World's Largest Chair: The Battle Rages
 1996:
Big Chair in Anniston, Alabama. |
Civic pride pulls no punches in the giant chair battle. Not two, but fully five American towns are involved, and at least four others joined the fight before being knocked out of the ring. And let's not even talk about foreign competition...(more on that later).
 Thomasville 1927. |
It started quietly enough when the town of Gardner, Massachusetts, erected a twelve-foot-tall Mission chair in 1905. Word got around. Soon a rebel yell came from the reconstructed South; Thomasville, North Carolina -- which prides itself on being part of the " Furniture and Hosiery Capital of the World" -- decided to build a chair thirteen feet, six inches tall.
 Thomasville's
Duncan Phyfe. |
Up went eyebrows in Gardner; pride was hurt. With typical Yankee determination, this self-proclaimed "Chair City of the World" countered with a fifteen-foot Mission in 1928. Then, to put a lock on their claim, Gardner replaced the Mission with a sixteen-foot Colonial Hitchcock in 1935.
Giant chair production took a back seat to wartime needs, but Thomasville fought back in 1948 by building an eighteen-foot steel and concrete Duncan Phyfe on a twelve-foot pedestal. Then they got neighboring High Point to build the world's largest bureau. They even convinced LBJ, over Lady Bird's protests, to take time out from politics and sit in their big chair.
Next, Bennington, Vermont, decided to enter the fray. They put up a wooden Ladderback nineteen feet, one inch tall. But this was not to be Bennington's fight, either. Word reached Vermont that another Duncan Phyfe, even larger than Thomasville's monster, had been built in Washington, DC, all the way back in 1939! At nineteen feet, six inches tall (on a four-foot base), it convinced Bennington to bow out for good.
 Bennington's
Ladderback (reported gone in 2000). |
Morristown, Tennessee, finally surpassed DC's chair with a green Recliner made of sheet metal -- a behemoth twenty feet tall that could seat ten across. But by 1962, it was gone.
Gardner, outraged, built a brown Heywood-Wakefield, twenty feet, seven inches tall, ostensibly for a bicentennial project. It was ten feet wide, nine feet deep and for a year, the world's largest.
Then private enterprise stepped in, escalating the fight and putting it on new terms. Pa's Woodshed in Binghamton, NY, erected a twenty-four feet, nine-inch-tall Ladderback, with a twelve-foot-square seat. Visible from both I-81 and I-88, it shocked the world.
 1985: Wingdale's first chair, 25-feet high. Gone! |
Pa was honored in the 1979 Guinness Book , but his glory was short-lived. The Hunt Country Furniture Company of Wingdale, NY, used more than a ton-and-a-half of wood to build a huge Fireside Chair, twenty-five feet tall and fourteen feet wide. It was quickly recognized as the World's Largest. And yet, after only two years of accolades, it was chopped into kindling. Accusations that "young people were climbing up and doing unsafe things on it" forced Hunt to tear down the behemoth for good.
The South watched and waited. Then, in 1981, Miller's Office Furniture of Anniston, Alabama, built a thirty-one-foot-tall office chair in a vacant lot next to its store. The chair was made of ten tons of steel, causing would-be vandals to throw up their crowbars in despair. It could withstand 85 mph winds, and a special spiral staircase led to its seat. Here, at last, was a chair for the ages. It quickly became Anniston's landmark. The Chamber of Commerce flew visiting businessmen over it.
Address: 625 Noble St., Anniston, AL [Show Map]
Directions: Miller's Office Furniture, N. of interstate, in town -- left off 431/21, after Ramada on 6th St.
Hours: Daylight hours. (Call to verify)
Phone: 256-237-1641
Address: 2101 Martin Luther King Ave, SE, Washington, DC [Show Map]
Directions: I-295/Anacostia Freeway to the Malcolm X Ave. exit. At the end of the ramp, turn left onto Malcolm X Ave. After two blocks, turn left onto Martin Luther King Ave. Drive 1.5 miles to V St. and the chair.
Hours: Always visible.
Address: 130 Elm St., Gardner, MA [Show Map]
Directions: Hwy 2 exit 23, north toward town, quick right onto Elm St. at the "Gardner District Court" sign. Chair is on Elm St., on the right, in front of the Helen Mae Sauter School, between Bond and Cross Sts.
Hours: Daylight hours.
Address: Thomasville, NC [Show Map]
Directions: Downtown.
Hours: Daylight hours.
July 2005: Artist Giancarlo Neri directed us to info on a chair created by the company
Promosedia in Manzano, Italy -- 60 ft. tall. A slightly smaller
version
provided
by
Promosedia,
touting
the
"Chair District" of Friuli, Italy, stands at the entrance
of the LA Merchandise Mart, 1933 S. Broadway, Los Angeles,
California.
America has
lost its giant chair edge!
June 2005: An Italian artist, Giancarlo Neri, created a 30-ft. tall chair and table as a statement on the loneliness of writing. The sculpture, comprised of 1,000 lbs. of wood and six tons of steel, is normally displayed in Italy, has been moved to London for several months. Sculptor Giancarlo Neri encourages visitors to interact with the giant table and chair, even to use the legs as soccer goal posts.
October 2002: Two new chairs have joined the civic conflict for World's Largest Chair supremacy, though in specialty categories -- a rocking chair and a traveling chair.
In Lipan, Texas, the Texas Hill Country Furniture and Mercantile has erected the Star of Texas Rocker, a 26-ft. tall cedar log rocking chair, besting Penrose, CO's and Austintown, OH's claims of "World's Largest Rocking Chair." But the jury is still out on whether it is larger than the giant (30-ft. tall?) rocker reported in Hattiesburg, MS.
At the same time, Basset Furniture has crafted a 20-ft., 3-in. tall mission-style layered ash chair modeled after its best selling Grove Park collection. It's on a tour at Basset stores across the US for a year, misrepresented in promotions as the "World's Largest Chair" (AKA "The Big Chair"). Some would argue it is the "World's Largest Chair on Tour." Once it finds a permanent home, possibly in Bassett, VA at Bassett's corporate HQ, it will fade into the fog of middle-sized giant chairs. Bassett is also responsible for a big Duncan Phyfe built in Washington DC in 1958 for Curtis Bros. Furniture, specifically to shame Thomasville, NC's Duncan Phyfe.
Meanwhile, mysterious artist Bim Willow quietly continues to erect his wispy tree branch wicker chairs. A 55-ft. high chair was completed on June 2, 2002 in Amboy, IL. BIM promises a 70-footer in 2003.
November 2001: Wingdale Chair was destroyed in a bad Spring storm. (Confirmed as destroyed and not replaced, June 2002.)
October 2000: The Bennington Ladderback Chair is gone. After a few years of deterioration, it was reported leaning dangerously during the summer, and then removed by October.
July 2000: By popular demand, the folks at Hunt Country Furniture rebuilt the Wingdale, NY, chair in 1996. The same artisans that fabricated the original 25-footer in 1978, have made its offspring 30-feet tall, using two tons of native wood. The "Big Chair" stands in the Webatuck Craft Village.
