OK- this is going to be an interesting couple years. Apparently the Iranians skated away form the negotiating table, The President canned the Secretary of Defense, and the Ferguson Grand Jury is supposed to report out.
I became a grandfather over the weekend. Guess what my favorite issue as we confront a Holiday week. I could go all proud Grandpa on you, but I am going to just say that I am thrilled and leave the publicity to the kids, of whom I am equally proud.
I didn’t know anything about the first three issues when I should have been writing the morning piece, but it has been Marion Barry all day. Suburban people viewed him with incredulity as he approached a variety of cliffs and jumped off them, only to re-invent himself on the backs of an electorate that adored him and could have cared less what the Post and the sniffy suburbanites- or the FBI after they busted him for smoking crack in the Vista Hotel.
Running around town this afternoon I heard some of the tributes. I am not going to speak ill of the dead- and it is clear that he did do amazing things for the people he represented. At one point it was all the people of the District as Mayor-for-Life, all four terms separated by a jail term. At the end, it was the people of Ward Eight who elected him again and again to the City Council as their protector and guardian.
I always enjoyed the Mayor, even if consider the way he operated to be a good reason why Home Rule should never have happened. But there was more to the story, something that surprised and humbled me.
Apparently the big Thanksgiving Day Turkey Give-away that Councilman Barry uused to conduct will continue. Hizzoner was accustomed to giving out $40,000 worth of free birds to his needy constituents. People would line up for blocks to get to the Union Temple Baptist Church, right past The Big Chair on the corner of Martin Luther King and V Street.
Yep. The Big Chair. I had no idea. Zip.
That is a little embarrassing for a guy whose avocation is posing as a Washington insider, and who has lived and worked here since 1986- nearly thirty years. In that time I have visited the sites of 29 of the original 30 District Boundary Stones, spaced exactly one mile apart all around the diamond of the original District. I have worked downtown and on Capitol Hill, navigated the subterranean depths of the Congressional private trolley system, found unmarked graves of Nazi Saboteurs and mass graves of Confederate soldiers. I know how this town works, or at least claim to, and have been dining out on that for years.
I have been generally been on the lookout for anything cool in this strange place. But I had never heard of The Big Chair. You can’t accuse me of not going to Anacostia. My biggest customer when I was working was over at Joint Base Bolling-Anacostia. To get to the Navy folks out in Suitland, MD, we would take Pennsylvania Ave all the way to the Disctri line, or hurtle out the Suitland Parkway to visit the Silver Hill Smithsonian Air-and Space restoration center.
I have been near the site of The Big Chair dozens of times but never even heard of its existence. It is located at the intersection of Martin Luther King Ave. and V. Street S.E.
It is said that the residents of the Northern Virginia suburbs reflexively recoil in fear at the sound of infamous “Anacostia,” known only for its extreme poverty, prowess in homicide statistics, and the ever present danger of accidentally crossing that river and falling into a panic attack, hopelessly lost among its labyrinthine streets.
It happened to me one time, trying to deliver an important package to JBAB. I got forced off the highway and onto the local Anacostia exit, and the panic attack about missing the deadline for delivery and wasting the work of a dozen people for several weeks while lost near the Frederick Douglas House….well, I was happy indeed to have made it.
This is all more than a little melodramatic and misinformed than I had intended. I decided to go look at it this afternoon and check that box, once and for all.
It was once the biggest chair in the world, standing 19 1/2 feet high. Originally constructed of real mahogany, it is a detail-to-detail replica of a Duncan Phyfe-style dining room chair. The current incarnation (it was refurbished in aluminum in 2006) is painted brown with a brown-and-white striped “cushion.” People in a position to know claim that even in the light-weight metal, it weighs between two and two and a quarter tons.
We had the Big Ass Stove in Detroit on Woodward Avenue back in the day located outside the State Fair Grounds. There is a long tradition of outsized objects being used for advertising purposes. The Big Chair was commissioned by the Curtis Brothers Furniture Company and built in 1959 by the Virginia-based firm Bassett Furniture. It was intended to be a clever way to bring customers to their family showroom conveniently located right behind the chair.
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.”
By 2005, the wooden legs were rotting out, but The Chair had become a touchstone to the old Uniontown neighborhood and they replaced it with the aluminum one with a new plaque.
When I swung by there in the Bluesmobile (you don’t think I am taking the Panzer to Anacostia, do you?) there was nothing in particular happening, but I do have to say, it is one big freaking chair.
In fact, it is more than a little bit like the man who used to give out the turkeys around the corner.
Purely larger than life.
And as I mentioned before, it is difficult to imagine Washington without him.
Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303