I just found this over at Shorpy, a great blog that finds and posts black & white photos from back in the day.
1914. Dr. Charles Campbell and a “municipal bat-roost” in San Antonio, Texas (”for one of man’s best friends“), his idea for mosquito control at a time when malaria was a major public health problem. Disguised as a favorite bat habitat, a church steeple (complete with cross), the roost was fitted with a trapdoor and stilts to facilitate the harvesting of guano by the wagonload for use as fertilizer.
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I learned to appreciate bats while living in Florida, where any creature that eats mosquitoes is worth its weight in gold! It’s too bad they have such a negative image, otherwise things like this would dot the countryside.