I have a house that was built in 1909, and have been cleaning up the
unfinished basement/utility room. The cold air return ducts have a paper
covering on them. The paper is very stained and brittle, and looks very
old, but I have no way of knowing when it was put on the ducts, although it
was certainly put on after the ducts were installed (rather than the duct
material itself having some sort of covering on it).

Does anyone know why this might have been done? The only theories we've
come up with so far are either just for esthetic purposes, or possibly for
some sound deadening (although I can't imagine how much good it would have
done).

It's clearly not any sort of insulation, it's just very thin paper - like
someone decided to wall-paper the ducts.

Curious minds want to know...

A. Brown
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