Vol. 5, No. 7, July 2008
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Merrily They Roll Along
For more than 120 years, the man-powered people movers known as rolling chairs have been symbols of Atlantic City
Since the late 1800s, rolling chairs have been among the most visible icons of Atlantic City. Somewhere between a rickshaw and a wheelchair, they were easier than walking, quieter than an automobile and less smelly than a horse. More importantly, they were cheaper than all three.
Atlantic City’s not the only place where guests can get pushed around, but our rolling chairs have a unique story. They first became prominent with the Philadelphia Exposition of 1876. This celebration of the American centennial introduced several products to the nation, including Hires Root Beer, Heinz Ketchup, and Alexander Graham Bell’s newfangled telephone. Some of the 10 million visitors to the Exposition enjoyed being pushed across the grounds in single-occupant chairs.
The chairs migrated down the shore, but their appeal was at first limited. By 1884, a Philadelphia businessman named (incredibly enough) Harry D. Shill was renting chairs to visitors. There was a drawback, though: Shill and his competitors only rented the chairs themselves—it was up to the rider to find a pusher!
So it was mostly invalids who used the first rolling chairs, since few able-bodied strollers would ask their companions to push them around the Boardwalk.
That all changed in 1887, when William Hayday started the first true commercial rolling chair service. Hayday provided an attendant to push the chairs and enlarged them to hold two adults comfortably. Suddenly, riding a rolling chair was a bona fide leisure activity for couples. The intimacy of the chair had no small attraction in Victorian America, where middle-class youngsters (and oldsters, too) were expected to follow strict rules of courtship etiquette, all of which precluded casual contact. The chairs were a hit. The city issued its first licenses for chairs in 1891, and they became an integral part of the local transportation scene. In 1902, the New York Times quoted a visitor who observed the endless line of chairs snaking down the boards. “The entire population seems to be on wheels,” he said. “I believe it is one of the most enjoyable diversions I know.” Three years later, rolling chairs were a key attraction. “The Spring Season has opened at Atlantic City,” read a March 8, 1905 advertisement for the Chalfonte. “Five miles of Boardwalk are free of ice and slush. The walking is good. The rolling chair is ditto, and golf is very popular. Now is the time for a visit.” As with any successful product, competition was fierce. In 1916 a “rate war” between upstart William Garret and the dominant Shill Company resulted in the cost dropping to a mere 30 cents an hour. For the next few years, legal maneuvering interspersed with occasional strong-arm tactics marked the skirmishes between rival operators. Rolling chairs hit their peak of popularity in the 1920s. During this booming decade, the Boardwalk was swamped with 3,000 of the wicker conveyances at a time. Riding in a chair was a necessary part of a shore vacation. At the time, operators charged by the hour, not by distance, showing that the experience was more about leisure than transportation. But with the Great Depression, hiring a man to push you around the Boardwalk seemed a superfluous luxury. And the economies forced by World War II—and the shortage of labor that followed mass conscription—hampered the growth of the industry. After the war, Atlantic City was different. In September 1948, the first mechanized rolling chairs hit the Boardwalk: 10 chairs with electric motors and chauffeurs seated behind the riders. They typically ground their way down the Boardwalk at 2.5 mph—slower than a brisk walk—and lacked the romance of the man-powered originals. Originally sheathed in sheet metal, the motorized chairs later reverted to the original wicker body. As motels sprouted amid the aging, once-proud hotels, the rolling chair trade diminished. The advent of casino gaming in 1978 didn’t appreciably help revive the rollers—most visitors were too intent on gambling to spend an hour gliding along the boards. In the 1980s, electric trams pushed out most of the remaining chairs, but in the middle of that decade Larry Belfer purchased 83 decaying chairs and re-launched the tradition. By the middle of the next decade, nearly 200 chairs were plying the Wooden Way, mostly ferrying gamblers from one casino to another. But a few visitors, taking a page from Atlantic City history, rode for the sheer pleasure of the wind, waves and relaxation.
