The upstairs is unbearable by July
If you own one of the older bungalows or Craftsman-style homes around Rountree, Phelps Grove, or the historic districts near downtown Springfield, you already know the pattern. The window units in the bedrooms run constantly from June through September, the electric bill climbs, and the upstairs still sits ten degrees warmer than the main floor. These houses were built in the 1920s through the 1940s, before anyone was running ductwork through walls, and they were designed around open windows, transoms, and maybe an attic fan. That worked fine before Springfield summers got as muggy and as long as they are now.
Why these houses fight you on this
A house with no duct system doesn't have the hollow wall cavities or floor joist bays that a 1970s ranch has. Plaster walls, balloon framing, and low attic clearance all make running metal or flex duct through the structure a real puzzle. In a lot of Springfield's older neighborhoods you're also dealing with additions and remodels stacked on top of the original footprint, so there's no single clean path from a basement furnace to the upstairs bedrooms. This is the main reason central air got skipped in the first place. It wasn't an oversight, it was just hard to do with the construction methods of the time.
More on this from Redeemed HVAC, Springfield.
What you can check before calling anyone
Walk your attic and basement and look for any existing chases, old dumbwaiter shafts, closets stacked directly above one another, or a central hallway closet that runs floor to roof. Those are the paths a contractor will be hunting for too, and if you spot one yourself it gives you a useful head start in the conversation. Check your attic insulation while you're up there. A lot of these older homes have thin or settled insulation, and no amount of new equipment will keep a house cool if the attic is dumping heat straight down into the bedrooms. You can also look at your electrical panel and note whether it's been updated or if it's still the original fuse-based setup, since that affects what equipment options are realistic.
Where this stops being a DIY project
Adding ductwork to a house that never had it is not a weekend project, and it's not really a one-person trade job either. It usually means coordinating decisions about where the equipment goes, how to route supply and return air without wrecking plaster ceilings or hardwood floors, and whether a ducted system even makes sense versus a ductless mini-split approach for part of the house. Springfield's humidity is the other variable that matters here. A system that's sized wrong, or ductwork that's leaky, won't just make the house less comfortable, it'll leave you with damp, sticky air even when the thermostat says it's cool enough. Getting the sizing and the duct sealing right is not something to guess at.
What tends to work in practice
For a lot of these older Springfield homes, the practical answer ends up being a hybrid: central ductwork run through existing chases and closets for the main living areas, with a ductless mini-split or two handling a converted attic room or a stubborn upstairs addition that has no real path for ducts. It's not the tidiest solution on paper, but it respects the house instead of fighting it. Whatever route you take, get more than one opinion on the ductwork plan specifically, since that's where corners get cut on a tight-access job like this, and that's exactly where the comfort and the efficiency of the whole system either hold up or fall apart.
The season to plan it, not the season to install it
Fall and early spring are the better windows for this kind of work in Springfield. Contractors aren't slammed with emergency repair calls, and you're not trying to live without air conditioning mid-project during a July heat wave or without heat during a January cold snap. If your window units are already struggling this summer, that's your cue to start getting estimates now rather than waiting until next June rolls around and you're back to the same uncomfortable upstairs.