Sligh Furniture Gallery
Sligh Furniture. Charles Sligh was 12 when his dad was killed in the war. Since his older brother was also serving in the military, it fell to Charles to go to work to help support his mother and sisters. The year, 1862. The place, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
You could hear the whistle of the train and smell the sawdust in the air as furniture companies were springing up on every corner in Grand Rapids. Newly arrived immigrants, settlers from the eastern seaboard and young Grand Rapids men were ready to work hard to make their success in the burgeoning new industry.
My great grandfather, Charles Sligh ended up working for Berkey & Gay, the leading furniture manufacturer of its day, first on the shop floor and ultimately as a road salesman traveling to all parts of the United States.
Back then furniture factories were very specialized. One plant might make headboards for beds. Another, under different ownership, might specialize in dressers. Still another made night stands. Retailers and consumers were left to their own devices for gathering together the furniture needed in a bedroom.
Great grandpa figured he had a revolutionary idea. In 1880 he founded Sligh Furniture Company, the first to offer from one plant, in coordinated styles and finishes, all the furniture pieces needed for the bedroom. And that innovation did indeed transform the way the industry approached bedroom furniture.
Grand Rapids furniture burst onto the national scene at the centennial furniture exposition in Philadelphia in 1876. By 1900, 40% of everyone employed in the four county area around Grand Rapids was working in the furniture industry. For 50 years, until the mid 1920s, Grand Rapids was the center of residential wood furniture manufacturing in the U.S. The winds of change were already blowing in the early 1900s. Trees were logged without replanting. Abundant raw materials and lower labor rates in the south inevitably attracted wood furniture manufacturing. A furniture recession that began in 1926 immediately followed by the great depression wiped out most of the residential wood furniture manufacturers in Grand Rapids.
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