’ training center, which houses the museum.

She smiled and fanned her face as she unlocked the door to what may be Los Angeles’ largest--and warmest--tribute to air-conditioner history.

Never heard of the Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Industry Museum? Few have, although it is 13 years old. It was founded by H. J. (Hy) Jarvis, a now-retired refrigeration equipment manufacturer and the brother of Proposition 13 author Howard Jarvis, along with Meador’s father, Ron Feldmeth. The museum is tucked away in a brick building on Hill Street south of downtown.

“Well, it’s never been really opened to the public, although anybody can call up and come see it,” said Feldmeth, a business agent for the air-conditioning and refrigeration fitters union.

And anyway, she added, “not everybody’s interested in old air-conditioning and refrigeration equipment.”

Perhaps the uninitiated don’t realize that this year marks the 90th anniversary of the birth of air conditioning. That air conditioning was once ranked by Life magazine as one of the 100 most important developments that shaped America, right up there with the Louisiana Purchase and the atomic bomb. That Los Angeles can boast of having produced the first air-conditioned theater (Grauman’s Metropolitan in 1921) and the first air-conditioned train (California Limited, 1914).

For most of the last two weeks, air conditioners--of any age--have been among the most sought-after items in L.A. At last count, only about 51% of the area’s 2.97 million households had one.

“There are a lot of interesting artifacts,” said Feldmeth, who explained that the museum is mostly used to give a sense of history to the union’s apprentices and journeymen.

Showpieces include a wooden blueprint used for an antique refrigeration system, a leather gas mask of the type used by workers who built ammonia-based refrigeration systems, and an antique kerosene-powered fan displayed under the sign, “Granddaddy of All Air Conditioning Equipment.”

One of Feldmeth’s favorite air conditioners is an “old chiller” that he retrieved from the basement of the Huntington Library in San Marino. Built in the 1927 and painted sea green, it’s about the size of a Sherman tank. It had been shut down for decades when an acquaintance of Feldmeth was called in to replace it for the Huntington in the 1960s.

“Well, they turned the damn thing on to see if it would run,” Feldmeth chuckled, “and it started blowing dust all over ol’ ‘Pinkie’ and ‘Blue Boy’!”

Frantic over the potential damage to the library’s prized paintings, “the museum people ran out and yelled to shut the thing off,” he said. “But there it was--shut down for years and it still worked.”

For the untutored, there are books that recount the history of refrigeration. The tomes begin with the naturally cool caves of early man and snow-lined refrigeration pits dug by the ancient Greeks, and go on to cover the birth of vapor cooling and the invention of the ice-making machine in 1851 by a Florida doctor who needed to cool patients suffering from malaria and yellow fever.

And there are many mechanical nods to Willis Carrier who, at the age of 25, invented the air conditioner (for a Brooklyn printing plant where humidity and heat were creating inconsistencies in color reproduction).

As in any shrine to the wonders of technology, there is no mention of the industry’s downside. There is nothing on the seamy symbolism of air conditioning, which author Henry Miller once trashed as a metaphor for everything artificial in “The Air Conditioned Nightmare,” his account of a 1940 cross-country trip.

Nor does Legionnaire’s disease come up--even though it can be spread by germ-infested air-conditioning systems. Nor do chlorofluorocarbons, which are produced by faulty air conditioners and threaten the ozone layer. Nor do big electric bills, or even the 1988 incident in which an air conditioner slipped from a seventh-floor window in New York City and fell to the sidewalk, killing a pedestrian.

But a lucky visitor might be treated to a personal anecdote or two from Meador, whose great-grandfather was an ice man, and whose father sometimes took her along when he installed air conditioners in the San Gabriel Valley.

“I grew up with air conditioning,” she said, “and I’ll never forget what my dad used to say when I was growing up:

“ ‘Keep the windows shut! I’m not paying to air-condition all of Arcadia!’ ”