The Secret Behind the Adirondack Chair
This icon of a rustic summer only works because it’s a great example of a public good.
I love a great Adirondack chair. Nothing competes with its broad back at just the right angle for reclining, wide arm rests perfect for holding a drink or a book, or gently curving seat… all ideal for a lazy summer afternoon at the edge of a lake.
Clearly, I’m not alone. Adirondack Chairs are ubiquitous across North America among those seeking rustic relaxation. What’s more, they’re produced and sold — with only minor alterations — by dozens and dozens of different companies from giants like Wal Mart to individual carpenters selling at farmers markets.
At first, it seems pretty clear why the Chair is so successful: it’s got a great design, remarkably comfortable for something made entirely of wood (or, increasingly, vinyl), and it’s not particularly expensive. All of this is true, of course, but a focus on the genius of the design obscures our ability to see the real secret: the Adirondack Chair is a fantastic example of a public good in action.
Public Goods
If you’re in an Adirondack Chair as you’re reading this, then get comfy, maybe refill your drink, because I’m afraid we’ll need to talk economics for a few minutes. We can’t really understand The Chair until we understand a concept called “public goods”.
The man who defined the concept, Paul Samuelson, described it this way:
“[a good] which all enjoy in common in the sense that each individual’s consumption of such a good leads to no subtractions from any other individual’s consumption of that good….” (Samuelson 1954: 387)
What we mean here by a good is a product, service, or benefit. Unlike most “goods” — like cars, rice, or plane tickets — public goods are freely available for everyone to enjoy. They have two key features: they are “non-rivarlous” and “non-excludable.”
By “non-rivalrous” I mean that if one person uses the good, it does not diminish anyone else’s ability to do so. To be “non-excludable” means that it is not possible to prevent anyone from enjoying its benefit.
The classic example of a public good is a lighthouse: the service it provides is equally available to all ships on the sea and the use of that light by one ship doesn’t limit anyone else’s ability to do so. What’s more, it is effectively impossible to exclude some ships from using the light in favor of others.
Now, there are some blurry lines around some of this, especially excludability as some folks do their best to try to find new ways to make the good exclusive (presumably to profitable off them). But there are many unambiguous examples of public goods out there: herd immunity to disease, scientific knowledge, street lights, weather forecasting, Wikipedia, open sourced software, broadcast radio and TV, public art, clean air and water, and public roads to name a few.
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Hopefully all of this makes sense to you, but you’re probably asking: how in the world is my chair an example of a public good? Clearly, it’s rivalrous (only one person can sit at a time) and excludable (I can keep it on my private property). That’s all true, but as we will see, what is a public good here — and a fabulous one at that — is the design of the chair.
The History of the Chair
The Adirondack Chair as we know it today was born out of a tradition of late-19th century outdoor recliners used in the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York. Taking the cool mountain air was seen as a crucial part of the cure for tuberculosis and so many carpenters made chairs for the patients.
But we owe the simple brilliance of this particular design to Thomas Lee, whose family had a lake house in Westport, NY in the eastern edge of the Adirondacks. According to family lore, between 1900 and 1903, Lee made numerous iterations of the chair, using family members to test and rate various features.
His eventual design, the “Westport Chair”, was built out of only 11 pieces of wood and differs from modern design by having only a single plank as a back. Lee used only 11 pieces of lumber, each short enough that they might be cheaply acquired as scraps. What’s more, constructing the chair required no special tools and a only basic level of carpentry skill. The traditional style involved painting the chairs, meaning that the carpenter could easily put together mismatched scraps.
“Whether or not Lee was aware of it, his chair’s board construction reflected the region’s long tradition of simple, practical furniture made by homesteaders and local carpenters.” (source)
Like many such good ideas, Lee’s chair has a convoluted history after this, with friends patenting versions of it, and multiple conflicts emerging over form and ownership. Eventually, the current popular versions emerged but there is no clear owner of the design. At this point, it is essentially “open sourced” — Lee’s descendants lightly mock each new generation of inventors and tweakers who seek to own the design. According to grandniece Elizabeth Lee: “Whenever someone comes up with an improvement for the chair we say, ‘Patent that.’ ” (source)
Lee’s Chair and the Public Good
What Lee created was a truly democratic creation: a spectacularly comfortable people’s chair able to be made dirt cheap by anyone with simple tools and skills. He freely gave away chairs and plans, never seeming to have any interest in profiting from his masterpiece even as others around him did.
Today, the design of the Adirondack Chair is a public good. In the age of the internet, it is near impossible to exclude anyone from finding it (in fact, here’s fourteen of them) and ability to enjoy of its benefits is as close to universal as is possible for a piece of furniture. What’s more, it use by millions does nothing to decrease the comfort of each new iteration of the masterpiece.
We live in a society and in an age where the dominant economic and political culture encourages an absolutely ruthless commodification of everything. Every hobby needs to be turned into a side hustle, every possession into a quantifiable asset, even our bodies and organs are increasingly viewed as collections of saleable parts. Everywhere, we are told to scramble for advantage, for profit, for domination.
Lee’s lovely little chair points us in a different direction. As we relax in them this summer, I suggest we pause to think about this remarkable design. After all, it didn’t have to be this way.
If Lee had sought a patent and ruthlessly pursued competitors, then it’s unlikely we would see so many chairs to enjoy today. His descendants might be richer, but millions of us would have missed opportunities for a nap on the dock or the perfect sunset conversation with a friend. What’s more, thousands of skilled craftspeople would not have their current livelihoods. All of us would be poorer for it.
We are all better off for Lee’s generosity, and to honor that, I suggest we take a page from his book and seek ways to expand our toolbox of public goods. Imagine how much our lives could be improved if we could repeat the success of The Chair in many other areas, seeking out ways to democratize and universalize the good things in life through the expansion of public goods.
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For more cultural commentary, see my article “Texas Beige, Texas Boring.”
