I’ll be honest – I never paid much attention to old buildings until we started looking at houses in older neighborhoods for better school districts. Most of the places we could afford were built in the 60s or 70s and had been “updated” over the decades in ways that, frankly, made them feel pretty awful to live in. Dark. Cramped. Cut off from the outdoors.
But then I started noticing something interesting. The few original features that hadn’t been renovated – like the big windows in our eventual house, or the high ceilings that someone thankfully hadn’t dropped – those were always the parts of houses that felt best to be in. My kids gravitated toward the sunny breakfast nook with original casement windows. I found myself working at the kitchen table positioned near those windows instead of the “modern” home office setup in the basement.
This got me curious about what builders used to know that we seemed to have forgotten. I started reading about historic home design, watching YouTube videos about architectural restoration, following some preservation accounts on Instagram. What I discovered blew my mind – architects from the 1920s and 30s were incredibly sophisticated about natural light, ventilation, and connecting indoor spaces to the outdoors.
I came across this fascinating case study of a restored 1920s bank in Portland where the renovation team discovered that decades of “improvements” had actually covered up brilliant original design features. Someone in the 70s had installed drop ceilings that blocked amazing tall windows. A 90s renovation had sealed up window sections that were specifically designed to let in natural light and create airflow.
When they started peeling back all these layers (which honestly sounds like what we’ve been doing to our house, just on a much bigger scale), they found that the original architects had created this whole system for natural ventilation using the building’s shape to move air around. Warm air rises up through vents while cooler air comes in at floor level. They’d positioned windows to get the best northern light while using roof overhangs to block harsh afternoon sun.
The restoration architect didn’t try to impose modern ideas on the historic building – instead, they figured out what the original designers already knew about making people comfortable, then restored those systems using current materials where needed.
I spent hours reading about this project because it reminded me so much of what I’d been discovering in our own house. We have these great original windows that some previous owner had covered with heavy curtains and never cleaned properly. When I finally tackled cleaning them and switched to light curtains, the whole living room transformed. My daughter, who’d been having trouble concentrating on homework, suddenly wanted to do it at the table by those windows.
The Portland bank project showed how much detective work good restoration requires. The team spent weeks digging through old city archives, looking at original blueprints and construction photos. They found notes from the 1920s architect in the margins saying things like “ensure morning light reaches work areas” and “ventilation crucial for comfort.” These weren’t biophilic design experts – they were just good designers who understood that people work better in well-lit, naturally ventilated spaces.
What really impressed me was how they handled the window restoration. The original frames were solid mahogany but in terrible shape after decades of poor maintenance. They could have just replaced them with modern windows, but that would have completely changed how natural light entered the space. Instead, they worked with a local shop to rebuild the frames using traditional techniques, keeping the original proportions that were crucial to how the light worked.
They ran into the same kinds of trade-offs we face in older houses – the original single-pane windows were historically accurate but terrible for energy efficiency. Their solution was brilliant: custom storm windows that attach on the interior, invisible from outside but dramatically better for insulation. More expensive upfront, but it preserved the building’s connection to natural light.
The mechanical systems were another challenge I could relate to. The original building had no air conditioning, minimal electric lighting during the day – it relied entirely on natural systems for comfort. Modern codes required HVAC, but they designed it to supplement natural systems rather than replace them. They restored original ventilation shafts and installed fans that only kick in when natural airflow isn’t enough. The lighting automatically dims when there’s sufficient daylight.
On mild days, the building operates almost exactly like it did in 1925 – and apparently creates a much more pleasant environment than constant artificial conditioning.
The breakthrough came when they opened up the basement level that had been used for storage. Original drawings showed it was designed as a customer lounge with access to a small courtyard that had been paved over for parking in the 60s. They convinced the client to sacrifice four parking spaces to restore the courtyard as a garden that manages stormwater while providing views from inside.
This basement restoration became my favorite part of reading about the project. The original ceiling was nearly ten feet high with tall windows bringing natural light below grade. The 1920s architects had calculated sun angles precisely – winter sun penetrated deep into the space when trees were bare, while summer shade from leafed-out trees provided natural cooling.
The architect documented how light changed throughout days and seasons, measuring illumination levels and temperature fluctuations. This kind of careful observation is exactly what I’ve been doing in our house – trying to understand not just what works, but why previous designers made specific choices.
The results spoke for themselves. Employees preferred the naturally lit areas, customer satisfaction increased, and energy costs were 30% lower than comparable buildings relying entirely on mechanical systems. But beyond the numbers, people reported that the space just felt more alive.
I also read about a 1930s school conversion where they discovered original classroom windows designed to provide optimal natural light for reading while minimizing glare. Tall, narrow windows positioned to bounce light off ceilings and distribute it evenly across work areas. Modern renovation plans called for replacing these with larger contemporary windows, but light modeling showed the original configuration actually worked better for the new use as artist studios.
These projects taught me that the best natural design often involves rediscovering environmental wisdom that already exists in our buildings. We don’t always need to add new systems – sometimes we need to uncover and repair the sophisticated natural conditioning that earlier generations understood intuitively.
This has completely changed how I approach improvements in our own house. Instead of assuming modern is better, I try to understand what original features were trying to accomplish, then figure out how to restore or enhance them. We kept original hardwood floors that previous owners wanted to carpet over. We restored original built-ins instead of replacing them with contemporary storage. We’re working on bringing back natural ventilation patterns that had been blocked by later renovations.
Every restoration project is essentially a collaboration between past and present homeowners. My job is to understand what earlier designers were trying to achieve, then use contemporary knowledge to fulfill those intentions more completely than was possible with older technology and materials.
The most successful projects are ones where you can’t quite put your finger on why spaces feel so good – you just know they do. That’s what I’m aiming for in our house: creating environments that support my family’s wellbeing so naturally that the design improvements become invisible. We’re just rediscovering what good designers have always known about making buildings work with human nature instead of against it.
David is a dad of two who started caring about design after realizing how much their home environment affected his kids’ moods and sleep. He writes about family-friendly, budget-friendly ways to bring natural light, plants, and outdoor play back into everyday life.
