Houses built before modern utilities were designed to cool down. For example, in Virginia early homes have an open corridor from front to back for a breeze.
Yes, as I read this headline I was thinking of Montpelier, James Madison's estate, halfway between Charlottesville and Culpeper in central Virginia. Those doors on either side of the main entry door are actually three separate pairs of shutter panels, if I recall correctly, with several similar floor-to ceiling shuttered windows in the back of that central lobby, so that breezes can flow through as they are needed, whether low or high. This was a feature of many Georgian buildings; you can see them in original buildings in places like Philadelphia and Williamsburg.
Having so many panels meant the air flow could be adjusted in a variety of ways. Those interior shutter panels can also be angled to aid the ventilation of the rooms on either side. The bottom panels can also remain closed to keep children and dogs in, like many farm houses. Some interior rooms would have had transom windows over the entry doors.
One of the front rooms upstairs is where Madison wrote most of the Constitution. It looks out over rolling green hills descending. They used sheep to mow the main expanse of the lawns, with laborers clipping or scything the edges.