This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
The City of Rock Island might well have become the chair capitol of the world, had it not been for an actress named Lilian Lewis.
A Swiss Canadian, C. C. Knell, moved to Rock Island in 1876 and opened a furniture store on the ground floor of the new three-story Harper s Opera House on second avenue and sixteenth street.
In 1883, Knell changed the world of chairs forever. At that time, America was a land of uncomfortable, straight backed, hard-seated kitchen and dining room chairs. Women had the rocking chair invented by Benjamin Franklin for their babies and their knitting, but a man coming home from twelve hours of hard work could hardly relax in his home s Puritan chairs.