Excerpt:
It gets hot in Washington. Real hot. On Aug. 6, 1918, the temperature hit 106 degrees.
Washingtonians, including top government officials, have been coping with this heat since the earliest days of our Republic. In the days before air conditioning, there wasn't much to do about it other than get out of town. The congressional summer recess dates to 1791. As of 1970, it's a statutory requirement.
Presidents have also long vacated Washington during the summer in search of more-temperate conditions. Multiple presidents went to the Jersey Shore for relief from the heat, including Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley and Woodrow Wilson. Garfield's story is the saddest one. Shot on July 2, 1881, Garfield was taken out of Washington to escape the summer heat after primitive efforts to cool the White House with immense amounts of ice—nearly 500,000 pounds—failed. He never made it back to Washington, dying in New Jersey on Sept. 19, 1881. There is a statue of Garfield, and markers honoring the other six presidential escapees, at the Seven Presidents Memorial on the boardwalk in Long Branch, N.J. ...