Walter Heywood Chair Company

From Country Store to Modern Furniture: 100 Years of Progress

[Chatting Heywood - Wakefield - history] would not be such a difficult task, if the Company ... manufactured only the wood chairs that the five Heywood brothers began to fashion in a barn adjacent to their father's farm, in Gardner, Massachusetts, U.S.A., back in 1826. - From a 1951 speech by Richard N. Greenwood, former company president.

   As noted by Richard N. Greenwood, the birth of Heywood-Wakefield "Modern" furniture traces its roots back more than a century to five Heywood brothers-Walter, Levi, Seth, Benjamin and William-who in 1826 began making wooden chairs in a small barn in Gardner, Massachusetts. At a time when John Quincy Adams was president of only 24 United States and the country's first railroad tracks were only just beginning to be laid, Walter Heywood began fashioning chairs largely by hand, with his only "machine" being a foot lathe. Walter was soon joined in the chairmaking enterprise by his brothers Levi and Benjamin, who began assisting in the work part-time while running a nearby country store. The brothers' chair business enjoyed quick prosperity and they soon built a new shop across the street from the store, which was disposed of around 1829.

   In 1831 Levi Heywood moved to Boston where he established an outlet store to sell the Heywood chairs, while Benjamin and younger brother William remained in Gardner to manufacture the products which gradually evolved from wood-seated to caneseated variations. In 1834 a fire destroyed the Heywood's chair shop (which was not rebuilt), prompting Levi's return to Gardner a year later. To continue chairmaking operations, in 1835 a definitive partnership-B. F. Heywood & Company was formed, initially comprised of Benjamin, Walter and William Heywood, along with Moses Wood and James W. Gates.     Upon his return to Gardner, Levi Heywood again became involved in the chair-making business. And it was Levi Heywood, the oldest of the brothers (and the one who would later achieve fame as an inventor and a patentee of chair-making machinery that revolutionized production), along with younger brother Seth and their descendants, who became the predominant figures in the development of the company in the 19th century. In 1835 Levi Heywood guided the company's move to the shores of Crystal Lake in Gardner (where a company factory would remain until the business closed its doors for good more than 140 years later). The fledgling chair-making enterprise purchased a lake-side building equipped for wood-turning and in the process gained its first "real" machinery-turning lathes and a circular saw. Initially an outlet from Crystal Lake provided the company with plenty of power, but eventually the currents of Crystal Lake proved inadequate to drive Heywood's machines and in succeeding years Levi replaced the plant's water power with steam.     Levi's insistence on the installation of new machinery dismayed his early partners, who gradually withdrew from the chair-making concern and for a period left Levi the sole Heywood owner. By 1844 a second partnership-Heywood & Wood had been formed, with Levi and Moses Wood the apparent principal partners. By 1849 Wood's name had disappeared from the company's title-Levi Heywood & Company and in 1851 a new name, Heywood Chair Manufacturing Company, was adopted during the formation of what amounted to a joint stock association.