Adirondack Chairs - A History Of Family Fun And Back Stabbing Deception

Nowadays Westport, New York is a sleepy little town within Adirondack Park. It calls itself "a gateway to the Adirondack Mountains" and you can see Lake Champlain as well as the state of Vermont from the town's county fairgrounds.

However, Westport wasn't always as sedate as it is today. Its history is both interesting and intriguing. And some of it smacks of back-stabbing skullduggery and deception.

Journey back one hundred fifty years and you would have found Westport's social scene regularly reported by the Boston newspapers as well as The New York Times.

Around fifty years later, Thomas Lee and his 22 member family spent the summer vacationing in Westport.

While there he started thinking about the outdoor chairs that he wanted to have for his summer home. So he set about building chairs and testing them on his family. One of his designs was cut from a single plank of wood. It was made with just ten cuts that yielded eleven pieces of wood.

So, in 1903, the Westport Plank Chair, which came to be known as the Adirondack Chair, came to be. His family loved it and a legend was born.

Most people think that he designed the deeply raked back so that people could recline in the chairs. Actually, they were built that way because the Lee property was on an incline. When Tom put his chairs on their hillside, outside their home, the family could actually sit straight up and look each other in the eyes.

One of Tom's "friends" in Westport was a carpenter named Harry Brunnell. His eyes, apparently were a bit crooked.

As in many old resort towns, the majority of the resident's income was earned during the summer months. Harry needed extra winter income and Tom offered to let Harry build and sell his design to Westport's summer residents.

They sold like hotcakes.

Then, in 1905, it seems that without asking Tom's permission, Harry filed for and received patent number 794,777 for Tom's design.

Bunnell continued to manufacture his "Westport Chairs" for the next 20 years. He signed all the chairs, which were made of hemlock and painted either medium dark brown or green. Chairs that sold for $4.00 one hundred years ago will bring upwards of $1,200.00 today.

Over time the Westport Chair came to be known as the Adirondack Chair.

Probably the most noticeable feature of Adirondack Chairs is their wide arms. The arms are so wide you can put a drink and a plate on them if you want.

Maybe that's why they've become so popular at outdoor cafes. Because if you lounge in one of these chairs you don't really need a table if you want to eat. So, in additional to being comfortable, they're great space-savers.

The design has evolved a bit over the years and is now a little more rounded and contoured. The chairs are also made of materials that range from the traditional hardwoods to soft woods and plastics.

But Adirondack chairs are still as comfortable and reminiscent of summer vacation as the first day they were designed.