DC -- Anacostia -- Public Art: The Big Chair:
- Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.
- Recognize anyone? If you recognize specific folks (or other stuff) and I haven't labeled them, please identify them for the world. Click the little pencil icon
underneath the file name (just above the picture). Spammers need not apply.
- Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
- Accessing as Spider: The system has identified your IP as being a spider.
IP Address: 3.149.233.72 -- Domain: Amazon Technologies
I love well-behaved spiders! They are, in fact, how most people find my site. Unfortunately, my network has a limited bandwidth and pictures take up bandwidth. Spiders ask for lots and lots of pages and chew up lots and lots of bandwidth which slows things down considerably for regular folk. To counter this, you'll see all the text on the page but the images are being suppressed. Also, some system options like merges are being blocked for you.
Note: Permission is NOT granted for spiders, robots, etc to use the site for AI-generation purposes. I'm sure you're thrilled by your ability to make revenue from my work but there's nothing in that for my human users or for me.
If you are in fact human, please email me at guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can check if your designation was made in error. Given your number of hits, that's unlikely but what the hell.
- Help? The Medium (Email) links are for screen viewing and emailing. You'll want bigger sizes for printing. [Click here for additional help]
|
[1]
 CHAIR_040723_01.JPG
|
[2] CHAIR_040723_11.JPG
|
- Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
- CHAIR_040723_01.JPG: The self-described "World's Largest Chair". This was dedicated in 1959 to honor the Curtis Brothers furniture company which was once located here. Made of solid mahogany from Honduras, the chair stands 19.5 feet tall.
- Wikipedia Description: Chair (sculpture)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Chair is a public artwork designed as an advertisement by Bassett Furniture, located at the intersection of Martin Luther King Ave. and V. Street S.E., in the Anacostia neighborhood of Washington, D.C., United States of America. Chair was originally surveyed as part of the Smithsonian's Save Outdoor Sculpture! survey in 1994. It was once considered the world's largest chair, but has been overtaken by works like Broken Chair in Geneva and the temporary The Writer on Hampstead Heath in London.
Description
The chair, which stands 19 1/2 feet high, is a detail-to-detail replica of a Duncan Phyfe style chair. Painted brown with a white and brown striped "cushion", the chair is entirely made of aluminum. Weighing between 4,000 and 4,600 pounds, the chair sits on a concrete base.
Acquisition
The chair was built in 1959 by Virginia-based furniture maker Bassett Furniture. The concept for the chair came from Charles Curtis, of the Curtis Brothers Furniture company, as a clever way to bring customers to their family showroom which was located on the grounds where the chair is currently placed.
The piece was dedicated on July 11, 1959, and a plaque was placed with it, stating:
THE WORLD'S LARGEST CHAIR
PRESENTED TO
CURTIS BROS.
FOR THEIR OUTSTANDING LEADERSHIP
AND SERVICE TO THE PUBLIC/BY THE
BASSETT FURNITURE INDUSTRIES.
THE CHAIR MADE OF SOUND HONDURAS MAHOGANY
IS 19 1/2 FEET TALL AND WEIGHS 4000 POUNDS
DEDICATED JULY 11, 1959
DESIGNED
LEO M. HIRAMETT
BUILT BY J. E. BASSETT, JR.
Re-dedication
John Kidwell, the caretaker of the Chair, frequently patched holes that would form after heavy rains with cement. During the days of August 23–24, 2005, the original Chair was disassembled by a backhoe and taken away for restoration. Made entirely of Honduras Mahogany, the legs had begun to rot. On April 25, 2006, the chair was returned by Curtis Properties (was Curtis Brothers), however, this was a new chair, made entirely of brown aluminum. Over 250 people attended the re-dedication including Mayor Anthony A. Williams.
With the dedication of a new chair, a new plaque was placed, reading:
THE BIG CHAIR
RE-DEDICATION APRIL 25, 2006
THIS COMMUNITY LANDMARK REPRESENTS THE CURTIS COMPANIES
LONG-STANDING ALLEGIANCE TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD AND
STEADFAST COMMITMENT TO UNITY, PROSPERITY, AND GOOD WILL
TO ALL WASHINGTONIANS AND FRIENDS OF ANACOSTIA.
This new chair was designed by Devery Lomax managed by John Kidwell. It was fabricated by Cinnbar, an Orlando-based business known for their oversized objects, and Nelson's Welding. The new chair cost over $40,000 to build. Upon its delivery, by flatbed truck, overpasses had to be avoided due to the size of the chair.
Looking Glass House
On August 13, 1960, Rebecca Kirby (aka Lynn Arnold) moved "onto" the chair. A 10-by-10-foot cubicle was built and placed on the seat, furnished with a shower, bed, toilet, heater, air conditioner and balcony. Placed upon the chair by way of forklift, Kirby lived in the chair for 42 days. In the cubicle, she would watch TV, read books, and talk on the telephone, as well as dine, as her meals were delivered every day.
Kirby would step outside onto the balcony every few hours to greet visitors who learned about her living situation due to newspapers advertising her as "Alice in the Looking Glass House". Visitors would be encouraged to guess how long she'd maintain her residency. Her then 14-month-old son, Richard, visited often, being placed in a dumb waiter and sent up to see her.
After 42 days, Kirby "decided to return to earth," earning $1,500 for her stay.
Community reception
The Chair has been received as a part of neighborhood life since its original installation. Anacostia, a neighborhood that has seen economic and cultural ups and downs prides itself on a landmark that withstands the community's evolution.
The Chair is often used as a geographic marker for direction giving and holiday celebration; Santa Claus sits upon the chair during Christmas. When the Chair was reinstalled in 2006, community members surrounded the giant, clapping, yelling and photographing the new chair.
During the 1968 Washington, D.C. riots the Chair was one of the few landmarks to go unscathed in a neighborhood heavily affected by Martin Luther King, Jr.'s death.
- Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.)
I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com
and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
- Connection Not Secure messages? Those warnings you get from your browser about this site not having secure connections worry some people. This means this site does not have SSL installed (the link is http:, not https:). That's bad if you're entering credit card numbers, passwords, or other personal information. But this site doesn't collect any personal information so SSL is not necessary. Life's good!
- Photo Contact: [Email Bruce Guthrie].
