The first Adirondack chair was designed by Thomas Lee while vacationing in Westport, New York, in the Adirondack Mountains in 1903. Needing outdoor chairs for his summer home, he tested his early efforts on his family. After arriving at a final design for a “Westport plank chair,” he offered it to a carpenter friend in Westport in need of a winter income, Harry Bunnell. 
Bunnell saw the commercial potential of such an item being offered to Westport’s summer residents, and apparently without asking Lee’s permission filed for and received U.S. patent #794,777 in 1905. Bunnell manufactured hemlock plank “Westport chairs” for the next twenty years, painted in green or medium dark brown, and individually signed by him.
Originally the chair was called the Westport Plank Chair, but was renamed the Adirondack Chair after the mountain range Westport is located in; the Adirondacks.
These Chairs are in the collection of Gail Gannon.
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