World's Largest Office Chair

Anniston, Alabama

In 1981, Miller's Office Supply in Anniston, Alabama, wanted to call attention to itself. Owner Leonard "Sonny" Miller had an inspired idea: he would build the world's largest chair in the vacant lot next to his building. Since he sold office furniture, he used an office chair as the model, simply converting inches into feet.

The result still stands today: a chair 33 feet tall with a 15-foot-square seat, built out of ten tons of steel (Sonny also had a steel company), anchored in 15 tons of cement.

Sonny asked the president of the HON company, the firm that designed the original chair, to come to the dedication of the giant chair -- and he did. Guinness World's Records officially christened Sonny's creation the World's Largest Chair in 1982.

Years passed. Other, larger chairs, were built. Miller's Office Supply moved to a different part of Anniston, and the chair -- now a distant neighbor -- grew weathered and rusty.

But then Miller's moved back. It repainted the chair, adding its 1982 Guinness claim-to-fame to the front, turning it into an historical photo-op giant chair. "As long as we're here, we'll be maintaining it," promised Phyllis Dill, Sonny's daughter-in-law, now president of the company. She added that Miller's this time planned to stay.

World's Largest Office Chair, 1991.

Sonny's choice of an office chair proved fortunate, as his creation remains the World's Largest Office Chair (And you can still order the original model chair next door at Miller's). The space beneath the chair is a popular parking spot on sunny summer days, providing a handy car-size scale of reference for shutterbugs.

A violent storm blew through Anniston in July 2012. It tore the roof off of Miller's, but it didn't bother the chair. "That chair will be here long after the rest of us are gone," Phyllis told us. "It would live through just about anything, except for maybe a sinkhole."