A Chair Built For A President

- John Short

THE UNREMARKABLE CHAIR rests in the corner, low-slung with wooden arms and a dominant faux leather cushion. It is just a little too low to the ground, and the back of the chair sits just a little too straight, sporting unnecessarily wide armrests. It’s the type of chair that’s last to be chosen when any other sitting option presents itself.

This is the president’s chair, unassuming among the more prominent relics in the James B. Duke library archives at Johnson C. Smith University. Well, a replica of it, at least. The chair wouldn’t be a Charlotte historical artifact if it hadn’t disappeared years ago. All that remains of the original, lost to decades of campus furniture-shuffling, is this copy, a graceless symbol of a time when Charlotte received the national spotlight it pursued as an up-and-coming city in the new South.