Adirondack Chairs

If you’ve spent any time at all in upstate New York, chances are you are familiar with the unique design of the Adirondack Chair. Adirondack Chair has been around for about 100 years and has its roots in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. Their unique design is out of the rustic style of furniture inspired by the Adirondack Mountains themselves. The chair was originally designed to be a practical, comfortable outdoor chair for the family of Thomas Lee, the owner of the Westport Mountain Spring in New York state. Using his family as furniture testers, he came up with a plank style chair which was first called the “Westport plank chair”.

Thomas Lee wasn’t planning to mass market what became known as the Adirondack Chair, but an unemployed carpenter friend of his, Henry Bunnell, developed dollar signs in his eyes after he was shown the plans. Work was hard to find in the winter season in the Adirondack Mountains, and Bunnell jumped at the chance to make and sell the Adirondack Chairs designed by Lee, who was also his hunting partner. He apparently preferred to remain just a hunting partner and not a business partner because he didn’t let Lee in on his plans. Fulfilling the “American Dream”, Bunnell applied for a patent and began selling the chairs for profit without permission from his friend Thomas Lee. The patent was awarded in 1905. He made a good living for 20 years off the stolen design, which he called the “Westport Chair”. In this and so many other ways, the Adirondack Chair so aptly represents Americana, capitalism and American 20th century history.

In his patent application, Bunnell called it a “bungalow type” chair to be used on porches, lawns, and at camps. He also mentioned it might be useful as an “invalid’s chair”. He produced variations on the original Adirondack Chair, including the child’s version, a rocker, and the double chair. People from all over the Adirondack regions bought his chairs.

If you think you have one of Bunnell’s original Adirondack chairs, then you might be sitting on a big pile of money. Some of them are worth up to $3000 today if they’re in good condition of course. If you have a spin-off design like a rocker or “tete-a-tete”, then you REALLY have a good pile of money there.

Here’s how to tell if you have an original:

He signed all his chairs on the back with “H.C. Bunnell”
The patent date is also stamped on the backrest
He made them of hemlock or hickory
Original colors were green or reddish brown

As for the design, feel and comfort level of Adirondack Chairs, well, think of how it feels to sit in a regular straight-back chair. It feels good for about 10 minutes, and then you want to recline a bit to rest your back. That’s why it feels good to tip back against the wall in your chair. That’s how it feels to sit in an Adirondack Chair. The armrests are wide planks where you can put your lemonade or even a dinner plate. This is in keeping with the Americana craftsmanship tradition of practical sturdy furniture. It’s a simple design, using only 11 planks. The wide planks, sloping back, and low seat are trademarks of the Adirondack Chair. The chairs do not look comfortable but they really are.

Manufacturers starting copying Bunnell’s and Lee’s Adirondack Chair in the 1930’s, although they modified the design, probably to make the chair cheaper and easier to mass-produce. They narrowed the slats so they could use scrap lumber, and they used pine. They also made the backrest shorter (again, so they could use smaller and therefore cheaper wood). What we know today as the Adirondack Chair is actually this adapted version created in the 1930’s. If you want to differentiate, Bunnell’s chair would be known as the “Westport Chair”.

The Adirondack Chair is very popular these days. You can buy both Westport and Adirondack chairs, with the price ranging from a couple hundred dollars up to over $500. The Adirondack Chairs are made from all sorts of wood now, even wood you would never find in the Adirondack Mountains, like cypress. And, besides the Adirondack “Chair”, you will now find recliners, gliders, matching tables, and loveseats. The popularity of the Adirondack Chair and of the Adirondack Mountains as a vacation destination have broadened exposure of the term “Adirondack” so that it is used by many people today to mean more than what we know as the Adirondack Chair. The term “Adirondack” in the furniture world has come to represent an entire style of decorating, and any type of rustic furniture