The "A Bench Is A Bench Is A Bench......" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Reading about benches in Mr. Jack Brubaker's (The Scribbler)  Lancaster Newspaper's column. You know....something you can sit upon.  To me... a bench is a bench.  What else is there to it.  That is, until you begin to read about them and they tell you all the fancy, schmancy things about a bench.  Yeah...they suggest I look very closely at the bench so I can compare one bench with similar but subtly different benches.  And, until I realize that benches tell something about the people who made them and the people who sat upon them.  Guy by the name of Philip Zimmerman, a Lancaster-based museum and decorative arts consultant, has spent months studying the plain, unpainted benches at the Lancaster (Quaker) Friends Meetinghouse, 110 Tulane Terrace in East Hempfield Township.  He said, "This is a veritable museum of benches which were built in 1855.  "These benches have a lot of stories to tell, but we have to start listening."  This relatively "new" meetinghouse, constructed relatively late in the history of Quaker meetings, collected all of its benches from older meetinghouses, primarily in Chester and Delaware county, that no longer needed them.  As a result, Zimmerman says, Lancaster has the greatest variety of benches, and one of the oldest of any Quaker meeting houses.  He knows of no other meetinghouse that owns benches from such a wide area.   The specimens include seven different groups of benches and four single benches representing two centuries of history.  For a furniture historian, studying this collection is something like an art historian discovering a group of fine paintings by various artists that has never been cataloged.  Zimmerman wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on 18th century and early 19th century meetinghouses of all kinds in New Hamshire.  So when Lancaster Quakers asked him to examine local benches, he quickly took on the task, pro bono.  Zimmerman has found that the earliest of the benches (dating to the 1750s) are austere compared with the most recent (dating to about 1940).  Most have been altered, many after they were purchased in the 1950s, both to make repairs and for comfort.  Mr. Zimmerman has provided approximate dates of the original benches and has identified a pattern of woodworking that points to individual benches and has identified a pattern of woodworking that points to individual craftsmen from seven groups.  Like other early American church benches, these have long plank seats and backs  Unlike standard pews, these benches were not bolted to the floor.  They could be arranged and rearranged to suit the occasion.  Originally they were in rows, but today they form a square.  Most benches are made of tulip popular and yellow pine wood.  They are both beautiful as well as functional, with little ornamentation.  Some have graffiti as well as dates scratched into them.  An American eagle is cared into one of them.  A few of the benches have hinged backs, but that is rather rare.  There is much more to the benches than their beauty.  Each has a history to them.  Mr. Zimmerman has spoken to the Quaker congregations abut the benches and has written an essay about each of the benches.  Mrs. Zimmerman, a retired Franklin & Marshall College professor refers to her husband's obsession with the benches as "benching."  Neat idea and name for his passion which she must sometime patent!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.  PS - the following photos are taken from several Meeting Houses in Lancaster County...