Seth Heywood Site: Gardner's First Chair

On this site in seventeen seventy-three, Seth Heywood built the first home of one of Gardner's original settlers. Heywood was among the men who circulated the petition to incorporate the town of Gardner, which was established in seventeen eighty-five. Then in eighteen twenty-six, the Heywood family began manufacturing chairs on this same ground.

That modest workshop became the seed of what Gardner would grow into: the Chair City. By nineteen ten, Gardner had about twenty chair factories turning out roughly four million chairs a year, Windsor chairs, fancy chairs, and rocking chairs from the forests of central Massachusetts. A large chair monument still stands downtown to mark the city's identity.

The Heywood family name lives on in Heywood-Wakefield, the furniture company that traced its roots to this spot.