Growing up we had a huge fan in the attic (my dad built the house). It was at the end of the hallway where the bedrooms were. There was a switch on the wall and a louvered panel in the ceiling would open up and the fan would turn on - drawing the air up into the ceiling. I’m guessing it was about 3’ x 5’ in size.
During the day it would help bring the cool air up from downstairs, and at night exhaust the hot air with the windows open.
We don’t have a/c (Seattle) but when it gets hot I’ll put the vornado at the bottom of the stairs shooting the cool air up into the living area. And at night usually just use fans to create a cross breeze with the windows open.
Maybe I need to put a box fan at the attic door as an exhaust during the day?
I was just talking about the old days with my 94 year old mom. She reminded me that all they had were iceboxes and that was for the food (and milk) - so they never had any nice cold drinks with ice cubes or anything. Although she said when the ice man came around the kids would crowd around, and he always seemed to miss-judge the size of the ice block so he had to chip away lots more pieces for the kids to suck on!
We don’t really have cool nights during the summer here in New Orleans. The nights can be downright awful! During August especially, the nighttime temps can hover around the high 80s and 90. But running a big box fan in the window helped a lot during those hot summer nights before A/C.