HALLOWELL — Mayor George Lapointe looked up, red-faced and sweating, having just stacked a pink Adirondack chair on top of a green one in the back of the Second Street fire station.

“Last one?” Lapointe said. “Those kids move fast.”

It was 10:09 a.m. on Nov. 16 — just nine minutes after the scheduled start of the annual pick-up and storage of Hallowell’s 52 Adirondack chairs for the winter. The recently crowned state champion Hall-Dale High School boys soccer team, having just moved the chairs three blocks southward in record time, were posing for a picture in front of the station.

Kieran Kammerer, the driver of one of the three pickup trucks hauling the iconic chairs from the city’s bulkhead to the old fire station, finished taking pictures with his phone and thanked the team for their help.

“We’ll see you again in May,” Kammerer said. “Before the prom!”

Kammerer, a retired pediatrician and Hallowell’s self-proclaimed “Chair Man,” has organized volunteers to move the chairs in and out of storage since they were placed on the bulkhead in 2015. Over those 10 years, arranging storage, the power-washing and general maintenance of the chairs comes down to him.

“They’re loved by many, cared for by few,” he said.

But when the weather’s warm enough — usually right before Hall-Dale’s prom, when dressed-up students will often take photos on the bulkhead — he rounds up a group of volunteers to bring the chairs back to the bulkhead.

In fact, it was the Chair Man who had the idea to have chairs there in the first place.

Players from the state championship Hall-Dale High School boys soccer team move Adirondack chairs Nov. 16 off the bulkhead on the banks of the Kennebec River in Hallowell’s Granite City Park. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

‘BECAME A SYMBOL’

In early 2015, Kammerer drove past the South Portland location of Bedderrest, a now-defunct furniture business. Dozens of colorful Adirondack chairs lined up outside caught his eye.

“Wouldn’t those be great to have on the bulkhead?” Kammerer asked his wife.

Kammerer, then a member of the Hallowell Area Board of Trade with his woodworking business, Hallowell Woodworks, proposed a funding scheme to the other board members: Businesses and residents could “sponsor” a chair for $250, dedicating a plaque to whomever they choose and paying for the cost of the chair.

Ryan Madore stacks Adirondack chairs Nov. 16 into a pickup truck at the bulkhead on the banks of the Kennebec River in Hallowell’s Granite City Park. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

Leadership of the group agreed, and Kammerer posted a picture on Facebook in May 2015 of himself sitting in one of the resin composite chairs — more durable than wood and less likely to need repainting — and asking for sponsorships. Mark Walker, the mayor of Hallowell at the time and a HABOT member with his law firm, bought one.

“Well, picture this, you just finished your nice run along the rail trail and end in Hallowell,” Kammerer posted. “Go get your favorite beverage/snack from one of our downtown stores and have a seat in one of our 20, new multicolored chairs.”

Within a day, according to Kammerer’s comments on the post, five additional chairs had been sponsored. And after a smooth approval process with city officials, he lined them up on the bulkhead in June 2015 — and he said they were full on their very first day. Businesses that didn’t sponsor a chair on the first round of orders to Bedderrest wanted in on the second, and residents flocked to the bulkhead to see the new, colorful addition to their city.

“It seemed like it, it developed overnight, almost,” Walker said. “They were hugely successful. And I point to the parking area down there — on middays, midweeks, the parking lot would be full.”

By the next summer, the total number of chairs — which were emblazoned under the seat with “PROPERTY OF HABOT” and marked with official dedication plaques on the front — rose to 54 with new sponsorships and purchases. Since then, one has been stolen, Kammerer said. One other chair floated downriver several miles and hasn’t yet been returned.

But the other 52 have become a staple to Hallowell’s residents and tourists and a focal point of the waterfront. The chairs are even featured as the city’s Facebook profile picture, in the logo of the Hallowell Pride Alliance and on the branding of several downtown businesses and organizations.

“It was just a great success, and it became a symbol for many people of what they thought about for the city of Hallowell,” Walker said.

Players from the state championship Hall-Dale High School boys soccer team move Adirondack chairs Nov. 16 off the bulkhead on the banks of the Kennebec River in Hallowell’s Granite City Park. The chairs will be stored over the winter and return in the spring.  Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

REVITALIZATION

One of Kammerer’s goals in buying the chairs, gaining sponsors and organizing storage every year was to help revitalize downtown and bring residents to businesses — something he had hoped to see for a long time.

The chairs quickly became a central part of the city’s waterfront, being within Granite City Park and with the Kennebec River Rail Trail just feet from the bulkhead.

Granite City Park, thanks to hundreds of hours of work from volunteers and the cultivation of native plant species, has itself become a downtown attraction. Even the construction of the bulkhead itself was the product of decades of activism from residents who wanted to make downtown and the waterfront more of a focal point of the city.

While the bulkhead had seen light use since its construction was completed in 2008, Kammerer said the chairs brought more people to businesses and helped the downtown and waterfront areas feel more lively — a shift away from the city’s emphasis on antiques and toward the downtown restaurants and bars the city prides itself on now.

“There’s still a couple of really good antique-type stores in town that bring a lot of people in, and they get lots of visitors,” Walker said. “But I think over time, the chairs became a much more common symbol than the ‘Antique Capital.’ We also have good restaurants, we have a good music scene, a good vibe downtown, and I think the chairs just add to that, enhance that.”

But for about five months of the year, the chairs are stowed away, waiting patiently for high school volunteers to put them on pickup trucks and drive them back to the bulkhead — so those high school volunteers can pose for their prom photo shoots in front of an Adirondack rainbow.