(From A Terrible Kindness by Jo Browning Wroe, Part I, Aberfan, chapter 5)
There are now five embalming stations around him doing the same. The formaldehyde fumes he usually enjoys are intense, even with all the leaded windows tilted open to the chill day.
I think to has a locative meaning there – tilted open to outside, where there is a chill day. It doesn't have a temporal meaning in this context, right?
Best Answer
I think this is simply a poetic variation of the stock phrase open to the weather.
day does not have a calendar sense there, but refers to what the day has brought (chill); and "open to" does not have a directional sense indicating that the windows tilt outward.
The windows are tilted open and admitting the chill.
If a theater's doors are "thrown open to the crowd" they could still be opening inward, not outward. It means that they are opened to admit the crowd.