Most people riding on municipal trains or buses don’t want to think too much about the surface their butt is planted on. For good reason. If you are a fan of the 1893 World’s Fair, however, the seat underneath your backside probably has a direct lineage to the World’s Columbian Exposition. Chicago Magazine offers a surprising report that the company that makes about eighty percent of the seats for transit agencies in the United States—including most buses, subway trains, and airport trams—started at the 1893 Fair and is still in business.
Freedman Seating operates today out of the West Humboldt Park neighborhood of Chicago. In 1893, Hyman Freedman (the great grandfather of the current CEO) began making seat cushions for horse-drawn buggies and was awarded a diploma of honorable mention at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago for his upholstery skills.
Riding on your municipal subway or elevated train may not be as thrilling as a spin around the Ferris Wheel, nor as romantic as a moonlit ride across the Grand Basin in a gondola, but that vinyl seat you’re sitting on is yet another legacy of the 1893 World’s Fair.
A tally-ho carriage on display at the 1893 World;s Fair. [Image from White, Trumbull; Igleheart, Wm. World’s Columbian Exposition Chicago 1893. P. W. Ziegler, 1893.]