NORTH DENNIS – The remnants of a house, once the subject of the improbably popular Chair Watch Facebook page, now sit in the county landfill, but the story of a chair and red suitcase, abandoned in the home’s attic, live on in the social media community, where a group of over 13,000 follow updates.
Friday, Dec. 15, Mike Litchko demolished the house he owned – a property noticed by many who traveled Route 47 through Dennis Township. The house – or, more specifically, certain items in the attic – reached celebrity status after a straight-line wind took off the roof, leaving items exposed, including the now-famous chair, which sat perched at the south side of the structure, toying with gravity.
Litchko said he bought the property, including the house, in 1978 and lived in it for a time. As a fisherman, Litchko kept a cooler and a freezer on the property and stored his crabbing gear there.
“That’s why no one lived there,” he said.
The exception, Litchko recalled, was a time when two young women and their children moved in.
“I let them stay there for a while. I don’t remember the dates,” he said, adding no one has lived in the house for at least 15 years.
The house had a termite problem, and when insulation was blown in, it seemed to exacerbate it, according to Litchko. He said, after that, the house started coming apart and he didn’t want anyone to live there.
When Litchko last spoke to the Herald, he stated he had spent about $4,000 in tipping fees at the landfill getting rid of the house.
Ray Rebmann, the volunteer curator at the Dennis Township Historical Museum, is familiar with the house and the popularity the chair has gained on social media. He said he believed he saw a photo of the house that was identified as “Minnie Robinson’s Store.” However, he recommended speaking to architectural historian Joan Berkey, who could speak more knowledgeably about the house.
Berkey did not believe the house had been a store, but knew it was not built in 1940 as Litchko had previously stated. The Cape May County Clerk’s office said an adjacent structure was dated as having been built in 1940, but not the house of online fame, centered around its signature chair and suitcase.
“It is closer to 1820 t0 1830. It goes back to the Ludlam family that settled the area in the late 1600s,” Berkey said.
Berkey, a published author on historic architecture, said she never wrote specifically about Litchko’s building, but is aware of it. As far as the store, Berkey said it was actually located where Dennisville Fence is now.
Berkey said that the chair house was originally a Ludlam house.
“I think we’ve all been watching the slow deterioration of this house, even before a windstorm sheared the roof off a few years ago,” Berkey said. “I know part of its history, having studied this area of North Dennis, which is where our house was built about 1790.”
According to Berkey’s research, the chair house was probably built between 1810 and 1815 by Thomas Ludlam III. He was the son of Thomas Ludlam Jr. and Zilpah Smith and the grandson of Thomas Ludlam Sr. and Jane Leonard.
It was Thomas Ludlam Jr. who built the house in which Berkey and her husband now live. Thomas Ludlam III married a woman named Sarah around 1810, and their children were all young when he died in 1823 or 1824.
“When his land holdings were divided in 1838,” she said, referencing page 143 from the Book of Divisions, “the land on which the chair house stands was given to his widow and the house is drawn at its present location on the subdivision map.”
She said on the 1846 road map for Jake’s Landing Road, on page 270 of Roads Book B, the house is shown under the ownership of H. Vancle, who is Hiram Van Wickle. Van Wickle married Thomas III’s daughter, Ellen. The deed transferring ownership to Van Wickle is dated Dec. 12, 1842, according to page 479 of Deed Book S, which indicates the land was part of the dower given to “the wife of Samuel Robart, late the widow of Thomas Ludlam, deceased.”
“The house may also have been built by Ludlam’s widow, Sarah, about 1825, when she married Samual Robart on Aug. 24, 1825. Either way, it appears to date to the early 1800s,” Berkey said.
Litchko said he always believed the house in older than he originally thought. He said the house sat on four piers, with large posts at each corner. The beams, he said, were notched out square, and there was evidence of post and beam construction, which included notched and fitted timbers. The ‘A’ on the roof was “pegged,” meaning the beams that formed the peak of the house were joined together with wooden pegs.
The Chair
The chair hanging on the edge of the attic floor for several years, which was the object of fascination for a long time, was finally blown off the roof, Dec. 11, by a storm that spawned two dozen tornadoes in the south. Rather than losing popularity, the site administrator, Tony DiMeglio, of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, said the site gained 500 followers after the chair fell. The Chair Watch page has followers from all around the region, including neighboring states, and as far away as California, British Columbia, and Portugal.
The chair, when it fell, was in very bad condition. The plywood structure of the back and seat had decayed so badly that those features literally crumbled on impact. The chair was broken at every joint, but, woodworker John Hassay, of Cape Island Woodworking, immediately stepped up and offered to reassemble the chair. Hassay was able to identify the chair’s key features and origin.
“It is made of teak. It’s a cheap Danish modern knock-off,” he said. “It’s a production piece.”
Hassay said teak was extremely expensive in its heyday, and in the 1960s manufacturers found a less expensive source in Myanmar (formerly Burma). Hassay said teak is a very sturdy wood, but all the joints came apart in the fall. He said he re-dowelled and epoxied all the joints, and he fabricated a new seat and back from plywood. He said the original plywood seat and back were “long gone.”
“The chair had a kind of a permanent tweak [bending and twisting] from being in that state so long. I tried to keep a little [of] that,” Hassay said.
Hassay said he wire-brushed the wood somewhat too, removing some green mold, “to keep the funk down to a minimum.” He took the reassembled chair to Chip Birchall of Chip’s Custom Upholstery, who volunteered to recover the chair.
Speaking on the phone, Hassay said, “I just realized I never sat in [the chair].”
Birchall said he received the chair on Saturday, Dec. 23 and said Hassay had done a really great job with the wood, shoring up the joints and making the chair solid.
“I cleaned it up and put a stain on it, getting it ready to reupholster,” Birchall said.
Birchall told the Herald the wood was very dry and needed to be treated to protect it from splitting. He said he looked in his inventory and found a red-orange vinyl material that would mimic the original. Birchall has been an upholsterer for over 40 years and does a lot of antiques. He said he believes that when you restore something you “bring it back to life,” to give it more life for people to sit on. He said not restoring the chair was not the way to go.
The question remains as to what the next step for the chair is. Many people have hoped that it would somehow benefit the Dennis Township Museum & History Center, which could provide the chair with a home. The Herald asked Rebmann if the museum would be interested in taking the chair and he said it would.
“But I will tell you this, as far as our museum is concerned, it’s only open on a limited basis. As far as room for the chair, that is not a problem, but I don’t know about public access,” Rebmann said.
The museum is currently open every other Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., or by appointment, but won’t open if there are icy or snowy road conditions.
“Making (the chair) available to other groups would not be a problem,” Rebmann said.
John Haigis, a museum board member, said he would like to see a meeting of interested parties to see how the chair should be preserved and utilized.
“It would make sense to gather people who have interest in the chair, history and how to preserve it,” he said.
The Red Suitcase
The suitcase is currently being prepped for opening. Its clasps are severely rusted, and a spray rust solvent is being applied to dissolve the rust and free up the clasps. Various suggestions have been received regarding the time and place for the opening of the suitcase.
One “Chair Watch” member suggested midnight on New Year’s Eve, to coincide with the ball drop. Another liked the New Year’s Eve idea, but preferred an earlier time. One person suggested timing it to coincide with the next nor’easter, forecasted to arrive between Jan. 7 and Jan. 11, 2024.
The date will not be New Year’s Eve, less than a week away, but other suggestions are being entertained.
The suitcase and the chair have already been booked for the Christmas in July Golf Cart Parade in Wildwood, on July 27.
Contact the author, Christopher South, at 609 886-8600 ext. 128 or email csouth@cmcherald.com.
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